Nora and I often say that the State Motto of Vermont should be, “Huh… don’t know that I’d’a done it THAT way…” Every time a contractor comes to do a repair, or a mechanic gets under the hood, it’s a guarantee that we’ll hear some version of that in reference to someone else’s prior work. Everybody’s an expert in road repair, snow management, pie crusts, dog training—and they don’t mind informing the world of what everyone else has done wrong. And once they tell you what they think should be done, they’ll end with, “It’s just common sense.”
I’ve come to believe that the phrase common sense is a shorthand for “I haven’t thought about this too hard, but I know my own biases and preferences.” It’s a phrase that does several simultaneous pieces of work:
It oversimplifies complexity. (We’ll talk more tomorrow about wicked problems.) There might be two dozen competing variables in how a problem gets resolved; if you choose only one as your sole guidepost, the navigation is simpler. It’s wrong, but it’s simpler. Social problems don’t often have single and unambiguous answers, like arithmetic does.
It disregards difference. The idea of common sense presumes common values, common goals, common language, common histories, common culture. It’s linked to the same project as our current hysteria over DEI—there’s one right interpretation, one right course of action, one right community, and all others are deviant or inferior.
It amplifies the voice of the inexperienced. I had someone on the phone a couple of weeks ago who wanted more sand on her hillside road. She’s never done any road maintenance, but had no problem substituting her own judgment for that of our 40-year-experienced road foreman. “It’s just common sense,” she said.
It demeans others. Anything that’s “just common sense” is obviously contrasted against things that don’t make sense. The other is not merely wrong, but dumb.
It demands closure. “It’s just common sense” is another way of saying “I’m done listening—I don’t care to learn any further.” It scribes the line in the sand beyond which no ideas can encroach.
“Common sense” is the field marking of the incurious and disdainful, and holds particular power in our current, incurious, and disdainful moment.
More tomorrow.
Herb Childress 