Thoughts on common sense – its loss, how we need it, its traits, and such

Recently, I said some things that are worth recording:

I said that one of the things that we seem to need right now is common sense. I jokingly said that I wanted to have some shirts or signs that have these written on them:

“Make common sense an American virtue again”

“One act of common sense a day”

“Be common sense oriented”

These are variations of shirts or signs that I’ve been seeing that emphasize “Be kind” and such. I said that we need common sense more than kindness. In my opinion, people aren’t all that unkind enough to make a big deal about, especially to advertise it on shirts or signs. Personally, I don’t see that people were any less kind than 20 years ago. But it seems to me that it’s a bigger deal to make an issue out of the lack of common sense. This is because it is so lacking and its absence, I think, seems to be having negative effects. I’m not the only one who has noticed that there has been a loss of common sense. It’s something many of us have mentioned.

COMMON SENSE

I’d say common sense has qualities such as:

1. It is down-to-earth
2. It is practical
3. It looks at the big picture of things
4. Its simplistic
5. It’s not “overthought”
6. It doesn’t get wound up with high-causes, idealisms, and such
7. It tends to be unemotional
8. It tends to be based in experience

1-It is down-to earth

It tends to look at things “as they are”. It doesn’t embellish, glorify, or elaborate on things.

2-It is practical

It does what’s required to deal with the issue or problem.

3-It looks at the big picture of things

It also tends to look at things from a broader perspective. Common sense is an explanation that looks at things from an overall perspective. For example, it looks at what the effects of things will be . . . “this will cause that which will cause the other thing”.

4-Its simplistic

It only does what’s needed to explain the situation or solve the situation . . . nothing more. In this way, it has a “minimalist” quality. Often, the bigger the explanation or solution the less common sense it has.

5-It’s not “overthought”

Often, common sense entails little thought. In many cases, the more thought it takes the more it loses common sense.

6-It doesn’t get wound up with high causes, idealisms, and such

Being practical, common sense generally has nothing to do with high causes, idealisms, and such.

7-It tends to be unemotional

It tends to calm-like, almost cold in nature. It often has no emotion associated with it at all but a “matter-of-fact” quality. In this way, it is like saying “this is that and that’s it”. Because of this, it tends to state things as they are with no embellishment or elaboration.

8-It tends to be based in experience

Common sense is something one learns by doing. You can’t read about common sense. You must do it.

THINGS THAT DESTROY COMMON SENSE

I’d say that what destroys common sense are things such as these:

• The tendency to overthink things too much. People, nowadays, are over-educated and think about things too much.
• The tendency to try to come up with fancy explanations avoiding simple explanations.
• The tendency to look at things in too complex of a way
• The tendency to use pre-fabricated knowledge
• The tendency to get wound up with causes, idealisms, and such. This causes a tendency to forget the simple solution and become too biased toward the cause, idealism, and such.
• The tendency to only look at specific things and details, often forgetting the big picture.
• The tendency to let emotion dictate ones thoughts.

THE ABSENCE OF COMMON SENSE

This absence of common sense is seen in many aspects of life, in everyday life, in socializing, at work, in politics, etc. I think its absence has caused many problems and dilemmas. Perhaps many problems of today are caused by the absence of common sense???

The absence of common sense often gives explanations and solutions qualities such as:

• They are emotionally charged to the point that emotion dictates things
• They are too complex that its hard to understand, even to the point that no one can understand it
• They tend to steer away from the subject and often go in weird directions
• They neglect the problem or issue

In ways, such as these, the absence of common sense often has an impairing and disruptive quality. From another perspective I don’t think it would be too far off to say that the absence of common sense makes us dumber.

THE RECENT LOSS OF COMMON SENSE

It seems, to me, that the loss of common sense, that seems prevalent recently, has been caused by various things:

• The influence of science. This has caused an overvaluation of knowledge and the endless intricacies of knowledge and knowing things.
• Education. People spend too much time in school learning this and that and the other thing.
• Information. There’s so much information nowadays that we have become lost in it.
• Media. This adds to the prevalence of information and tends to cause a tendency of making things emotionally charged.
• Some beliefs, attitudes, and such. There are times when something like religious or political beliefs, negative attitudes, and so on cause us to lose common sense. This is because they tend to cause us to stray away from practicality and simplicity.

These seem to portray things nowadays. But it seems that common sense has been lost off and on throughout history. Several things that seem to cause its loss include:

• Religious belief and causes
• Political belief and causes
• Popular fads, trends, mania, hysterias, etc.
• The prevalence of established knowledge, education, information, science, etc.

When things, like these, are prevalent common sense tends to fall.

WHEN COMMON SENSE IS PREVALENT

It seems, to me, that common sense is prevalent when conditions like these are seen:

• When the qualities described in the last section are absent or minimal.
• When people need to do things. Common sense comes from experience. As a result, people need to be in a position to do things to develop it.
• When there is ability to develop common sense. This means, more or less, that common sense is an ability much like art and, as such, some people can do it better than others. For common sense to be prevalent someon

What this shows is that common sense needs specific conditions to exist. It doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. When the conditions are absent then common sense tends to not appear or have difficulty appearing.

THE STRENGTHS OF COMMON SENSE

Just because something entails common sense doesn’t mean it works or is right. It can be just as wrong as something that has been given great thought. In this way, the fact that it is always right is not necessarily its great strength. There must be other things that give it its strength. It seems to me, that the great strengths of common sense is that it helps a person live in a realistic vision of the world. It does it in these ways:

• Doing. It comes from experience and from ones “doing in the world”. In this way, it is associated with living, discovering, making mistakes, developing an understanding of things, etc.
• Realistic. It tends to be more “realistic” and portrays things “as it is”. As a result, it tends to give a more realistic image of the world.
• Developing. Because it is based in experience, it makes one more able to live and do things and develop as a person living in the world.

Knowledge and science often claim to be portraying a realistic image of the world, as if its viewpoints is everything. The problem with these is that they are based in a form of knowing that is learned at a school usually, and that usually comes from the effort of other people. As a result, it has an absence of doing and developing. Common sense, on the other hand, is a form of “knowing” that comes from one’s experience in doing, creating a realistic image of the world, and developing in that image. In this way, common sense puts a lot of emphasis on the person as doer and creator. That, it seems to me, is its great strength.

RELYING ON OTHER PEOPLES COMMON SENSE

As I said above, not everyone has the ability and conditions to develop common sense. Because of this, people often have to rely on other people’s commons sense. This is common in society and social situations. Children look up to adults, people look up to authority, and such. In this way, social bonds are often based in some people’s reliance of other people’s common sense. This reliance as if creates a bond that holds people together.

If the people relied upon for common sense don’t have common sense, then it often creates a problem or crisis. This seems particularly endemic with politics as this is a subject that tends to be too easily swayed by things like causes, idealisms, and emotions. As stated above, these tend to undermine common sense. As a result, the political situation has a tendency to undermine common sense in politics.

---

Copyright by Mike Michelsen