Uncommon Sense

Why Common Sense is not Currently Common

The fruit of a divided society is a lack of common sense. Common means shared. Without shared goals and principles, a population will have increasing difficulties trying to maintain a community. When society becomes divisive and selfish, common sense sinks beneath the surface of personal egotism.

Uncompromising rhetoric and retreating to a safe environment with like-minded individuals drowns out common sense. Diverse societies require more freedom of speech and established platforms to share concerns and perspectives. By increasing dialogue and by fostering a willingness to compromise, common sense can be defined across many ethnicities, religions, races, and other minority groups.

When the majority in a community no longer share goals and disagree on the methodology to achieve an outcome, different solutions are not considered by those controlling the narrative and suppressing progress. The ability for a society to embrace a shared perspective dies without dialogue. In the extreme, the inability to reach agreement can stop the progress of civilization and hurt individuals.

Image by Henrique Vefago Henrique from Pixabay

For example, everyone agrees that no child should go hungry. However, some prefer to handout food indefinitely through various programs, while others want to address the needs of the primary caregivers to help them succeed to the degree where food needs are more easily met. With open debate, perhaps the compromise is to provide both types of programs, or without healthy compromise perhaps the issue is not addressed when one group insists on a single solution. While no one wants a child to go hungry, intransigent opinions can prevent the cooperation necessary to resolve the reasons hunger exists.

In a community suffering from the initial states of division, principles such as tolerating civil discourse, respect for neighbors who disagree or lead different lifestyles, and a “live and let live” perspective are frequent. As the disease of selfish egotism advances respect for private property and even life are attacked. The sanctity of life, for example, becomes relative to circumstances rather than a shared community principle. One group may consider the desires of the state as more important than the right of the condemned to live; another segment may claim that a mother’s personal desires are more important than the life of her unborn child; and policies surrounding when suicide is to be criminalized or when it is to be endorsed become debated – all these situations occur because there is no community-wide agreement that life is valuable. In a selfish society, each individual believes that “only my life is valuable”. The value of all life is relegated to egotistical perspectives and personal desires. It’s not realistic to think that there could be “common sense” when a society cannot even agree on an absolute value of life.

After the respect for the diversity of ideas to resolve issues like hunger falls and principles such as the value of life become relative, the next attack comes from the bullies. Bullies are those in a community with the police power or financial might to punish anyone who does not agree with them.

Bullies are death to common sense because enforcing a set narrative onto those who disagree ensures that the best solutions to resolve society’s ills die. When conflicting ideas cannot be expressed, considered, and adopted, there is no compromise nor improvements to a narrow way of thinking. Oppression of human expression is the opposite of respecting diversity and results in the death of common sense.

Restoring Common Sense

Embracing goals and principles beyond the limits of the personal ego fosters a community with greater common sense. If there is agreement that no child should be hungry and that all human life has a value worth protecting and affirming, then methodologies to achieve those goals can be considered and the best solutions are likely to be adopted.

Some governments have attempted to set these higher goals and over-arching principles within their constitutions and governing documents. For example, the USA has a ‘Bill of Rights’ which places the highest value on several individual freedoms such as the freedoms of speech and religion.

The highest way to establish common sense in a society is to share a religion that emphasizes idealistic divine goals for behaviors and a few absolute principles over personal desires and opinions. Humans who do not believe there is an entity who is greater than their own thoughts and behaviors worship the ego.

Common sense is not prevalent in societies who do not have shared goals and principles. Divisiveness leads to conflicts and conflicts lead to oppression. Once systemic oppression has been established, the egos of one or a select few individuals will set the rules for a totalitarian society. A common religion provides not only the goals and principles of society but also supplies the motivation and intellectual perspectives to succeed.