Common Sense Is All Too Common

A guy at the Y who was always griping about the policies there said his mother’s favorite saying was “common sense is the least common thing.” Trouble is what’s common sense to one person makes no sense to another. All too often common sense doesn’t conform to reality. In fact, many valid scientific theories like relativity, quantum physics and evolution were and still are in conflict with the conventional “common sense.”

It’s “obvious” the sun and stars rotate around the earth, right? For millennia that piece of common sense led people to believe our no-account little planet was the center of the universe. Many still do.

In everyday life everything must be made by someone, therefore, common sense says the universe must have a “creator.” Considering ourselves the highest creation of that assumed creator we further assumed the whole vast universe was created entirely on our accounts. We were the center of attention of the supposed creator. Why should life exist anywhere else? Why God wasted all the real estate out there was never considered, but then again, we had no idea of the vastness of the universe. The stars were just twinkling lights on a mantle floating above the planet.

Thus, anthropocentrism was inscribed into religion, which when it was conceived also made common sense. Further, those who dared to disagree were condemned as heretics. Still are. At least one fellow, Giordano Bruno, used his superior brand of common sense to figure out the basis of modern cosmology. Almost 600 years ago, his uncommon common sense led him to conclude the universe had no center and Earth, being but one of countless planets going around countless stars, was most certainly not the center of it. For taking the trouble to enlighten mankind on this basic truth, he was burned at the stake.

In our age of narcism, many have difficulty accepting the fact we each are not at the center of everything, that our opinions may be misguided and don’t warrant being held in common by the rest of us. Disagreement and conflict are inevitable.

In some cases, perhaps, there is only one good way to solve a problem. The problem here is that everyone’s common sense sees something different as the problem.

As a therapist I quickly learned that common sense often does not apply. Telling people, Dr. Phil-like, to accept “reality” and suck it up is usually the worst way to try to help them. To them, irrational assumptions are just common sense. You have to get into their point of view, see the world through their eyes. That makes them feel understood. You gradually help them recognize the fallacies in their system of thought and how their experiences in life made them seem logical. This helps them to trust you enough to let you suggest alternative ways of seeing the world and themselves and of behaving.

Too bad that technique can’t be applied to society at large.

Owing to how the human mind works, common sense, far from uncommon, is all too common, and, more often than we wish to believe, it makes no sense at all.