Slow Havamal: 75

[kylec]

The 75th verse can be taken in three distinct pieces of wisdom: 1) the ignorant are unaware of how ignorant they are, 2) you become a fool by listening to fools, 3) neither the rich man nor the poor man can blame the other.

We deal here with knowledge and fate, and a subtle discussion of causes. On one hand, we can either know something, or not know it. But on the other, there’s also a difference between knowing when we’re ignorant and thinking we have it all figured out. This is a second-order matter, independent of the first. It seems to create four levels of knowledge, in order from wise to lacking: to know, and know you know > to know without appreciating how much you know > to not know, and to be aware of it > to not know, and to think that you know.

In fact, that linear structure creates confusion. It ranks according to the first order, which is knowledge or the absence of it. In this, there are only two states. The others don’t tack on, they exist at a higher order of magnitude: the knowledge of knowledge. I could argue that while basic knowledge seems like a good idea, it tends to be trivial compared to what can be known of that topic. So knowledge should come with an understanding of the incompleteness of knowledge—an admission of ignorance at the higher order. In that case, to know, and to know you don’t know might be a paradoxical but more accurate way of putting it (known limited scope of knowledge).

Or I could follow Socrates and place the ultimate wisdom at not knowing, and know that you don’t know. Both are ways of saying that our collection and association of data points is at best a map, not the territory. Those who think themselves most knowledgeable probably haven’t learned enough to see their expertise humbled. Thus, the ignorant man doesn’t know how little he knows, but the man who knows his ignorance at least has a bounds within to gauge his action, and is less prone to grave errors.

How did he get to be so ignorant? By listening to fools, according to the poem. Your knowledge is as good as the source it springs from. Drinking from a poisoned well produces cadavers, not immortality. But how do we know which well is the right one to learn from when we don’t yet know anything? To be wise, we must live broadly. The more experiences we collect, the more maps we test, the closer we come to a truth which cannot be absolute. The man who drinks from a single source gets all the brilliance contained in it, but also all the contaminants. We are better off listening than talking, and listening to many, examining what they say against the real world, and leaving behind what doesn’t work. In that way, we become a sort of cocktail of our own wisdom, which others can listen to—among their many sources.

The last half of this stanza encourages us to let go of blame, and possibly also giving too much credit. The poor man isn’t poor because of the rich man, even if the rich man collected most of his money. And the rich man may have gotten his cash from a thousand paupers, but to say they made him rich is an oversimplification. We often like to find simple causes. Single causes, even. Everything moves according to Newtonian mechanics, and that which can’t be expressed in a neat formula is irrelevant at best, if not illusory.

But the poor man, while he may have been pilfered, is in his position because that is the culmination of all events in his life. Everything causes the whole that we call the present. And the present can change. Act differently, and the next “present” will take on a different character. Place the blame for your circumstances on another, and you rob yourself of agency in your own life. That isn’t to say other factors don’t contribute. There just isn’t any situation that’s quite as neat as we would like.

We also encounter a differing assignment of cause between the two halves of this verse. In the first, a fool is caused by a fool. Like causes like. In the second, the causes should not be blamed on a single type of person. They’re seen as complex, and our own role is taken into consideration. A possible hidden key to this conundrum is that the fool comes from a single source, while the wise derive from many. As long as he sticks to his favorite news website and never takes an active role in seeking and testing new knowledge, he may blame other fools. At the basic level, perhaps that’s true. But at the higher order, he could have noticed his own foolishness and found different fonts of wisdom. There are many other factors in his life that led him to be the kind of person who seeks the easy answer and the quick reward for his brilliance.

Causes, too, can be followed at different levels. There are always those basic pool ball mechanics involved in any event, so long as we ignore everything else. Pool balls don’t shoot themselves, though. Whence dangles that cigarette? Simple causes allow us simple expedients for change, and they often work. But the wise will also take the whole smoky bar room into account. The context can be broken down, but should also be considered as a whole. That’s where we’ll find the limits of our knowledge and the humility to reside within them.