Wisdom of the Vikings Part 4: Worldliness

I know you got skills girl.

Worldliness

The traveller must

train his wits.

All is easy at home.

He who knows little

is a laughing-stock

amongst men of the world

This is part 4 in an ongoing series (the series starts HERE) bringing together the Hávamál (a collection of Norse wisdom poetry) and the still-evolving rules and mores of the Internet, particularly as they are developing in the realm of social media.

While this particular bit of wisdom might seem to be a fairly prosaic platitude on prudence, I think it actually represents a particularly salient perspective on the subject. The more contemporary platitude is familiar enough: Better to  remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt has be variously attributed to Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln and few others (quote investigator has a nice treatment here). It provides the worthwhile advice that talking too quickly can get you into trouble and that it is when we speak - or type - in haste that we are most likely to embarrass ourselves. It's certainly a helpful couple of cents for anyone getting ready to venture into the wild anarchy of online forums and contentious Facebook threads.

But in this piece from the Hávamál we tap into a piece of wisdom more precisely directed at the wild unregulated frontier environment of Vikings and, per my hypothesis, the internet. Online the great tendency and temptation is to engage with the full force of one's personality and opinion. The anonymity of the web is infamously heady and it can be tempting to show off one's erudition or unload the full weight of your opinions on some poor, unsuspecting commenter, much like a young Viking warrior eager to prove her mettle by pitting her skills against some older stranger. Worldliness reminds us that having been considered a wit among your circle of friends or a bright student in your own school is no guarantee then when you go to cross words (or axes) with strangers in a strange place, you won't end up humiliated. Thus the wise viking, like the wise internet user (anyone one want to start recommending Viking-esque titles for internet users? I sense a developing need for such a term. Put your ideas in the com-box) must train his wits and remember that what was easy at home (on his own Facebook page or Twitter feed) surrounded by friends and family (in that internet echo-chamber where we can control whom we interact with and how we are perceived) may prove woefully inadequate amongst men of the world (in the larger world of forums and com-boxes). 

Part 5 is HERE

Click to get the Hávamál on Amazon

Boy Was I Wrong

  

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

- Mark Twain

 I wish that I was a quick a learner as Mark Twain. When I was 18 my dad told our Church that love is the guiding principle for the Christian life. As we deconstructed his sermon over our Sunday lunch I explained to him that while, of course, love is vitally important, truth is actually the guiding principle for the Christian life because, after all, love which is not based in truth is no love at all. 

 - Even typing that I feel like such a fool. - 

This is evil

  I thought that the head should govern the heart, that without an anchor of perfect truth, the world would fly apart. I was afraid and I only barely recognized it. 

  To this day, being wrong is probably my greatest fear (it may be clowns or spiders but it's probably being wrong). The very concept of what scholars call "epistemic humility", the capacity to acknowledge that we may actually be wrong, conjures up mental images of hurtling through space with nothing to hold on to - drifting.  

  I thought, deep down, that sometimes truth is at war with love. 

  And I thought all of that as a conservative, evangelical Christian. Somehow I believed that the God who is Love was at war with the Jesus who is truth. 

  I think even then I would have said that the conflict was only apparent, that ultimately, Truth and Love are always in agreement. But the thing is, as I informed my Dad, whenever we see an apparent conflict, it is our responsibility to err on the side of what we believe (I probably said know) to be true. 

  Why?

  See, over the last few years (like I said, I am a slow learner) I have come to realize that I have no warrant to conclude that my mind is any less broken than my heart. Why does the heart, which screams "this does not feel loving" when we alienate or disenfranchise someone for their sin, need to submit to the mind which tells it "I know this seems to hurt her, but it is really for her own good".

  Fellow Christians, I am reminded that Jesus never said that the whole of the law and the prophets hang on this: "That you know the truths about the Lord your God and that you express those truths to your neighbor as you express them to yourself". He told us it hangs on Love. 

Maybe Love can look like this.

  Are we likely to cause more damage erring on the side of our still malformed hearts or on the side of our still malformed minds? What would happen if we were to bring the two of them into the same room as equals?