Slow Havamal: 26

[kylec]

In the 26th verse, a stupid man can think himself knowledgeable as he tucks himself away in a corner, but when men ask him questions, he has no answers.

A corner is a privileged space. There’s only one way in and one way out, so a man who lives there is relatively safe from assault. If he were a stupid man, he could hide himself away, free from the rest of the world, and quickly convince himself that the few things he knew were in fact all that one needs to know to get by. Since there’s no one else in the corner, there’s no one to show up his knowledge, and plenty of room to imagine it inflating to the point that it exceeds all the other people he suspects inhabit the broader room and the world outside. He’s unlikely to find anything he says contradicted, and taking no risks, can justify any position with his survival.

Nagging at him is the well-suppressed fear that one day, other men will find their way into his space, and ask him to share his knowledge. These men may also know a thing or two, or be willing to test what he says. If that were to happen, he fears his relative stupidity would be exposed, so he has to double-down his isolation and self-reinforcing affirmations of wisdom.

This verse reminds me that whatever wisdom or talents I fear to share with others are in doubt. Am I just preserving the fragile illusion of value? And if not, why don’t I test my knowledge and skills against the proving grounds of the real world? If I say something stupid, others will let me know. It will be a blow to my ego. I’ll have to admit I was wrong all along. My hard-earned knowledge was little more than mental vapor. On the other hand, a test doesn’t yield reward or failure. Those are value judgments we place on what the test actually yields: information. Gregory Bateson defines it as “a difference that makes a difference.” Whether the beliefs I held matched up to the world or not, I now have the opportunity to refine them so they’re improved the next time someone asks me a question. The stupid man clings to anything that seems to make him feel valuable or worthy of love.

The wise man suspects he knows much less than he thinks. Where he is humble, he is at least knowledgeable of his own limitations. We see this quality in very dumb people. I knew a lot of kids at school, some of them in the resources program, that weren’t that smart and never imagined they were for a moment. That’s one level of humility and self-awareness. When we learn just a little, we tend to fall into the Dunin-Kruger effect, whereby our estimation of our knowledge is severely inflated. Due to the curve it makes on a line graph where the y-axis is confidence in knowledge or ability, and the x -axis is actual knowledge or ability over time, it’s been called Mount Stupid.



It’s here the stupid man resides in his corner, preaching wisely to beginners and avoiding anyone or anything who could shatter his illusion Beyond this place is a harsh come-uppance—a valley of despair, where confidence in our knowledge plummets even as knowledge increases. This is the second level of humility, and the beginning of wisdom. The wise man will look to his unquestioned assumptions and those arenas in which he feels himself the champion, and realize he’s stumbled onto one of his precious illusions. Then he’ll expose himself to the risk of failure and stupidity to test these sacred notions, knowing that in all likelihood, they will fail. But failure is a gift. The gift of information allows us to adjust, and to think and act differently.

We are not static, and finding a safe corner to rest in will ensure we never learn anything more than we arrived with. Wise men wander far and wide. Let every stupid utterance among the grinning, every clumsy effort, and every humbling realization enrich our journeys, which have a ways to go.