UN-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. They were mistaken. I had
picked up from them the gist of “common sense”; it just didn’t appeal to me.
And it’s taken me all this while to articulate why. Ah
well, better late than never.
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
everything he believes is just "common sense", and anyone who doesn't think like him
is, ergo, not sensible. Perhaps that's because he has attracted unto himself a
bunch of people who will, for whatever personal proclivities and preferences,
give him agreement.
Their views do not make them wrong, but the religious
zeal with which they identify their selves with views and attitudes they claim
to be universal to the exclusion of any other possibilities, does make them
narrow-minded.
Neither common sense, nor wishful assuming, nor faith,
nor redneck dogma is a reliable guide to intellectually and emotionally mature
decision-making. For that, you need a focused mix of openly heartful
enthusiasm, real verifiable evidence that gives equal weight to views from all
differing perspectives, wide-angle awareness, disciplined intention to get
at a core truth of the matter, analytical intelligence, compassion and mercy,
widely-shared moral values and an awareness of their hierarchy in your personal
ethic.
An effective mix of these requisites could hardly be
considered to be “common”. On the contrary, I'd describe it as being almost
rare.
Politicians and their acolytes seem to be the most
prone to glibly strewing phrases like “it's just common sense” and “everyone
knows” and “it's obvious” every time they refer to the feedback they get from the limited
cache of people who have a vested interest in telling them what they want to
hear. The implication is that, “if you don't agree with what I claim is
common sense, there is something seriously wrong with you”, and you
instantly become one of their lesser-thans”.
From my observations, it seems that those who are
loudest and most pedantic about “common sense” are those who are secretly the
least sure that it actually exists.
Pontifical cantors like Malcolm Turnbull,
Scott Morrison, Michaelia Cash, Eric Abetz, Corey Bernardi, Julia Gillard, and
Kevin Rudd all betray an underlying ground being of desperation and doubt. And
I suspect that the volume and vehemence of their blustering is somewhere in
direct proportion to the breadth and depth of their uncertainties. In their insistence
upon playing the Right/Wrong game for keeps, they betray set-jaw, shut-down,
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.
At every level I'm aware of, feudalistic intellectual
and moral superiority is the polar opposite of Evolution. But the possibility
of growth and transformation is unlikely to cut through while these people
refuse to question their conviction that they alone know what is best for all
of us.
And I could be wrong about that so please don't
believe me. Look for yourself. Look at what they say they stand for and measure
that against what they leave behind them in their wake. Make up your own mind –
after you've examined evidence from more than one position.
Common-Sense apologists may end up like Tony Abbott
trying to hand out “Vote for me” cards to shoppers who go out of their way to ignore him. He'll still
go home to Margie (if she's still listening to him, that is) comforting himself
with the mantra “But I'm right”.
It might not make sense, but that is their “common sense”.
Sadly, the delusions that one class of intelligent
people have a privileged ownership of common sense, are far too common amongst
the ruling elite. And right now these people ain't doing too well. In fact,
they're making a mess, and the “common people” are showing signs of getting
pissed off, but with no idea of what to do with their disillusionment.
Stories of the world actually working are more often
populated by individuals and small groups who don't cite “common sense”
as the basis for their actions. Such people tend to act solo, or gather
together in smallish groups, with a clear mission to meet a perceived humanitarian need in ways
that sometimes defy “common sense”. They tend to heed inner voices inspired by
community-directed states of being like compassion, consideration,
contribution, mercy, forgivingness, and harmonising interdependence.
If only those qualities were the Common Sense!
Well, maybe not on a massive scale yet, but the evidence of big shifts is revealing
itself – the instances of people actually thinking for themselves and pulling random acts of selfless kindness are on the rise.
And looking at upcoming generations of young people,
like my grandchildren and those of my friends, the signs are hopeful.
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