There are many schools of thought when it comes to common sense. Some think it doesn't exist while the others think that some people have it and some people don't.
I subscribe to the notion everyone has common sense but they rarely exercise it.
Experience is a great teacher but if you fail to consider the lessons that experience teaches you then you will fail to gain wisdom...and wisdom is the basis for common sense.
It can truly be said that each of us is the sum of our experiences yet if two people share the same experience they will each come away with a different lesson.
Why is this? It's because each of us has a different level of understanding.
What's this have to do with common sense?
Your ability to deduce what's going on is directly related to your understanding of how our society and the world works.
Bring back any memories of `teen angst?' Remember all those hours spent either alone or with friends agonizing over that monumental question `what's it all about'?
What's that you say? You never agonized over how it all works, never considered why things are the way they are...not even once?
A-ha, bagged ya! No one reading this is so young that they've never had their faith shattered, we've all experienced those heart-wrenching events that cause us to question our basic assumptions about the world around us.
Now if we were to posit which `philosophy' is the most prevalent in our current society it would be a safe bet to say the one that goes `I go with the flow and do the best I can' would be the most common.
Down Tiger! I didn't say most people roll over and play dead, this merely means they tend to pick their battles and try to avoid getting involved in `lost causes'.
What does this have to do with a person's understanding of how the world works?
Time to drop the other shoe...
Most people `give up' on trying to figure life out, thus do they `go with the flow'.
Unfortunately, this tends to make them susceptible to believing whatever `authority' says as not only being correct but also as being true.
So long as you `go with the flow' there's nothing to figure out. Life is a simple exercise of putting one foot in front of the other...until you step into your grave.
Simply put, endeavoring to make sense of how the world operates, given what we know about the concepts of right and wrong, is enough to make anyone's head explode...there are too many contradictions!
To the point where right and wrong become relative terms rather than the `constants' they should be.
The current administration is a perfect illustration of this. We keep seeing them do wrong yet nobody lifts a finger to put a stop to it...
Have I gone off on a tangent? We started out discussing common sense and here we are at right and wrong...
Each of us has an innate sense of right and wrong. That said, some of us `tune' this sense differently.
Some keep right and wrong on a personal basis with right being what is good for them and wrong being something bad happening to them.
Others are tuned correctly, which is to say they recognize right as being a positive or helpful act/event and wrong as an act/event that does harm.
Only the insane can not distinguish right from wrong...yet it seems this inability does not prevent one from functioning within a society.
If you wish to learn how to exercise common sense, you must first learn to distinguish right from wrong.
Pretty easy on the surface isn't it? Right = positive/helpful while Wrong = negative/harmful.
You're ready to kick ass, aren't ya?
Stop right there.
You'll hit a brick wall real quick if you don't do a little `de-programming' first.
Your sense of right and wrong was programmed by someone else so you need to get back in touch with this `gut' facility on your own.
Start by looking at the decisions you've made and how they worked out. We're all `programmed' to operate in our own best interest...it's those best interests that have been dictated to us by someone else.
Not just one but a lot of people in our lives have contributed to the best interests list and they're still doing it to this day.
Herein lies the conflict. What you've been taught as being in your best interest is not necessarily right...for you or anyone else.
It is not common sense but wisdom that prevents you from going to Washington and demanding that they impeach the president posthaste...because landing in jail is not in your `best interests'.
Wisdom also prevents you from barging into the boss's office and demanding your fair share of the company's record profits because unemployment is not in your best interest...although common sense dictates you should do both!
Common sense is knowing right from wrong, wisdom is acting prudently.
It's small wonder that most of us avoid the mental minefield these conflicting concepts create.
Yet it's this journey where angels fear to tread that leads to personal growth.
Knowledge is power and in order to gain knowledge one must first gain understanding.
There is a reason for everything and nothing is so complex that it can't be broken down into a series of simple, easy to digest steps.
The world is knowable.
Understand this and you're on the road to knowledge, a road that leads to the greatest of rewards, wisdom and the peace of mind that comes with it.
To aid you in your quest for knowledge and wisdom I will present you with a conundrum.
In as much as we are all in this together, why do we need a government to `protect' us from the machinations of commerce? (Especially when this seems to work in reverse, government protecting the interests of commerce over that of the common good...)
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner