McCracken has consulted on the intersection of culture and commerce for IKEA, Sesame Street, Nike, Kanye West, Netflix, and the Obama White House. He spoke with Reason’s Nick Gillespie in January.
Q: Can you define the Elizabethan ideal of honor?
A: Honor was like a storehouse of value. The value wasn’t economic; it was personal. You were judged and understood to be accomplished, or to have failed to accomplish, a personal reputation.
Q: So the honor code meant you were a man of your word and could be trusted?
A: Yes, and it’s also horrifying because it’s so exclusive. It says that unless you’re born into the aristocratic or at least the gentle classes, you can’t be trusted at all. I tried to go through the book as a kind of cultural engineer and bring up what’s good and get rid of what’s bad.
Q: What are some recent American examples where honor was just completely absent?
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Denne historien er fra June 2021-utgaven av Reason magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Gimme Shelter - The U.S. confronts a growing homelessness problem. Does Miami have the answer?
The U.S. confronts a growing homelessness problem. Does Miami have the answer?
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Left alone, AI could actually help small firms compete with tech giants.
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Cutting Off Israel
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States Turn Their Backs on Criminal Justice Reform
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to avoid the “strange bedfellows” cliché when reading about the criminal justice reform movement in the 2010s.
