Slow Havamal: 25

[kylec]

In the 25th verse, the unwise man falls into the error of thinking that those who laugh with him must be his friends. But at court, no one will have his back.

I don’t speak Old Norse, so I’m not sure whether “court” in this verse is a translation of a word that means a legal proceeding, or the court of a king. My suspicion is the former, but it also makes sense in the latter case, where the man isn’t on trial, but probably needs someone to vouch for him in order to be treated according to his status, or to speak kindly of him to the king. The first half of the verse is a repetition of the previous one. The problem for the unwise man is still being able to read the context and understand when people are real friends, versus patronizing tormentors.

Going farther than mocking in this case, these people will withhold whatever references the man may have expected in his defense. He assumed they held him in high esteem. When it mattered, they were nowhere to be found. We can lay the blame at the feet of false friends, but no wise man would fail to spot the distinction well in advance. One who keeps company with people who don’t care for him is responsible for his own delusions. There are many reasons to associate with someone short of true friendship. There is social obligation, amusement, personal gain, boredom, loneliness, and a host of others that may drive these men to hang out with the unwise man as long as it doesn’t cost them anything. But they won’t stake their reputations on it. Their service is a superficial one. The entire relationship is theatrics, performed within a narrow range of repeated behavior that serves to affirm their roles. In Transactional Analysis, not much more than a game that people play for some concealed psychological benefit. Games only work in TA as long as everyone sticks to the script. They shatter on impact with novelty.

The unwise man was only safe in his delusion as long as he could ignore the evidence to the contrary, and repeat the stereotyped interactions that allowed him to hold them. This is no life. It’s a snow globe scene. Real life is full of change. No two things repeat, and to the extent that we think otherwise, we are willfully ignoring information. Even if I did the same stuff today as yesterday, there were plenty of tiny variations for me to see: in my thoughts, my movements, the light, the wind, the world around me. Anything “done twice” is polished of the obvious differences and lumped into an abstract category: “same”.

Let’s move into metaphor. Suppose those friends were not people at all, but the habits of the unwise man. They’re the ways he interacts with the world, both inside and out, every day. He thinks they’re friends, and they serve him well enough as long as nothing changes. As long as he can make everything seem the same. But as soon as novelty forces him outside of his narrow patterns, he finds that the way he usually thinks about the world and the methods he’s practiced to cope with it are useless to aid him. He’s failed to garner genuine friendships. That would mean getting to know things as they are, participating with them, taking feedback, and constantly adjusting based on it. That kind of habit will help no matter where he lands himself.

The authority here is the court. It will decide the man’s fate. In our lives, the court is those forces which are more powerful than us, and hold sway over our lives. We can’t delude them away. Sooner or later, we have to stand before them and answer. If we’ve lived honestly and sought wisdom, changed our behavior to match the world, and earned our keep, we will leave free men, free to wander as we see fit. If we’ve lied to ourselves, engaged in games, built bad habits, and inflated our own importance at the expense of earning genuine recognition, we’ll be found wanting.