‘Common Sense’

Common sense isn’t really a thing. We like to use that term, but the reality is that people are taught by observation. You have to learn things from a young age.

We think it’s common sense not to put our hand on a stove, but our parents either showed us it was hot or they did it in front of us and we saw a burn. It’s not intuitive.

For something like the example of people who refuse to mask for the sake of others, to have empathy or care about other people outside of yourself, you have to learn that by observing other people and learning how to act like that.

If you grow up around self-centered people who can’t see beyond the end of their own noses, you’ll act the same.

EG: My mom is horrific in public. She is not always rude to servers, but she often complains about her food and tends to ignore them when they bring her things. She interrupts them when they talk and doesn’t really listen to what they say.

I grew up this way. I didn’t know any better. I wasn’t rude like her, but I wasn’t great.

I started dating a guy when I was around 19 who was super friendly and courteous to people working tables. He always paid attention when they talked to the whole table. He never yelled for the server across the room, and he always said thank you for a refill of drink or when they brought food to the table. It was literally the first time in my life that I saw this behavior. It changed my life.

Empathy wasn’t something I had in spades at that age. On top of still being basically a teenager, barely out of the house, I’d not seen true empathy from my father or mother towards others. My dad was angry at everyone all the time, acted horribly to homeless people, and my mom was bitter and seemed to hate everyone, including us.

I’d been taught to be selfish, bitter and angry at the world. I wasn’t just selfish, I was abrasive. I grew up poor and abused and it was hard for me to have any perspective of what others went through. At the time I still (mostly) had my health as well. I softened a lot working in a group home. Seeing people regularly that had actually had it worse than me (for once) I started to gain some semblance of understanding that I didn’t have it that bad, even though I was still practically starving myself.

I already had a multitude of reasons not to respect my mom but if I had a lot of respect/love for her, I may have picked up and kept those terrible habits. This is what I think happens to people who remain this way. They are never corrected or don’t experience that moment.

Empathy, compassion and humanity have to be taught and it has to be taught young, or through some kind of trauma.

Back to the anti-maskers*: To not be willing to put yourself even in slight discomfort for the LIVES of others shows that you were not observing that kind of behavior throughout your life.

One of our other issues is that people think that many people assume that people think the same way, and they simply do not. The concept of ‘common sense’ comes from very specific types of privilege that most people aren’t even aware of.

EG: Current stock market situation. We have heard our whole lives stocks and money and how investing is ‘common sense’ but how does that work for someone who grew up with parents who lived paycheck to paycheck, who used payday loans, who pawned things, let the bills get behind and spent our time in the dark or with no water? This isn’t even getting into what kind of capital it actually takes early on to get into the actual market.

So yeah, to those that were taught about these things and saw good money practices, it became common sense, even if they didn’t see it directly. If you see people treating a payday loan as something that is a viable option (it’s not), you’ll end up thinking it’s okay.

I’m sure there’s a lot more I can add to this, but really I think it’s pretty obvious if you really think about it. The next time you think something you believe is ‘common sense’, it might be a good idea to actually think about where you learned it, and realize that people may not have had that experience.

*When I refer to anti-maskers I am talking about the people that just whine that they don’t want to wear them, so they don’t unless they are forced to, not the highly indoctrinated cultists who believe in conspiracy theories about masks. That’s another level, and another post.