Havamal Snippets 75: Love of money turns a man into a fool

This is one in a series of very short posts containing snippets from the Havamal text (which can be found in full here - http://www.beyondweird.com/high-one.html)

Why post snippets of an old pagan text here, in a blog that's supposedly about the Androsphere?  I’m posting them because they contain helpful everyday advice that is applicable in the modern world e.g. being aware of your surrounding environment, drinking alcohol responsibly, how to score with women.  And for many of us, it is part of our heritage that goes back to Proto-Indo-European (PIE) beliefs that stretch back 4000 years or more.

Christianity and demi-nihilism offer the only other dominant philosophical view points in the Androsphere, the former represented by bloggers like Vox Day and Simon Grey, the latter by many PUA bloggers.  Christianity, and indeed the other monotheisms from the region draw, from the mythologies of the PIE culture.  For instance Noah’s flood is a replication of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the story of the Angels rebelling against God in the bible is just a copy of the Giants rebelling against the Gods, which is present in both the Greek and Norse religious traditions, as Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out in the eighteenth century.

So, instead of offering you snippets of second-hand wisdom from the Bible, I will offer you snippets of first-hand wisdom from the (probably) older and much more concise Havamal text (roughly 5,000 words compared to the 190,000 words of the New Testament).

(My own thoughts/comments are in italics).

Many men become fools through their love of money (money is just something that other people value.  It has little value in itself, and derives much value because people want it.  A stack of thousand dollar notes means little to a hunter-gatherer in the jungle, though it is good for starting fires.)

75

Veita hinn

er vættki veit

margr verðr af aurum api

maðr er auðigr

annarr óauðigr

skylit þann vítka vár

He does not know,

he who knows nothing:

many a man becomes a fool through ores [money];

one man is rich,

another poor;

he must not blame his woe on him.