The Problem With Common Sense

A famous quote by Voltaire (1694 – 1788) says “le sens commun n’est pas si commun” – “common sense is not so common.”

Merriam-Webster defines common sense as “sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts.” I would add that common sense is frequently the accumulated experience of a society, a community, or a tradition. Sometimes it’s simple cause-and-effect: don’t put your hand on a stove burner to see if it’s hot. Other times it’s generalized wisdom that’s easier said than done: “don’t spend more than you make.”

Common sense is both common and sensical because it’s true and helpful… for most people, most of the time.

Another quote – this one often misattributed to Mark Twain – says “it ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

And that brings us to the problem with common sense. Sometimes what seems obvious and intuitive just ain’t so. That’s one of the reasons why we still have fundamentalists who argue for creationism or intelligent design over evolution.

Other times common sense is helpful in the middle but harmful on the edges. The “common sense financial advice” touted by so many is very helpful for middle class people with good jobs. It’s useless for the poor (you can’t save your way out of poverty and structural oppression) and it’s meaningless for nations with their own currency (the rightwing push to “balance the budget” is all about ending efforts to reduce inequality, not any essential need to manage a national economy the way you manage a household budget).

A list of common sense truths that are neither

Last week I came across a post on the Patheos Evangelical channel by Anthony Costello titled 20 Common Sense Truths People Hate (And Why They Hate Them). Being on the Evangelical Channel I expected it to be grounded in some very different foundational assumptions from my own as a Pagan and a polytheist, but I was curious as to just how sensical his list would be, and if I would, in fact, hate it. So I read it.

People have been debating the nature of truth for at least as long as we’ve been human. We’ve still come to no definitive conclusions. In general, I define truth as a statement of fact – something that describes reality as it really is, to the extent we can perceive and understand it. I put extra emphasis on that last qualifier. I think truth exists, but it’s very hard to determine, and it’s impossible for us as finite humans to ever be completely sure we’ve got it right.

With that understanding, I look at Costello’s list and I see some things I’m pretty sure are true. I see other things that are generalizations – intuitive observations that are true and helpful in many situations, but not in all situations. And I see some things that are baseless claims that the morals and values of his religion are universal truth and not merely one opinion out of many.

I left three comments in an attempt to make this point. I don’t think I got through – not that I expected to. But at least I left a public response making it clear that his anti-feminist and transphobic “truths” are nothing of the sort.

Costello’s list demonstrates the problem with common sense.

Life is not binary

To Costello, “there are men and there are women” and “men and women are not identical” are common sense truths. This is intuitively true – we know it because we see it when we look around the world.

But we also see that intersex people exist. We see that trans people exist. We see some who are non-binary and defy attempts to force them into one box or the other, to a lesser or greater degree. This is as self-evidently true as the statement that “there are men and there are women.” That relatively few people are intersex or trans doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

And also, gender is more than what’s between your legs.

In this case, “common sense” becomes a rationalization for denying truths some find difficult or unpleasant.

Using the edges to restrict the middle

Costello says there are some things men do better than women, and other things women do better than men. With a few obvious exceptions, this isn’t as true as he thinks it is. Mostly it’s a case of trying to restrict positions and roles of importance to men. But even where this is generally true, it’s not universally true. What our observations of the world over the last century tell us is that when given equal opportunity, men and women do most things equally well.

In most athletic contests, the best men will always win against the best women. But move away from “the best” even a fraction of a point and that’s no longer true. Or have Costello and his kind already forgotten that Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs?

Sometimes common sense is true in the middle but false on the edges. In this case, it’s true on the edges but false in the middle. Those tiny edges are used as a rationalization for restricting the opportunities for the middle – for forcing (or at least, coercing) both men and women into traditional gender roles.

“Common sense” as rationalization for what you want to be true

When I decided I had already spent too much time in another blogger’s comment section, I left a final comment that directly addressed what Costello had indirectly said. I clearly stated that trans men are men and trans women are women. His response shifted from polite if ungrounded debate to an anti-trans rant. It should carry a trigger warning – I do not recommend you read it.

He’s far from the first to do this.

What he’s saying is that the mere existence of trans people, women athletes and soldiers, and people living happy and successful lives outside the bounds of straight marriage so offends his “common sense” views of the way things are supposed to be that he is justified in using hateful arguments and political power to force them to live the way he thinks they should live.

Instead of accepting that different people have different wants, needs, and abilities and respecting them as they try to find their place in the wider world.

Or, you know, minding his own damn business.

Left unchecked, “common sense” becomes rationalization for oppression.

Accept nothing without analysis and investigation

I don’t mean to call out Anthony Costello for his post. These ideas are not unique. Far from it – they’re all too widespread.

And while most of the abuses of common sense I see are on the right, the left isn’t immune from doing the same thing – particularly when it comes to economics.

Here’s another famous and relevant quote, a paraphrase of early 20^th century journalist H. L. Mencken: “for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”

Life is incredibly complex, and random, and messy. Our ancestors who developed shortcuts that are fast and generally true had an evolutionary advantage over those who didn’t: sometimes what’s most important is quickly deciding if this is an animal you can eat or an animal that will eat you. We are the descendants of those who did, and many of their shortcuts remain and are still considered common sense.

That doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

It does mean they’re incomplete.

And it absolutely means that some of them can be harmful when they’re used to justify limiting and oppressing people who don’t fall into the neat little boxes prescribed by “common sense.”

So if you think something is a common sense truth that anybody should be able to see, examine it closely. Is it always true, or just generally true? Does it help everyone, or just the people who are already in power – and who are trying to hold on to power? Is it meaningful to everyone, or is someone looking for rationalizations for their beliefs and the way they think things should be?

And while you’re doing this, listen to the people who are negatively impacted by it. If your ideas are at odds with their lived reality, odds are good you’re the one who needs to change.

I’ll close with a final famous quote, this from Socrates – who, we should remember, was a Pagan and a polytheist: “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Let’s examine our common sense and make sure it really does make sense.