Common Sense Is An Illusion
I have been driving for many years now. Nonetheless, I can't help myself but wonder every now and then what the fuck must be going inside people's heads when they are found in front of the wheel. The frustration hits me like electrocution even if the surge slowly fades away. The weird part is that in that very moment almost everybody around feels the same.
In order to understand why this is happening we would have to examine the nature of human perception. When we evaluate a given situation, our minds cannot properly deduct every possible history of association. Through hasty neurological hack, the brain sums up the situation and serves the dish cold. This is also the reason why sudden sensory stimuli scare us so much. When the mind fails to process complex information in a logical way it glitches in unexpected ways.
We expect everybody to think like we do. If only...right? The world would be such an awesome place if we could tune those around us into our own perceptual frequency. After all, we are the fair ones. Life has been unjust for us and everyone else acts like an asshole — or so we think. We are not entirely wrong to assume so. Much like being in the streets driving, our daily lives are filled with events that are unfathomably complex for us to understand so we resort into making hasty generalizations to appease our ego. It's common sense right?
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What happens in our mind cannot take place anywhere else. Every single person goes through a unique trail of sequential events that slowly sculpt a unique character, reactions and emotions. A careless driver might have ben rushing to the school because his daughter got in an accident. An old lady seems to be going off the lane because her new heart medicine is acting weird. Yourself might be angry judging them because your boss pissed you off and your car is acting weird. All three might be searching for common sense but it is nowhere to be found.
No matter how wish it, no single person is able to use common sense. Each and everyone of us uses a uniquely generated sensory code that can be applied only to specific instances and at specific times. Heck, not even our own self can use common sense for the same event throughout the day.
If we are so complex in understanding and controlling our own psyche, what makes us believe that we should expect others to act similarly? When 3 people can hardly decide over a few pizza toppings how unlikely would be to expect from them to connect over daily interactions that are based on thousands of unique possibilities?
This is also why you will notice that the ones getting frustrated the most are the ones being emotionally immature. Children suffer from this the most because they are used to everyone catering for them. Slowly, and as we age, we are giving less and less fucks because we start noticing that not everything is about us. In all likelihood rarely anybody even cares.
Perhaps the notion of common sense has been mutually propagated so people can be motivated to act upon a perceived sense of understanding. Romantic love, politics or even driving instructions from our partner operate on the same sense of illusion — hence the fact that misunderstandings are the rule rather than then exception.
We expect our peers to fulfill our own sense of understanding about the world — yet we get disappointed when they fail to do so. After all, why we should be the ones changing our views when everyone else is so obviously wrong? At the end, the way we expect others to understand us, reveals more about our person and less about them.
Hello @kyriacos. I notice that you write amazing articles. I am starting a blogroll named through the eyes of a mystic. I would love it if you can leave a topic on my article to discuss as i will try to write about topics given by the community.
Much love
Goldie ♡
Thank you. already left one.
There is no "common sense", but there is a common ideal standard that everyone expects everyone else to follow - but themselves. For example when driving, people are expected to drive steadily and in a specific distance from the edge of the road. Non- compliance creates frustration for everyone else, who see their expectations challenged.
The thing is though, if we are the ones doing it we can come up with a million excuses why. This is the root of all misunderstandings in the world: we judge ourselves differently than we judge other people. We have the leverage of knowing exactly what went wrong.
Obviously, every single person acts the way they do because their personality has been sculpted by unique factors, as you mentioned as well. So we can't always "excuse" peoples' negative actions just because they might have been stirred by trauma or hurtful experiences. But we can maybe try to put ourselves in their shoes just for a moment; perhaps this way we wouldn't all be so harsh with one another.
Awesomely put. Actually you might have explained it better than me.
You explained it really well :) Actually you mentioned something that I had never thought about before. I always assumed that the relationship between age and a not-giving-a-fuck attitude (very funny graph, btw!) was only due to the fact that young people interact through social groups while older people already have their own uniquely sculpted personalities and go their own merry way. But what you mentioned is also true: young people, although in larger social groups are also more "selfish", in the sense that they expect more of other people than what they can give back, and this comes from the fact that as a child, you have everyone catering for you. So obviously you get more frustrated when people don't act like you'd want them to!
Glad our perspectives meet then.
it's funny how humans grow to understand their own tragedy.
A very thought provoking piece @kyriacos, as usual.
@dwinblood recently wrote a post called Virtue Signalling and Parenting that dovetails into your comment about "Children suffer from this the most because they are used to everyone catering for them."
We live in world made up of people who never grew out of everyone catering to them, because they still INSIST that everyone continue doing so.
The "NOT-GIVING-A-FUCK" graph has gone invertedly parabolic (is that a real term?) and is now "GIVES-A-FUCK-ABOUT-EVERYTHING-EVERYWHERE-ALL-THE-TIME".
I'm frustrated by the self-important who can't be bothered to wait in line, or insist everyone else accommodate them.
But, like a dumb-ass, I continue to follow the rules of a "civilized" society.
lol. Don't feel bad about following some rules. One has to adopt or perish.
The graph was meant as a joke but more or less it dos correspond to reality.
I will make sure to read that article
I don't feel bad, but I often sometimes understand how Diogenes felt.
With that said, that's the most exciting thing I find about Steemit, i.e. the number contributors here who do really impressive work.
It has inspired and given me an optimism that I haven't felt for a very long time..
Now that I'm riding a motorcycle again, this has become a life-threatening observation. I think self-driving cars will solve a lot of these problems.
if only AI uses common sense... :)
lol... :-) right!
Obviously, I've mixed up logic and common sense all of my life ... I thought common sense is logic applied on auto-pilot, basically.
Looking at this from my version of logic .... "IF I drive under the influence" or "IF I drive while angry" THEN "consequences" BUT common sense wouldn't require a person to think this out logically. It would just be a given.
Good common sense is just the ability to rapidly think about consequences based on already acquired knowledge before taking action.
It also covers social pressure in that it is common sense (and logical) to not rock the boat (unless, of course, you have a life raft right handy).
I was aiming towards the "shared" common sense. I get what you mean though.
i agree, always people say. we should act with the comon sense but is our experience
yeap
Nice quote from Voltaire - so true.
I also agree, as you get older, you just care less what others think. It is like new freedom!
indeed
Great post! Common Sense is in the eye of the beholder.
exactly. very well put
Common Sense is no more no less than LIFE EXPERIENCES. Period.
And since it is almost impossible any one, any living being on this planet have passed through the exact very same experiences. There you go, not even the most remote possibility or evidence that Common Sense have ever existed or will exist. Much less as to reach the most minimal collective consensus about that. }:)
nicely put!