Slow Havamal: 11

[kylec]

In the eleventh verse, wisdom is described as the best burden a traveler can carry. The worst burden is alcohol.

As with verses 8 and 9, verse 11 begins with a repetition of the first half of the preceding verse. Repetition means we should pay careful attention to this advice. It’s a strong technique in poetry, but not so much in essays, so I’ll refer back to my piece on verse 10 for that portion.

The second half is very straightforward. In contrast with wisdom, the worst burden is a pack full of alcohol. I don’t want to rail on the dangers of drinking too much, but it’s clear that Odin wants to get the point across that the more you imbibe, the less wisdom you have at your disposal. I’ll also point out that it doesn’t say, “don’t drink at all.” The vice is drinking to excess. When one’s faculties are impaired, all the other fine practices we read about begin to deteriorate. We are less capable of reading the context and making wise choices with regards to our actions, which is essentially wisdom. And our functions as a benevolent guest get short shrift. There is little to learn when you’re drunk, other than why it might have been a bad idea to drink so much.

Let’s take alcohol consumption as a metaphor, though. What undermines our ability to acquire and use wisdom? Even those who don’t drink? Alcohol is an intoxicant. It dulls the subtler capacities and orients us toward our passions. Its reputation is to loosen the tongue, the fists, the trousers. We all have subjects or situations that arouse our passions. Certain context markers shift our attention to a well-worn topic, something intoxicating and tempting. Maybe something we have a bad habit of imbibing in on too-regular a basis. It could be a political or religious issue, the presence of a certain person or type of person, an intemperate hobby. Perhaps it’s self-defeating thoughts, or stories of how great we are.

Whatever habitual emotional arousals we partake in function much the same as alcohol. It crowds out all of our finer senses and higher reasoning, and rewards us with a rush of: pride, anger, zeal, shame, fear, smug satisfaction, righteous indignation—pick your poison. Note that just as some drunks are uproariously happy and some are violent and mean, the emotional gratification we get from being consumed with passion can come from either a place that we usually consider positive, or negative. Those seemingly negative emotions can function as defenses that prevent us from having to deal with the real source of the issue beneath it, or excuses for why we haven’t done the things we know we ought to—mental self-flagellation that effectively removes the feeling of guilt without addressing the problem.

There’s nothing wrong with a healthy dose of passion, just as the occasional drink can be a harmless pleasure. It’s when we engage in these passions to an extreme degree, and without making the conscious choice, that it becomes a problem. When the passions cause harm to other areas of our lives and hold us back from being our best. Wisdom is our daily water, and passion should remain a drink of choice, rather than a bad habit.