[toomanyrichies]

This reminds me of a passage I read from "Hillbilly Elegy" by JD Vance, where he talks about growing up in the Scots-Irish parts of West Virginia, and the almost pathological devotion to family honor.

One anecdote (the details of which I'm mis-remembering slightly) involves an incident he witnessed in a Walmart or Kmart or some such store, where a mother whose out-of-control kids were scolded by an employee for their behavior. The mother proceeded to physically threaten the employee for the perceived affront against her family's honor.

The canonical example of "vendetta" behavior among Scots-Irish is the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys, which I believe Vance also mentions.

Throughout the book, the author intertwines anecdotes of self-limiting (or even anti-social) behavior like the above with descriptions of the worsening economic climate that the region's residents find themselves in. He makes a great case (sometimes subtly and sometimes bluntly) for the idea that the two reinforce each other.

It's amazing what kind of mental gymnastics people will go through to convince themselves that they're "honorable", especially when that honor is the only asset they think they have left.

[ghostbrainalpha]

That book should be the required reading for this article. I love how he talked about the effect of Honor culture even in elementary school fights, and how difficult it has been to detach himself from that culture as an individual.