The Lost Tradition
I just finished watching The Last Samuri. What a thought provoking film. The idea that honor and a code of morals should be put above all else seems so out of place in our society. To think that it once was ingrained into our thoughts, that there are some things more important than money or advancement, and that we actually used to fight for those ideals. Now that's viewed as backward, primitive, not with the times. Our society looks down upon what it once held in the highest esteem, punishing what it once rewarded. No one person cause this change, it was a change brought about by people as a whole. I resist that change, and I receive retribution from an appaled society. Nothing but hatred and disgust at my beliefs that honor matters above all else, and that life should be governed by a selfimposed set of moral codes. More than once I have been shunned by my peers for "doing the right thing" while all I hear is approval for doing wrong and just plain stupid things. I say our society is more backwards than it has ever been. Maybe a few days on the frontline would change people's outlooks on life, maybe then they'll see that, when the shit hits the fan, nothing really matters except what you believe. But no, this is not possible, so they scurry around, blinded by the the shine of their money, unable to see through the smoke into the truth as I have. I can imagine the hell that my brethren have gone through, I have seen the people that have come out of the fire, their souls tempered into a fine piece of steel, and I have decided that I will go that same path, knowing full well that I may not make it out the other side.
Live with Honor, Fight with Honor, Die with Honor. To do otherwise is to render life meaningless.