From an excellent New Yorker article on the history of dueling:
Whatever else ÄúhonorÄù may be, it is the knowledge that every impertinence carries with it the seed of a greater, more fundamental insult: the suggestion that a person can get away with it---which is, after all, where humiliation really begins. Somewhere in our molecular makeup a sword-bearing protein squalls to have its day. But that doesnÄôt mean we have to listen... Ultimately, the duel was sustained not by a failure of communication but by a failure of imagination.