COMMON SENSE

So the people cry out for good old fashioned ‘common sense’ values. But what exactly is ‘common sense’? Does it focus on the best or the worst in people?

Usually the latter. Usually someone is to blame for something.

The problem with ‘common sense values’ – a bit like ‘traditional values’ or ‘family values’ – is that it acts as a cover for paranoid and insecure people to attack all the people that they don’t like and are uncomfortable with.

For a certain section of English society it is ‘common sense’ to believe that blacks/gays/Muslims/single mums/asylum seekers/gingers (pick the group(s) of your choice) are out to destroy ‘our way of life’. Backed up by ‘liberal do-gooders’, obviously.

Like they all gather in the local Mosque to desecrate the Union Jack with their lesbian ways, while sponsoring a paedophile to camp outside the nearest school..

All of which merely exposes just how scared and threatened by life some people are.

What is necessary are ‘un-common sense values’. Being free of fear and prejudice; seeking out truth, beauty, love and joy in everything we see.

If we wish to survive and prosper as a species there really is no other way.

© Phillip A. Klein March 2008