A few weeks ago, I learned a little about loyalty. I tend to be a hands-on learner, which is just a nice way to say that I make lots of easily avoidable mistakes, and reflect later on my fundamentally poor decision-making. Learning about something as profound as loyalty in that way is a pretty surreal experience when you don’t take yourself seriously enough, but I’m glad I learned something either way. This is how it went.

I went to a big party at a fraternity house with a few friends from my own, separate fraternity. We mingled and wandered about for a bit, but it eventually occurred to us that things were winding down. As we were about to leave, we realized that there was an empty table on the dance floor. In typical frat-boy fashion, we agreed that it was tragically low on dancers, and that it was our duty to fill that niche. We stepped up onto the table and began dancing, beckoning the other partygoers to gather around and dance with us. People began crowding around, shouting all manner of incoherent party-jargon and jumping up and down. The next logical step is usually to remove your shirts and twirl them around like lassos, but to our dismay, we didn’t quite make it that far: as things were picking up, one of the brothers from the fraternity came up to the table and shouted up at us, “Get the fuck down!”

Fair enough. It is their house, so we should go by their rules. But it just seemed counterintuitive to actively stop people from having a good time. So I asked him why we had to get down, to which he tactfully reiterated, “Get the FUCK DOWN!” I couldn’t argue with that and he was visibly trembling with fury, so I began stepping off the table. Another brother, thinking that I was refusing to get off, came and shook the table while we were still standing on it. We were thrown off balance, and each of us almost took a serious spill. We looked at one another in tacit agreement: that could have been bad, we thought. If we had fallen off, the best-case scenario would be a painfully awkward crash on the dance floor. The worst case would have been a trip to the hospital. Party time was over for me at that point – It was time to put my game face on and confront the situation (Recall: I don’t often take myself seriously unless the situation is aptly serious, so this was a rare occurrence for me).

Let me preface this by saying I rarely lose my temper or pick fights. If you encounter someone who is fundamentally a prick and knock him out, they’ll probably still be a prick when they wake up. However, there are a few ways to make me truly infuriated, and endangering my friends is one of them. So I asked the table-shaker “Are you the guy who shook the table?” He denied it repeatedly, but there was no question he did it. I continued to ask, but he just kept shaking his head and thrusting his hand forward for a “let bygones be bygones” handshake. I don’t know where the notion originated that clasping someone’s hand absolves you of any wrong you’ve done them, but when I see that ritual exercised, I forget about negotiating and get downright medieval. Feeling frustrated and feeling a little bold, I leaned in and made damn sure he hear these words: “Listen, I know it was you. And if you do something like that again, I’ll kick your teeth down your throat.”

Not only was that a foolish thing to say, but I also stole it shamelessly from a movie (credit to Ryan Gosling in Drive). Testosterone is literally coming out of people’s ears at these parties, so threats like that can start some serious altercations – and that it did. A score of frat brothers descended on me like wildfire, but my buddies were quick to step in their way. Luckily, the girls were able to permeate through the wall of furious frat brothers with incredible speed, which relieved me (that they wouldn’t get caught in the middle) and impressed me at the same time. I can’t imagine what they thought of the altercation, but it was probably not along the lines of “wow, what an intelligent way to settle a dispute”. I only saw one girl’s reaction to the snafu. She made a face that was somewhere between disgust and confusion.

The situation escalated quickly, with brothers holding each other back from coming down upon us like hyenas. Thankfully nobody actually fought or got hurt, but I was too preoccupied being amazed at how quickly my friends rushed to my defense to even notice that no punches were actually thrown. It was like watching hopelessly as a grizzly bear barreled towards me, teeth gnashing and mandibles dripping, only to have a tree fall on it at the last minute. It was a stunning show of solidarity. The fact that the whole thing was entirely my fault for seizing a great opportunity to be an enormous twit is, of course, aside the point – but whatever would have happened otherwise, I probably deserved it. Fortunately, my friends didn’t seem to think so.

Frankly, I’m a real sucker for stuff like that – displays of courage for your friends – and I am not ashamed to admit that I almost shed a tear for the bravery I witnessed that night. Furthermore, it got me thinking pretty deeply about loyalty. At any degree of importance, the principle of being loyal to someone else is powerful. From backing up a friend in an argument to stepping in the way of harm to protect them, loyalty inspires boys to become men, and men to become great men. It tests our will and our friendships, demanding that we become stronger for the sake of our friends in the face of adversity. Fidelity identifies our true comrades and tightens our bonds with them.

While our modern view of the word loyalty is defined by these elements, the word’s origins point to a different definition (though it helps us understand what it means today). The Oxford English Dictionary defines loyalty as “Faithful adherence to one’s promise, oath, word of honor, etc.” (1.). It takes its roots in law and affairs of state, and indicates an agreement to serve only the body of which one is a part. This means refraining from subversive activities and devoting oneself to the state entirely. Though loyalty’s beginnings lie in politics and law, it is used nowadays to indicate close friendship. To call someone a loyal friend is a considerable compliment – it basically means that they are willing to give up some of themselves for the sake of their friend. In a way, its meaning in the context of friendship is almost deeper than it is in law, because a loyal friendship is organic. It forms out of mutual admiration and love rather than out of an obligation of service to a larger, less personal body.

Loyalty is also a very fraternal and masculine word. It was originally a stipulation for someone who works for the state in a time when only men participated in politics. Nowadays, loyalty is obviously not considered unique to men – however, loyalty between men is still emphasized as a crucial part of many male-dominated organizations (fraternities being an obvious one, but the military values it the same way amongst soldiers). In such organizations that embrace tradition, the original law/politics-based meaning of loyalty is extremely important. Its significance is more symbolic of the organization as a whole than it is of individual, personal relationships within it.

Therefore, we can distinguish two different types of loyalty: one is more structural and political (between members of an organization), while the other is more organic and personal (between friends). Both forms are strong, but loyalty in both cases can be broken through lies and untrustworthy deeds. If a brother in a fraternity steals from another, he will be reprimanded and often looked down upon by other brothers, which weakens the whole of the organization. Similarly, if someone discovers that his friend lied to him, he may not trust him and could choose to end the friendship altogether. In a nutshell, be careful when it comes to loyalty, because nobody wins if you blow it.

Cicero points to a mutual admiration for virtue as one of the most decisive factors in determining friendships. This is central to organizational loyalty. Each member of the organization must believe in the same ideals and trust one another in order for that organization to move most effectively in its desired direction. Generally, an organization that places little importance on what one might consider “virtuous” – i.e. service, charity, honesty, dignity, equality etc. – will not instill a great deal of loyalty between its members because the organization has no common good or standard of decency to abide by. This can be seen in, for example, large companies that pay their employees poorly, and as a result, the employees resent the company itself and are not loyal to it, choosing to be lazy and even steal in place of working hard.

On the other hand, do two friends really have to be honorable or upstanding to care about one another? Absolutely not. Though loyalty is often also compared to virtue, there is nothing about the definition or its roots that means one is required to “do the right thing”. The same goes in a friendship – a virtuous person who is loyal to their friend may indeed do something that isn’t virtuous for the sake of that friend. Two friends are loyal to one another because they like each other, not because they both like the concept of virtue. They might be loyal to one another because they’ve been through thick and thin together. The raw experience of facing hardship with a friend can bring him or her closer to you. Essentially, loyalty between friends doesn’t have to arise from virtue as it may have to in a group or organization: it is often lumped in with honor and virtue, but just because it shares a lexical field with them doesn’t mean it relies on them in practice. That being said, friendship and loyalty do establish an unspoken set of rules that friends follow not out of obligation, but out of a real desire to hold the friendship together. Following those rules unconditionally could be considered virtuous, as it would be to abide laws out of appreciation for the stability they create. However, loyalty to a friend is more loving and caring, and overlaps in some cases with virtue rather than being synonymous to it.

Rather than virtue, what truly inspires loyalty is loyal action: when a friend supports you, you become inclined to support them as well. Tolkein’s “The Lord of the Rings” is full of examples of this. For example, Boromir (from the Fellowship of the Ring) is far from being a pinnacle of virtue. Despite this, he is still loyal to Frodo. In fact, he eventually admits to his own inability to resist the power of the ring, shortly before he dies protecting Frodo’s life. At the end of the day, he gave his life to protect Frodo – the ultimate display of loyalty. Boromir may have been incompatible with the fellowship and even disloyal to it, but his loyalty to Frodo saved the hobbit from certain death.

Behind these feelings of fidelity, there must be a reason for being a loyal person. In Boromir’s case, it boiled down to a mixture between an obligation to his role in the fellowship and his love for Frodo. People don’t necessarily have to be close friends to be loyal to one another. Loyalty can also be an implied part of one’s position in a hierarchy, organization, government, etc. (as discussed earlier). However, loyalty between friends is by far the most natural, and as an extension, the strongest. Michel de Montaigne even goes so far as to say that friendly love is stronger than romantic love because we are liable to lose interest in our significant other. We are not loyal to our friends because we want to be polite or because we have to for the sake of an institution. We are loyal to them because we want to be. To see our friends distraught makes us genuinely unhappy, so we go to great lengths to keep their spirits high. In return, the friendship grows stronger and more meaningful.

This highlights the dichotomy between loyalty in a friendship and loyalty in a company or government – Loyalty in a group is reinforced by the collaboration of the group as a whole, while loyalty in a friendship is reinforced by two friends’ personal devotion to one another. I personally would agree with Montaigne: loyalty in friendship is indeed the tightest, even stronger than that in an organization because it is voluntary rather than obligatory. However, in both ways, loyalty is a force that brings friends together in times of despair to make the whole greater than its parts, so to speak. It instills the comfort of knowing that our buddies have our back, and that we have someone who will always tell us the truth. Loyal friends will unconditionally come to one another’s aid, regardless of their own general moral compass – which, let me tell you, is great when your moral compass lets you steal lines from movies to start fights with people at their own parties.

Works Cited

Cicero, Marcus Tullius. On the Good Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971. Print.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967. Print.

“loyalty, n.”. OED Online. March 2013. Oxford University Press. 26 April 2013.

Montaigne, Michel de. On Friendship. New York: Penguin, 2005. Print.