Sunday September 18, 2022; 9:46 PM EDT
- Common sense is the good sense that people share with each other across the society. They grow up in similar circumstances, with similar traditions, they encounter and solve many of the same small- and middle-sized problems as each other over the years. They tell stories about how they made their way through life. Something builds up in the culture, a sense of how things go in life, how to get along. It's the society's common sense.#
- But people don't go to the same schools or read the same books. They don't hang around with folks from the other side of town. A handful of people own printing presses or the equivalent and print news or money, but most don't. A handful ask other people what they think. A certain number shut up and listen when other people have the floor, but many don't. If experience teaches somebody something different than what it's taught you, chance are you'll never hear about it. The customs of conversation that make common sense possible have rusted out back among the high weeds.#
- Many days, many places, there is no such thing as common sense. When a politician mentions common-sense solutions, the politician is warming up to simplify something beyond recognition. Warming up to tell a lie.#
- Working in small groups on a shared problem, people build up a common sense of things among themselves. Most of us have experienced this. In times of crisis, the people in a country can develop a shared sense of things, if all goes well. But it might not.#
- Learning how to establish common sense among a group of people is a beautiful thing. The skill is in short supply.#