BLOG: What Will Rogers Would Have Said About Un-Common Sense

A few weeks ago some nice folks dropped off a little paper entitled “Common Sense.” It seemed like good common sense (would there be such a thing as bad common sense?) to read it so I read it all, and one thing I noticed was the spelling was good and the grammar much better than mine.

Then I got to thinkin’ about that term, “Common Sense.” Back when I was growin’ up on the farm in Oklahoma my father would say, “Will, if you’d have just used a little common sense and closed the barn door we wouldn’t be out here chasin’ these cows.” 

‘Course if the cows had used a little common sense, they wouldn’t have left the comfort of the barn in the first place, door open or not.

Anyhow, "common" usually means we have a lot of it – you know, the common cold, common law, common cause – oops, I think that one is a political group.  So, anyway, “Common Sense” must mean there’s a lot of Sense out there for it to be so Common. 

Now the word “Sense” is a bit more complicated.  Strictly speaking, it refers to taste, touch, smell etc. – I remember that from third grade. Yep, I did go to school, for a little while. In this context I think we stretch the meaning to include some sort of decision making process that, hopefully, is intelligent.  ‘Course like my father used it back then, most folks today use it to make us think of practical, down-to-earth people.

But if it’s that common, folks, why is it so many of us do so many dumb things?  You know, like turnin’ into the wrong lane at the Rancho Viejo-Junipero Serra intersection just because we don’t like the dumb traffic pattern; or havin’ that second martini even though our common sense should tell us we’ll say somethin’ we’ll regret in the mornin’.

Now I took the trouble of lookin’ up the definition of the phrase, too. It was most common to find it defined as "sound judgment derived from experience rather than study.” That makes sense, I guess, though sometimes a little study before gettin’ the experience might make the judgment more sound.

Now one of the things I’ve noticed is a lot of folks equate common sense with goin’ back to the “good old days.”

Not too long ago common sense told us that the world was flat and was created in six days by an old man with a long white beard. That came from our experience, of course, because that was what our ancestors were told and what was passed on and it made good Common Sense because it was “experience rather than study.” Some study of the matters has changed those notions.

Now I reckon the whole idea of havin’ common sense means we can make good judgments, dontcha think? And good judgment comes from experience. 'Course a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

I’d like to propose that we take a look at “Uncommon Sense.” Let’s define that as “sound judgment derived from experience AND study,” and let’s look forward instead of backward; work for progress not regress.

What do you think?