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An Essay on Common Sense
"...a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason." COMMON SENSE by Thomas Paine 1774
The Quest for a Conceptual Grasp
Hegel once famously said that he felt at home in the world when he knew it but even more so when he had a conceptual grasp of it. There are those among us able to grasp little more than a can of Stella, a group easy to dismiss as stunned simpletons, if like Trotsky, you're in a hurry to get on with the revolution. Well, we think it's a bit late to be rushing around trying to change things.
Fact is, things are changing constantly, least ways, things appear to be changing. This process of change or its appearance is the focus of our efforts.
R. D. Laing once observed that the deluded man finds his delusions so obvious that he can't understand why the rest of the world doesn't want to share them. Frequently, however, people do share the delusions of mad men, they believe things are as they are because it's obvious and then, they call it common sense - a shared understanding of the way the world is.
The problem with the obvious is its ability to seem like common sense, that is, some kind of meaningful understanding that we all share. I mean it's obvious that we need a raft of high street banking intermediaries who have made a complete mess of the international economy through their clueless and reckless behaviour. I mean it must be obvious because our Government has given over billions of pounds, that it does not actually have, to save them.
It just might be that, just like R. D. Laing's mad person, the bankers are all deluded, as are the politicians, and what of us, are we deluded? Or have we just got too much common sense?
Perhaps it's time to stop touting common sense as some kind of virtue. Instead, perhaps it's time to start asking where all this common sense that we possess comes from? Is that what Hegel meant, by questioning our common sense we gain a grasp of what is actually going on in the world
Pause for thought: So we bailed out the bankers, according to Mr Brown, because if the Government had not taken decisive action then the cash machines would have failed and the direct debits would have gone unpaid. So we were not in fact bailing out idiot bankers, we were keeping the world of illusion spinning. That is, the illusion that the banks actually had our wages in their coffers - clearly they did not. The consequences for civil society of doing nothing in this circumstance would have been catastrophic - the banks would have been burned to the ground.
Providing the banks with the wherewithall to meet their obligations was not decisive action.
Philosophers and other spectators
Traditionally, studying the world as it is, has been left to the philosophers but not much happens in philosophy, it just might happen. The philosopher's world is full of potential, to change, to evolve, to develop and when none of this occurs we keep the spirit alive by recourse to hope, which leads to existential inner gazing and myriad forms of irrational behaviour.
Human conditioning fails to cope with the idea that no salvation exists. As Hobbs once told us: "life is nasty, brutish and short" and that's all there is and when we spend many hours waiting to get through security at the airport we are inclined to agree with him.
Philosophers have only interpreted the world... in fact, they made some things up as well.
As philosophers go, Hegel had a few lucid moments but as with most of his ilk, he thought a bit too much and following a night out at an acid house party, he dreamed the end of history had arrived. Young Hegelian's like Marx were not impressed. Marx insisted that there was still work to be done but he too got a bit carried away with his 'materialist conception of history' and ended up spending his later years on the comedy circuit. He made audiences in working mens clubs laugh a lot but inside he was a disappointed man.
A few years after Marx played his last working mans' club, Adorno observed:
"philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed".
Very clever, in fact, a cover story for the failure of the working class to realise its potential as a revolutionary force for change. The fact that the working class had missed the boat didn't negate the possibility of some future resurgence of working class realisation. What a relief, it was 1920 and history was still alive and well - potentially anyway.
However, after Adorno and his chums from the Frankfurt School, philosophy took a bit of a nose dive. All the English ones were having a wrestling match with science and technology, demanding proof or at least refutation of anything to do with the 'materialist conception of history' leading to the dictatorship of the proletariat'.
Well, we might as well forget it then. Elsewhere philosophers plumped for Lenin and his version of 'dialectical materialism' but that turned out to be the 'dictatorship of the dictator'. The latter didn't end history, it just put it on hold for about 50 years, while half the world's population took a long march to nowhere.
Puzzled by the apparent disappearance of history and the simultaneous appearance of National Socialism, not a few cultural marxists disembarked for the New World; perhaps the explanation lay there? This was a good move indeed, there was no proof, just a few indications, that progress had been misapprehended by the masses. To misapprehend means to take hold of the wrong end of the stick; preferably the end coated in sugar candy.
The masses were confusing technological change with progress, this made them more comfortable but not more happy, not more fulfilled, not more actualized - just better off materially.
Fromm told us they feared freedom, Marcuse said they were alienated, and C Wright Mills said they had no imagination. These guys were really making sense of things but there was not much in what they said to reassure anyone, especially those seeking to make sense of things.
It appeared that oppression in the modern age came from affluence not poverty. The crumbs from the table were now enough for modern man since they now came wrapped very nicely, with fancy names and brands to identify with.
Marx turned in his grave, what chance now for the revolution, for genuine progress where history is not the sum of individual ambitions but rather the passage through time in which human activity facilitates the primacy of spiritual development.
- "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."
- Karl Marx (1845), Theses on Feuerbach (Thesis XI)
The words of all the philosophers, from Socrates to Bertrand Russell, don't add up to a bag of beans - if they did, the world would be a better place.
