Ijaat Akun said:
Honor is not a universally defined virtue by any means. At all.
I'll explain in the most succinct manner I can, using a topic very near and dear to my heart - Imperial Japan circa the 1890s. Japan, as many know, was an isolationist island nation up until the last two centuries or so. That meant it lagged far behind the rest of the world with regards to industrialization, culture, and other societal/national constructs. This is not to say they had no culture, or had poor culture, they simply had not advanced to the level industrialized nations have.
Here is the key point, however. As Japan stepped onto the world stage, they wanted to gain prestige, and walk as equals with the 'Western powers.' That is to say Prussia, Great Britain, France, the United States and other imperialist countries. In this attempt they realized they would need to not only advance rapidly, but acquire new values and ideals at a pace unprecedented before. They reformed education, religion (they had a religion they just refused to call it a religion) and adapted the old ways to fit a new global perspective.
And in doing so, they did something important. They came up with their own idea of what it meant to be civilized. In this manner, they decided that honor, duty, and sacrifice for the family and the Emperor were deemed acceptably civilized activities. And so while Americans looked upon kamikaze attacks as uncivilized assaults by a fanatically loyal population, the Japanese viewed it as a perfectly normal civilized act by a dutiful subject of the Emperor.
In this manner, too, can we not describe 'honor' as a catch all term like we would like to with 'civilized.' The Mandalorian code of honor revolves around the concept of growth. Have you fought the toughest enemies? Have you broken their will to fight? Have you, in the process, brought something of value to your clan? These are all key tenets of the Mandalorian concept of honor - it has nothing to do with killing 'innocents,' because the only innocents they acknowledge are children.
Everyone else? Fair game. They're a people of war. Total war.
I look forward to seeing this play out.