Is Common Sense Dead?

[rizon72]

Are we losing our touch with common sense? It just seems like as I read the news, and look at the world, common sense is going the way of the dodo, replaced with constant fear, removal of blame and zero tolerance.

 

Thoughts?

[matortheeternal]

"Common" sense was never a "common" thing anyways.

[Oubliette]

Common sense doesn't really apply to more than one individual at once, when there are more people gathered you will see less and less rational thinking.

[KakeiTheWolf]

I believe Voltaire stated best when he said "Common sense is not so common".

[HeyYou]

Seems the further up the food chain of command you are, the less sense you have. Just look at what our government likes to call 'solutions' to some of our problems. That should tell you right there that they have absolutely zero common sense. (I am referring the the US govt, in cast that wasn't clear.)

[WarRatsG]

As HeyYou said, government has little sense to spare. Mainstream "role models" are interchangeable w***ers who have never had an original thought in their pointless existence (ie Joey Essex, Katie Price, Justin Bieber). The other day I met a 16 year old who had never heard of sexism. This week a 9 year old boy hung himself in a town near me because of racist bullying - some Asian kids made fun of him being white.

The future looks bleak.

[JimboUK]

"Common sense" is my favourite oxymoron closely followed by "Police intelligence".

[Vagrant0]

I think it deals more with the fact that due to our vastly more connected world, where every day we interact with more and more people from places far and wide, we hear more about the idiots of this world and see people who do not have the same background of culture and sensibilities that we have. Notions which might be common to you may be entirely foreign to those who have had a different life or who have not had the same experiences. For example, to someone who has had a wealthy background, it may be common sense to set aside a portion of their salary to distribute between various stocks and bank accounts since that allows the money you have set aside to gain additional value, and it may appear to them that anyone who is spending all their earned money on day to day life is subsequently foolish... Neglecting the fact that those people who are living paycheck to paycheck may not understand how stocks work, or may simply have not had enough money on hand to open a simple bank account (nevermind the fact that you rarely find banks in poorer parts of a city). Common sense is all relative.

[McclaudEagle]

My brother is someone who sometimes doesn't put common sense to good use. A while ago he decided to see if the in-car light worked...by touching it. He found out it did work. His same 'common sense' told him it might be a good idea to pour lighter fluid all over an already lit BBQ. By the age of 30, he'll either be in a care home, or on a burns unit at a hospital.

 

I do think that a much larger portion of today's younger generation are becoming more and more care-free, and not in a good way. I've seen teenagers who think it's more important to be face down at their iPhone than it is to make sure a car isn't approaching the road they're crossing. The majority of car collisions on the road involving young drivers are generally young men who like to impress or think it's safe to go 70-80mph down a narrow road in a car that's not built for that. Many people think it's fun to pit their reaction time against the speed of a train.

 

But it's not just limited to young people, there are also plenty of older people, people who should be wiser and more responsible, that also do very stupid things that go against common sense. Every day on the road outside my town, I see middle aged men and women taking the foolish risk of making dangerous overtakes just to beat the rush hour traffic to work. People in SUVs that become delusional about the safety offered by such a vehicle that they choose not to wear a seatbelt, because they think they won't need it.

 

Common sense hasn't been a seemingly important thing for some people for thousands of years, but I think it's this generation that is seeing the largest lack of common sense.

[WarRatsG]

Fun fact - many young adults and teens were found to have worse memory skills than the elderly due to over-reliance on the internet.