Restating the Problem
It's not exactly clear why all the thinkers mentioned in the forgoing passage spent so much time seeking Hegel's illusive conceptual grasp. Only Marx is crystal clear, 'the point is to change things' and to clarify the purpose of such change. That is, to provide a vision, some end point, to describe what it is we are trying to achieve.
So to restate the problem: the first task is to gain a conceptual grasp of what's going on in the world, then to provide a critique of that grasp, and finally to provide alternative ways of doing and being in the world.
In order to gain that conceptual grasp we need to make some assumptions (to test). Crucial to our analysis of the world is the idea that nothing is obvious and that common sense should be viewed with deep suspicion. Perhaps even more crucial is our assumption that no one really knows what's going on in the world.
This assumption is made because someone (well actually quite a few people) actually believes that someone else knows what they are doing.
"Obituary of the late Mr Common Sense".
The Obituary was penned by Allen Jesson, a writer of love poems.The ‘obituary’ has been doing the rounds on the Internet for some years now and it’s time it was properly finished off. Our purpose here is to bury it.
The ‘obituary’ regurgitates home spun wisdom and borish prattle to fit neural receptors educated to acquiesce in conformity.
People make sense of the world by forming internal views of what’s going on outside in the world, common sense provides meaning.
World views are formed, with varying degrees of sophistication in the search for meaning based on information received from a welter of external stimuli.The point here is that common sense is a creation, it is not some instinctive mental process that develops into a set of right minded guiding principles.
Analysis of the Obituary….'Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. (the use of the phrase “beloved old friend” appeals to the assumption that everyone finds common sense comforting.)
No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. (Bureaucracy is here being used as scapegoat; beyond trying to cover-up his birth, perhaps it was these demon bureaucrats who did for Mr Common Sense as well.)
He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: (the use of the word ‘cultivated’ is interesting as it conjures up the idea of growth, reinforcing the idea of the wisdom of ages, of lessons learned and passed down the generations. The error here is not to notice that everything changes.)
Examples of valuable lessons…..
Knowing when to come in out of the rain; (faced with a decision to get unnecessarily wet or not is dependent on whether or not you enjoy that cold, damp, bone chilling feeling that exposure to the elements entails. Most humans have an instinctive aversion to discomfort, there’s nothing cultivated about knowing that staying dry trumps getting wet any day of the week: unless you are a chav with no where to go and find standing in the rain, in a menacing huddle, outside the One Stop Shop, intimidating elderly shoppers and searching for the meaning of life.)
Why the early bird gets the worm; (this assumes that worms are also early risers, if they are not then the birds don’t get the worms and hence the wisdom here is invalid. Some might argue that this sort of wisdom is not meant to be taken literally. This is interesting because it raises one of the central problems of meaning . If the early bird doesn’t get the worm, why are we talking about birds and worms, why employ metaphors to communicate meaning.)
Life isn't always fair; (no metaphors here, this is a statement of fact but used as an explanation for social inequality. But saying life’s not fair doesn’t explain anything, what it does is excuse the injustice in the world and allows a marvellously uncritical approach to life.)Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies , e.g. don't spend more than you can earn (superficially this seems to make sense but only if you have no disposable income, else, no one would ever buy a house or car, or any other big ticket item. Our economy runs on credit, that's the common sense of the system, you don't have to delay a purchase, you are encouraged to borrow. However, at the level of business investment this sound financial advice is complete nonsense since no investment would ever occur if it were followed.)
and reliable strategies, i.e. adults, not children, are in charge. (This piece of wisdom simply ignores the actual way that parenting and educating children is managed by the state, the media and the experts. Children are in charge today and that's because adults put them in charge. A whole infrastructure has been developed to promote childrens rights and welfare. The common sense in relation to children has changed and wishing it was not so is not good enough.His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition. (Here we are provided with examples of behaviour supposedly at odds with common sense but they represent examples of the prevailing common sense.)
Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. (Both teachers and parents are severely constrained in law to the extent that they can discipline children. Each side blames the other for unruly behaviour when in fact they have allowed themselves to be disempowered, acknowledging this fact would leave all concerned feeling silly. Hence denial and blame makes perfect sense.)
It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or giving an Elastoplast to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion. (Here, we have more examples of the management of intervention imposed on schools, more examples of today's common sense.)
Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband; (contraband?, this doesn't make sense, smuggled goods, in what sense are the Ten Commandments smuggled goods?)
churches became businesses; (Chuches have always been businesses, taking their 10% and setting up phoney relic sales.)
Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault. The criminals received better treatment than their victims. (The Law constrains action to avoid excesses and legislaters always like to include a pinch of humanity for external observers to marvel at. There's not much scope here for common sense.)
Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement. (It doesn't make sense for the woman not to claim surrounded by a culture of 'no win, no fee'.)
Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason. He
is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I'm A Victim. (None of this is at odds with perfect sense. I'm a victim, someone else is to blame, I want it (compensation) now; I know my rights!).
Mr Jesson should read Tom Paine's essay 'Common Sense' (1774) in which he tells us "Time makes more converts than reason." In the passage between events that we describe as time change occurs and converts are created.
Common sense is presented by Jesson as if its frozen in time, the same in all places and times.
