COMMON SENSE

Is there is such a thing as common sense?

My parents ap-parently thought so; they chose to remind me often that I was severely deficient in it.

It seems to me that “common sense” – something that I was allegedly “born with” and had since discarded -- is what parents evoke to secure compliance with their dictates on everything from going to the toilet before going out, to dissuading us from jumping off the roof holding an open umbrella.

But “common sense” can be a dangerous concept when applied to more complex matters, as the journalist and writer Chris Wallace noted in a recent article.......

“Common sense is such a lazy, bogus concept,” she wrote, referring to current politics. “When someone dishes common sense at you (“everyone knows”) it typically camouflages an emotionally charged, unexamined, partisan position on something important that the common sense propagator wants to dismiss as beyond debate…”

Interestingly, politician Cory Bernardi’s blog is named “Common Sense Lives Here”. And he means it – he really assumes that evrything he believes is common sense. Perhaps that's because he has attracted unto himself a bunch of people who will, for whatever dodgy personal reasons, give him agreement. Their views do not make them wrong, but their identification with their views to the exclusion of any other possibilities does make them narrow-minded.

Neither common sense, nor wishful assuming, nor faith, nor redneck political dogma is a reliable guide to rational decision-making. For that, you need evidence, wide-angle awareness, disciplined intention to get at a core truth, analytical intelligence, moral values and an awareness of their hierarchy in your personal ethic, and openly heartful enthusiasm. None of these requisites could be seriously considered to be “common”. On the contrary, I'd describe them as being almost rare.

Politicians seem to be the most prone to glibly strewing phrases like “common sense” and “everyone knows” and “it's obvious” to refer to the feedback they get from people who have a vested interest in agreeing with them. The implication is that, “if you don't agree with what I think is common sense, there is something seriously wrong with you and you are beneath the right of audience”.

From my observations, it seems that those who are loudest and most pedantic about “common sense” are those who are the least sure that it actually exists. Pontifical proponents like Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison, Kelly O'Dwyer, Eric Abetz, George Brandis, Corey Bernardi, Julia Gillard, and Kevin Rudd all betray an underlying ground being of desperation and doubt, in direct proportion to the volume and pitch of their blustering. In their insistence upon playing the Right/Wrong game for keeps, they display their set-jaw, closed, steel-trap states of mind. They will be right, at all costs. They'd even rather be right than effective. They'd rather be right than happy. And they'll take you down with them if they can.

And I could be wrong about that so please don't believe me. Look for yourself. Make up your own mind – after you've examined the evidence from more than one side.

Common-Sense refugees may end up like Tony Abbott trying to hand out “Vote for me” cards to shoppers who ignore him. He'll still go home to Margie (if she's still listening to him) comforting himself with the mantra “But I'm right”.

It might not make sense, but that is Common Sense. Sadly, far too common.