OH FOR MORE COMMON SENSE!

Since we all have a vested interest in actually thinking for a living, it makes sense to develop what we call “common sense.” But what is common sense? Is it truly common? If it is so common, why would we need to develop it?

There’s recently been a lot of lack of common sense in the “Stay at Home” orders that various State Governors have issued. The most outrageous has been the Michigan Governor when she locked down and forbid people buying garden supplies, paint, household goods, flooring, carpet, etc. It didn’t make any sense. How could any of that spread the virus or cause people to be in more danger? Simultaneously, she allowed liquor stores to stay open and the selling of lottery tickets. You can go get a pint of whisky and buy a lottery ticket, but you better not be painting a room at home during the time that you are locked down and have to stay at home! Rational? It doesn’t strike me as rational. No wonder people have been, and still are, out in protests in Michigan. No wonder many have filed law suites against the governor.

When elected officials are seen as inconsistent and as lacking “common sense,” we feel it violates our sense of rationality, our sense of “sound prudent judgment” and “the unreflective opinions of ordinary people.” Those are descriptions which the dictionary uses in defining “common sense.” Now if we are to take “common sense” as being sound prudent judgment, then no wonder it is often said that common sense is not very common!

Actually, for there to be common sense, you need to be using a lot of your cognitive powers. You have to be using a lot of the executive functions of your frontal lobes. That’s becomes to have sound prudent judgment you have to access information, transform it into useable data, convert the data into information that applies in a given area, and then make intelligent decisions based on that data and the full context.

Prudent judgment means that there is a clear connection between doing one thing and experiencing the result of another thing. For example, how does buying garden supplies relate to containing the virus or “flattening the curve?” “What makes buying beer okay and paint not?” What the protestors have argued is that the restrictions are not rational, not consistent, and not reasonable. And when something isn’t reasonable, then we naturally suspect that something else is going on. We suspect that there are other agendas at play— perhaps personal agendas, perhaps politic agendas, something.

Originally the lock-down orders and the closing of businesses was to “flatten the curve” and the reason for that was in order to prevent the hospitals to get overwhelmed. We achieved that. The hospitals have not been overwhelmed and the medical boat, Comfort, which was sent to New York City, only housed 200 patients with the virus. And now, not being needed has left. If the

purpose and design of the Stay-at-Home order has been achieved, then why does it continue? It seems that someone has changed the purpose. Now they want to prevent any spread of the virus. Instead of guaranteeing those most susceptible to the virus, they are still guaranteeing everybody. How reasonable is that?

Prudent judgment always has to go back to the facts and reason from the facts. What are the facts? We now know that both the infection rate is much greater than originally thought and the fatality rate is much lower than originally anticipated. Recent numbers indicate that 1/4 of people in New York have been infected and even with high number of deaths, it is between .02 and .01 percent. 50% who get the virus are asymptomatic.

In California, the Governor there has closed all parks— local parks and national parks. Now in terms of social distancing, if we can maintain 6 feet apart inside a grocery store then how is it that people cannot use their common sense and maintain six feet, or twenty feet, of social distancing in a park? Besides, allowing people to go to the parks has many other benefits— to be out in the fresh air and sunshine, to relax on a beach with family, to get some exercise. How then is it rational for going to a park to be “bad” or “dangerous?”

Given that “common sense” is not all that common, and that we all think we have common sense whereas others do not, how can we develop more sound prudent judgment? There are several things you can do to begin to develop a sounder common sense.

First, commit yourself to the facts above any and every agenda. Let every judgment start with the grounding facts. Then consider the ever-expanding larger sets of contexts within with the facts are embedded. What is the context? What context is that context within? This systemic thinking will identify what’s relevant and what is not. Next, quality control your judgments. Identify the criteria that you’re using to make the evaluation and then check if the criteria and the ecology of the judgment.