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Only a few hours after reading Humans Are Just Machines for Propagating Memes in which Susan Blackmore describes us as biological machines which copy from one brain to another ultimately effecting our cognitive evolution, I heard someone mention common sense.
It’s been a dream of mine for sometime to write a thesis on common sense. I believe it is a complex and dangerous concept. Common sense itself literally means that an idea about something is a widely held notion. (or is it something your either born with or not???) What is problematic, is that in its use it heavily implies truth and stupidity…
Isabel Allende has said that good people with common sense don’t make interesting characters, only good ex-spouses. (see below) As she describes her characters as passionate, courageous adventurers I am drawn to recall another article related to the TED 2008 conference by Proffessor Zimbardo:
“To be a hero you have to take action on behalf of someone else or some principle and you have to be deviant in your society, because the group is always saying don’t do it; don’t step out of line. If you’re an accountant at Arthur Andersen, everyone who is doing the defrauding is telling you, “Hey, be one of the team.”
“Heroes have to always, at the heroic decisive moment, break from the crowd and do something different. But a heroic act involves a risk. If you’re a whistle-blower you’re going to get fired, you’re not going to get promoted, you’re going to get ostracized. And you have to say it doesn’t matter. “ - Philip Zimbardo, famous for the Stamford Prison experiment speaking of the Abu Ghraib incident to Wired Feb 08
I’m also doing a bit of thinking about heroic minds… all of these are inspiring artifacts on the matter.