If I think back why I was able to not kill myself or do other bad things in my early 20s it was mostly because I was taught to think of myself as a Christian Knight and that I had an obligation to protect women and my parents and anyone who needed my protection including myself. This self respect kept me alive when others would have killed themselves in my position. It also kept me from harming or raping women, it also kept me from becoming a criminal and harming others, it's also was why I would form a line waiting to get into a movie or anything else. Or as the British would say, "Form a Que".
However, this self discipline is not a natural part of non-European Cultures. I would call what we mistake for self discipline is obedience to family, loyalty to family, loyalty to religion or to a monarch or to the state. Yes. It is true that many individuals in those cultures respect what I would call self disciplne, chivalry, Western European honor and the ability to die in battle in a self disciplined manner based upon western values but this is not a general truth within non-western cultures.
This chivalry and Noblesse Oblige also exists in young men especially in the middle class and upper class in America in regard to rape in that young men in America generally are taught to be self disciplined enough to not engage in rape of women or men.
Around the world, this way of thinking is often foreign to those cultures even though some people in those cultures strive to the code of chivalry and nobles oblige.
Often women in western cultures fought alongside their men in battle. This also created situations on into the future where equality for women became a more natural thing in many western cultures. Often if someone tried to rape these women who fought in battle the women killed these people if they could because they were trained to fight. This extends all the way down through history to today.
Whereas if a young woman in say Africa in some cultures there is asked for for sex from a man and she is single she might be required to say "yes". So, this is often how these kinds of things play out in other cultures. This was especially bad when AIDS began in those cultures when millions began to die from this custom.
Whereas often in Asian cultures men have rights and women don't because all property is owned by men. So, in a culture like this all women become property and don't have individual rights except within a family setting. In these kinds of cultures rape especially becomes endemic to those cultures except where a family protects the honor of it's women or the honor of the family in whatever that means to the family there.
Whereas in Tibetan Culture property is generally owned by women so a man's role might be different in a culture like this.
So, what I'm saying here is that "Self Discipline" the way we think of it here in America and Europe does not exist in the same way in other cultures but is based upon a group loyalty rather than the self respect of oneself and the protection of oneself, women, children and others. So, the concept of self respect and even of individuality might not exist like it does in western culture. So, how it would manifest might be something more like family honor but not necessarily self discipline or self respect.
So, expecting this kind of thing in non-western Cultures isn't necessarily useful because it is not a natural phenomenon but rather when it exists is for them an adaptation to the mores of another culture than their own.
Chivalry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chivalry
Chivalry, or the chivalric code, is a code of conduct associated with the medieval institution of knighthood. Chivalry arose from an idealised German custom.
Wikipedia
Noblesse oblige - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige
Noblesse oblige
is a French phrase literally meaning "nobility obliges". It is the
concept that nobility extends beyond mere entitlements and requires the
person ...
Wikipedia
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