Standing when every collective support has withdrawn is the late form of the older duty of the higher type. A traditional order made that duty visible in rank, rite, and a recognized obligation that held a man upright from outside as well as from within. Those supports are gone. The age does not command him to stand. It invites him, hour by hour, to sit, to soften, and to treat the current as the only climate a sane man accepts.
The duty does not become a private mood because the public form has withdrawn. It remains the same hierarchical obligation, now imposed by the man on himself according to the permanent measure. He keeps the line in the work, the speech, and the body, where the older obligation used to show itself in public form. An audience is not required for the duty to bind. The binding comes from the measure, and the measure does not wait for a room that will applaud restraint.
Young men meet this as an excessive demand the world itself does not make. The room that laughs at restraint, the friendship that treats a standard as a quirk, and the job that pays only output each offer belonging on the condition that he sit down. Softness is sold as realism, and the hunger to stay in the room makes the trade look small. The trade is the duty. The age has no authority to cancel a measure it no longer recognizes.
Stand through the next hour that invites sitting. Keep the body under the rule you set before the company arrived, and refuse the sentence that would buy the laugh. Leave the circle if the price of staying is the line. A restored order would make the duty easier to share, and sharing is not the test. The test is whether you are still upright when nothing around you is keeping the watch.