COMMON SENSE — IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE TO ME!

By Edwin Cooney

Come on now, be truthful! What's usually going through your mind when you say to someone "have a little common sense”  or “use your common sense”?

Most people who utter those interminably boring words to me are usually frustrated because I don't, didn't, or won't think, say, do, or believe what they think, do, or say they will do because they believe something or other!

I'll never deny that I feel a high degree of gratification when people agree with me, because agreement is wonderful intellectual and emotional reinforcement of a strong belief or set of beliefs. More than once as a parent, I urged my lads to use their "common sense" especially when it came to their behavior in and around school or towards their mother.

A person I love and respect almost beyond expression insists that common sense is merely "the ability to think and behave in a reasonable way and to make good decisions." Then she chides me, "What's wrong with that?"

What's the matter with it is largely its application. "Use your common sense” is a command, even a demand. On reflection, I've come to realize that to urge the use of anyone's "common sense" is largely not instructional. More than that, such an instruction comes from a place of superiority. Beyond that, it's demanding and it intensifies disagreement or conflict rather than alleviating it. Finally, it's confrontational and authoritative rather than either supportive or encouraging. After all, the value or applicability of your behavior is inevitably subject to how others see your application of "common sense” as opposed to how you view your own behavior. If your "common sense" says vote for Trump and my "common sense” says vote for Hillary, Biden, or Bernie, and we slug each other with our "common senses," where does that leave our feelings, our attitudes and ultimately even our behavior?

Insistence of "common sense" is especially galling in politics. At present, there is a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination here in New York who insists that he'll bring "common sense" along with prudent economic administration to government (of course), because elected legislatures have never met anyone as efficient and honest and as determinant as he is. He even tells the public that unless legislators do things the way he tells them to, it will hurt their paychecks. Now, I'm generally sympathetic to the Democratic Party these days, but an appeal like that is an absolute turnoff for me. I suppose that self-righteousness is admirable at some times, especially when there is a counter element of self-righteousness in the field of debate, but there's little about self-righteousness that informs and thus convinces anyone as I see it!

As for sense, common or otherwise, it is invariably a physical, emotional, or intellectual reaction to other’s beliefs, behaviors, attitudes. Additionally, sense is the almost automatic physical reaction to heat, cold, gravity, or pain. If all of these senses are natural, then it's in denial of "common sense" that we have learned to fly above the atmosphere and into outer space. It can also be said that swimming in the extreme depths of the sea is a defiance of "common sense."

How many times have you heard a parent tell their child that a cat won't sit on a hot stove due to its "common sense." The late Gordon Liddy used to hold his hand over a hot cigarette lighter to demonstrate his willpower. However, you and I would pull our hand from a flame or avoid getting our fingers slammed in a door or withdraw our toes from under someone's spiked shoes — especially when our bare toes are at risk. These reactions are true enough, but they're instinctive rather than logical.

As I see it, good sense exists out of necessity — why else would Christopher Columbus have sailed despite the possibility of sailing right off the edge of the world! Back in 1491, the edges of the world to the average Italian, Spaniard, Frenchman, German and Englishman were plain "common sense” since the curvature of the earth can only be viewed from a great distance.

So, let's stop this appeal to people's "common sense" and respect them enough to discuss with them what makes “good sense.”

Even when we're frustrated or angry, let us begin teaching our otherwise “good sense” to others rather than our personal outraged self-righteousness!

So, there it is, you “common sense” types. Good sense might not be common enough, but it's too valuable to take for granted!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY