The Tyranny of Honor

You probably expect me to talk about the FBI raiding Mar-a-lago. But I don’t know anything more than you do, so I won’t be doing that. Instead I am thinking about the movie adaptation of The Green Knight. Specifically, I am thinking about the challenge itself.

A clearly supernatural man walks in a challenges the knights present to an exchange of blows. They give a blow now, and he returns the same blow in year’s time. Now, in the original material, the knights mused that if the first blow were well struck, no second blow would occur. But here’s the thing. If you kill the knight and that’s the end of it, then you’ve killed a man who was not fighting back. That’s not a heroic act. If you apparently kill the knight, and his obvious supernatural nature saves him somehow (what actually happens), you have agreed to let him kill you in one year’s time. The best tactic is to refuse to play, but if nobody takes the bait, then all of you look like cowards and King Arthur (your liege) loses face. There is no good option here. The Green Knight is using the knight’s own rules against them. If he were not simply out to test their bravery, he could bring down the round table.

There is a lesson here: do not let others know your code, lest they use it against you.