Common Sense-23

The pamphlet that was one of the things that started the American Revolution. I was never much of a history fan, but I was interested to see how much common sense was in "Common Sense."

Thankfully, both for the sake of the book being interesting enough to read and for the sake of preserving my last shreds of hope that humanity isn't completely comprised of idiots, the title of the book was an accurate description of it's contents.

As for the things discussed in themselves, I didn't find them particularly interesting. It quite simply an appeal using common sense as it's basis to split from Britain. Logic and common sense were really all it was, no politics or deceit or exaggeration. Thomas Paine simply presented the view that union with Britain was detrimental to the American colonies, and provided logical reasons as to why he reached this conclusion.

The question that comes to mind is, "why is Thomas Paine the ONLY one who does this? Why can't modern speakers take the same approach?"

A lot of problems today are caused by stupidity, wishful thinking, illogical and irrational decisions, and overall just a plain lack of common sense. If people could learn to set aside their emotions, optimism, and personal bias when making important decisions then we'd find that our world would become a much better place.

The question remains, WHY can't anyone do this? I try and act without bias, debate with logic and experience, and make common sense take precedent to emotion. For the most part I am successful. This does not mean I am without bias, do not sometimes debate based on ideals, and do not sometimes let my emotions override my rationality. I'm only mortal, so I can't claim I'm perfect, and I can't expect perfection from others. However, I do believe that if someone like me, a person who used to be very emotional and had very poor control over said emotions, can achieve this level of detachment and control, then it is not unreasonable to expect similar results from others. Particularly the people in positions of power who make the most critical decisions.

In a system where politics has degenerated into a democrat vs republican cold war, it seems that common sense has died. Now would be a great time for another Thomas Paine to surface, but now regular people are just as caught up in this lack of common sense as the politicians, so the number of people who could possibly be the next Thomas Paine are few and far between.

As always, I present such cheery thoughts in these blog posts, and all without any sarcasm. It's a grim situation though, and I'm not going to be focusing on the silver linings. I feel obligated to point out that the silver lining is just the edge of a giant lump of coal, that's just how I view things. I hope that people like me become more common, that way we can make the entire thing silver instead of just the linings. Then we can look at the gold linings without feeling guilty.