One question that has gnawed at me since election 2016 was, how common is common sense? If it is indeed common, why didn’t many voters put their self-interest first at the voting booth rather than voting along the party lines without thinking through how it will impact their lives. Did they listen actively to what the candidates were putting out in the election messages? If common sense existed indeed, would they not discern policy statements from malarkey? Wouldn’t they choose someone with a proven record of statesmanship than someone without a proven ability to govern? It led me to examine the whole idea of common sense. As more time passed, I saw citizens’ errant behavior, who were treating politics like a horse race than the serious business of governance. Which made me question, “Why is the idea of common sense still so pervasive? Even when it seems to have gone the way black telephone handsets!”
What exactly do we mean by Common Sense?
How often, one encounters the admonishments like, “Use your common sense” or “Where is your common sense?” We all are supposed to have some cookie-cutter template through which we shape behavior, which supposedly yields the right solution.
In Sanskrit, there is a saying, “Tunde, Tunde mati bhinnah,” which translates in English as, “Every head has a different mindset!” If this is true, and neuroscience and behavioral psychology seem to provide ample evidence that it is, then how can there be such a thing as common sense?
When did the idea of “common sense” take birth in the first place?
Is it still viable, especially in this digital era, where almost everyone with a digital platform can spew, sense and nonsense, truth and falsehood, utopian and dystopian, real, and fantastic stories with equal ease and influence thinking and behavior of a significantly large number of people?
The prefix Com in common sense means ‘in association with’ or ‘together with.’ It points to an underlying sense beyond the five senses in all human beings, which allows them to develop common perceptions through everyday experiences forming a baseline for making sound life decisions. Common sense assumes commonality of experiences in a community, and therefore a way of thinking common to all within it. It was something born out of collective wisdom that tells that if you are facing situation X, then the commonsense method of solving would be process Y, and the most likely outcome will be this or that, sort of like the Best Practices in the business world. But commonsense is not always led by logic or facts, but by making certain assumptions about a situation, thinking through consequences, and acting in a commonly prescribed way. That is at the core of the idea of common sense; simple action based on not-too involved thinking, but something akin to a gut feeling, yet different.
The gut feeling comes from beyond knowable, happens without any effort. You feel it in your guts. However, common sense behavior is judgmental based on norms or models for decision-making based on many people’s past experiences in the community. I came across a guest post by Duncan Watts on the Freakonomics blog that describes common sense’s current status. It “is a hodgepodge of accumulated advice, experiences, aphorisms, norms, received wisdom, inherited beliefs and introspection that is neither coherent nor internally self-consistent.” (Excerpted from, “The Myth of Common Sense; Why the Social World is Less Obvious Than It Seems.” https://freakonomics.com/2011/09/29/the-myth-of-common-sense-why-the-social-world-is-less-obvious-than-it-seems/.)
Can there be Common Sense in the digital age?
Given the modern world’s focus on Individual identity at the center of the social universe, it is hard to imagine that we have anything neatly packaged as “Common Sense” any more. Until the late 1990s, before the Internet, access to Media as a bully-pulpit was still restricted to authors, intelligent thought leaders, investigative journalists, and reporters who researched, analyzed, and reported their findings in a manner that created a shared pool of factual knowledge based on varied yet familiar experience. They were the standard-bearers for ‘normal’ common understanding. The idea of common sense was born to counter the jadedness and skepticism that once existed in British society. However, the reach was still based on people actively participating in seeking and retrieving information to enrich their knowledge base and learn.
What is different in the Internet age is an uninvited plethora of conflicting information deluging our senses. There is a vast amount of information but not necessarily cohesive or coherent. So the promise of Common Sense, as providing a predictable behavior model to achieve predictable outcomes, is just gone out of style.
Once advanced computing and consumer-friendly technology became ubiquitous, we are inundated daily with individual points of view, real news, made-up news, alternative facts, advice, coaching from experts, and not-so expert innovative spinners, deniers, and creative visuals, each vying for our attention to influence our thinking. It decimates the notion of Common Sense and results in fractious, and at times warring philosophies. Add to that the current emphasis on disruption as a precondition to innovate and create new products and services, and establish unique branding and customer experiences to win a share of the minds and markets. And now we have a society and a marketplace that is segmented into smaller and smaller units of like-minded population. Digital technology provides a perfect environment for creating tribes and factions and a further fragmenting of societies.
Cohesiveness is the last thing people are likely to see in a fractious society. The Internet has provided a digital megaphone to anyone, wise or otherwise, who did not have a voice before, but now can find like-minded people, building mini tribes and use it as a useful tool or a weapon, depending on their intentions.
When you put the idea of common sense through the litmus test of universal appeal, you will find that although the draw of using commonsense in decision making is held worldwide, common sense is contextual; categorized by local, regional, national cultures, and is time-bound, i.e., it changes and evolves as the culture changes. What is different this time around is that the access to information and the speed with which it is delivered is transforming native cultures in fundamental ways.
National cultures can no longer impose norms and expect the masses to use those for decisions that impact their lives, except through force. But because now people can find and spread information at the speed of light and find and compare other ways in different societies of handling an issue, they are no longer blindly following the “common sense” rules imposed by political systems or religious institutions. People are examining how other nations have solved similar issues, made different decisions, and achieved better outcomes. The generation gap is widening, and the younger generation is no longer venerating the idea of inherited culture. They want to seek the best solution for their time.
Native cultures and the construct of what is common sense is in turmoil.
Common sense is evolving into a new definition with an ever-narrower scope. It is going through major ideological adjustments with opposing forces in a tug of war. Arab Spring was an example of the disruption of the entrenched political system. America’s ideological divide between conservatism and neoliberalism is a case in point of the conflict between Demagoguery (us vs. them) and long-held belief in Democracy.
Information is upending the cultural status quo and creating a whole new global culture with local colors. The young and educated tech-savvy people are challenging the age-old customs and belief systems, forging new cultures that are obliterating the existing socio-political barriers, and attempting to devise new approaches and ideologies in tune with their times.
After a while, we may find that the American system of Healthcare may have to adapt to socialized medicine. Its legal system will have to adjust to the changing role of marriage among heterosexuals and same-sex marriages. Its puritanical patriarchy will have to make room for equal rights for women. Youth in India may force the centuries-old caste system to change to a more egalitarian course. Its arranged marriages will have to give way to more modern types of weddings, traditional joint family structure to nuclear family structure, and dominant patriarchy-based system to women ‘s right to inheritance from parents’ properties. These scenarios of clashes between the old pre-Internet culture and the post-internet-era evolving needs are the reasons why people have abandoned the the traditional concept of common sense. It is a war based on a fear of losing the familiar way of life to something different and “uncommon.”
If I reconsider the divisiveness and the partisanship from this perspective, then my original question, “Why are voters not looking out for self-interest and along the party line” is a moot one. People are looking out for self-interest! Those who are fearful are resisting change, but those experiencing the new reality want to influence change that accommodates it!
It is ironic that the Internet, which was conceived as a tool to spread the American ideal of Democracy at a global level, is now being weaponized worldwide as a tool by the Demagogues and Democrats alike. However, in time, a new type of “common sense” will emerge. I already see cross-cultural influence as youth, women, and minorities are beginning to assert to correct the course their native cultures by taking the digital megaphone in their hands and questioning the old norms, experimenting with new ideas, and changing the mores, just like their disestablishmentarian Hippie parents did half a century ago!