Uncommon Sense

If you are like most people, you grow up believing that there is a strict way to achieve your goals. If you grow up in the United States, you might not even consider driving through a red light. In another country or in a small village it might make sense to simply drive through. I’m not encouraging illegal behavior, however, it’s clear that we miss a lot of opportunities when we look at the world through simple categories.

There is a book by Ellen Langer called Mindfulness. In Mindfulness Langer advises against looking at the world through these categories. Thinking of a coin as just a coin might make sense in most instances, but if you don’t have a pencil, you could use the coin to scratch a phone number on a piece of paper. You can use your email account to write personal notes or reminders that are accessible everywhere.

You might think that it is absolutely impossible to live without a job. If so, consider that long ago, people hunted and gathered their food. They didn’t have or need money. As time went by people could store grain, and this surplus could be traded with neighboring villages. At some point people began to structure their lives around jobs and social hierarchies. But all these societies have something special in common: We seek to create value for others. We may not be conscious of the value we seek or create because of the boundaries within these structures. It is no longer necessary to hunt a cheetah to survive; some people create value through giving speeches, reporting the news, or creating new recipes. So it is easy to forget how embedded we are in this structure and social dynamic we call common sense.

In the United States we take health care for granted, but does it truly make sense to take money from one person and give it to another? That’s generally called stealing.

We take our job for granted, but do we ever stop to think about the value we create? Could we create this value without an established social hierarchy within corporate organization? My guess is that we can, but we rarely think that far. We somehow just assume there is no better way to achieve our goals than the way we are currently doing it. Most likely, our goals are “designed” to avoid thinking about these new ways to achieve goals.

For example, they tell us growing up that we go to school so we can do well in the real world. But how many people actually experience the real world? I would argue that getting a job is common sense. And that’s the problem. We unknowingly get pushed around being told that good people get jobs; that we must work for years before we get a raise; that there are limited ways to experience life. And we believe it, because it is common sense.

It takes an outsider to tell you that if you challenged common sense just a little, that if you rejected the little notions everyone holds to be true, that perhaps you could get things done faster, better, or simply differently. And all it takes is a little thought.

Instead of thinking of survival in terms of a job, think about it in terms of creating value.

Instead of thinking of school as a series of tests and grades, think of it in terms of learning and bettering yourself.

Instead of voting for a candidate that is expected to win, vote for the best candidate.

It is comforting to stay within broken ground where everything is familiar, but the rewards of breaking new ground are considerably greater. A great example is Steve Pavlina, who rejected the notion he had to have a job. Instead he published a series of personal development articles that give him the freedom to write for a living and earn a relatively passive income. Breaking new ground to this extent is not feasible for everyone, but everyone is capable of questioning core assumptions and making changes in their lives.

Per Wikipedia, “Common sense is sometimes regarded as an impediment to abstract and even logical thinking. This is especially the case in mathematics and physics, where human intuition often conflicts with probably correct or experimentally verified results. A definition attributed to Albert Einstein states: ‘Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.’”

In other words, appealing to common sense is an appeal to tradition which by it’s very nature can be a source of fallacious thought. If you can best traditional ways of doing things, you are creating value. You can achieve your goals faster, better and more creatively by avoiding categories and rejecting common sense.