When I was growing up I was constantly hearing how educated people had no common sense. “They have them book smarts, but them folk can’t just have no common sense!” Then I got an education. While I do admit that common sense is great if you limit your circle of influence to whatever fishbowl you live in, it’s pretty much worthless in the larger world. Sure…you can wow the catfish and carp with your knowledge of the algae and slime growing at the bottom of your tank, but you have no idea how any social or political issues impact the larger world.
People who tout their common sense are usually just showing their self-centered bias and ignorance for anything and anyone beyond their city block. It also just gives them an excuse for being too lazy, too racist, and too ignorant to better themselves. For why on earth would you care how decisions made in the larger world impact anyone other than you?
The other day I was watching the news and a story came on where American Airlines kicked a guy off the plane for doing math. That’s right…math. He was a college professor who was working on a presentation and had a sheet of paper with a bunch of calculations on it. Evidently the woman next to him thought those magical numbers would jump off the page and blow up the plane. Her common sense told her that math is dangerous. “If I don’t understand it, it must be evil.” So…they kicked him off the plane and sent him to the FBI, where they told him that math is bad…you know…like science…and that ever pesky being for the ignorant…technology.
My God, have we gone back to the dark ages? So now when we don’t understand something it must be a terrorist act? You know this has already been tried right? A few times. Didn’t the Spanish Inquisition, or the Salem Witch trials teach you anything? Seriously you ignorant, uneducated, racists, sexist, back water, gutter snipe. Did you ever think there is a larger world out there and perhaps you might want to take some time to understand it?
Here are just a few things common sense told people. The sun and plants circled the earth. Turns out that common sense was wrong. When Galileo proved this by using that ever present evil of the ignorant, math and reality, he was brought before the church and ordered to denounce his findings. After all, never let reality get in the way of someone’s agenda. Especially one that profits on the ignorance of others.
Keeping with the Renaissance, one of the common sense theories of the time was bleeding. That’s right, the way to heal your illness was to remove your blood…because after all…what better way to get you over the flu than to remove the mechanism by which your body heals itself. Oh wait…you’re bleeding internally? Let’s get that pesky blood out of you so you can heal. It’s full of demons you know! Oops…sorry…you died…we didn’t get all that blood out soon enough!
Think common sense medical advice is something only found before the advent of modern plumbing? Nope, common sense once told medical professionals that if you had an ulcer you should drink milk. No one questioned it until one day someone actually used science and general observation to do a study that showed that drinking milk increases acid production in the stomach which causes ulcers. And this was in the 1980s.
With all this Gomer what I’m getting at is never rely on just your common sense and then walk away from a situation thinking you know what the fuck you’re talking about. It’s quite likely you don’t. If all you’re doing is basing your opinion on your own experience then you’ve severely limited your ability to have any sense at all, common or otherwise. So the next time you think an educated person has made a decision that you find silly, maybe you should consider that they likely have a lot more information than you. Because while you were sitting in your fishbowl swimming in your own shit, they were taking the time to understand that maybe, just maybe, the world doesn’t revolve around you.
Rex