November 3, 2011
The Undeath of Common Sense
When I teach lessons on the various cognitive skills, I sometimes get into a peculiar sort of conversation:
Audience Member: “All these are good, Matthew, but what about common sense? I don’t hear much about that any more.”
Me: “Hmmm…well, what do you mean by ‘common sense?’ What is it?”
AM: “You know, when a person knows the states and capitals, but can’t read a map. That’s common sense.”
Me: “Reading a map is common sense?”
AM: “Yeah, it’s just all the basic stuff that everyone knows how to do.”
Me: “Everyone knows these things? I don’t suppose there’s much need for me to teach it, then, is there?”
AM “Oh no, there’s a lot of need! Especially young people these days…”
And so it goes. I never get requests from those who want more common sense–only from those who find it lacking in celebrities, politicians, young people, eggheads or spouses. Nor can anyone tell me what it actually is, even though they can point out plenty of people who lack it.
There’s something demeaning about the term “common sense,” as if it’s a minimum requirement for amounting to anything in life. Even worse, many facts that we think ought to be common sense are actually incorrect–conventional wisdom often leads to unwise decisions. If anything deserves to be questioned, it’s conventional wisdom, and yet ”common sense” allows us to draw a line in the sand around it and then snigger at anyone who wonders why.
Perhaps it’s a leftover of the Halloween season, but the concept of common sense reminds me a lot of the classic undead monsters. It’s impossible to pin down, keeps coming back every time you think it’s been dealt with, and forces us to confront our deepest fears. But just like those Halloween horrors, this one is easy to defeat: we just remind ourselves that in the end, it really doesn’t exist. It’s a cozy lie that we use to make ourselves feel superior to others, and we can rise above it if we choose to.
