BS: OBITUARY

Subject: OBITUARY
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 31 May 01 - 08:37 AM

A couple of threads reminded me of this obituary written by an unknown source; and which I have edited somewhat for this forum. (Common Sense is also the sense that tells us the world is flat) enjoy!

Today we mourn the passing of an old friend by the name of Common Sense.
Common Sense lived a long life but died from heart failure at the brink of the millenium. No one really knows how old Common Sense was since birth records were long ago lost during wars, and due to bureaucratic mismanagment. Selflessly devoting life to service in schools, hospitals,homes, factories and offices; helping folks get work done without fanfare and foolishness for decades; without petty rules silly laws and frivolous arguments. Lawsuits held no power over Common Sense, who was credited with cultivating such valued lessons as to know when to come in out of the rain, wearing appropriate clothing, and to realise that life isnt always fair.
Common Sense lived and survived cultural and educational trends by simple sound financial policies (dont spend more than you earn) reliable parenting strategies (the adults are in charge not the kids) and its OK to come in second. A veteran of the industrial revolution, great depression and the modern technological revolution, Common Sense even survived massive cultural and educational trends; althought weakened by whole language and new math. Finally infected with the "if it only helps one person its worth it" virus and overbearing federal regulationitis. Rapidly deteriorating health conditions were worsened when schools developed zero tolerance policies; and reports of six year old boys being accused of sexual harassment for kissing a classmate. After learning that a teacher had been fired for reprimanding an unruly student; and that schools had to get parental consent to get emergency medical treatment for students, but cannot inform parents when a female student is pregnant or wants an abortion Common Sense lost the will to live. As prayers in school were banned and Churches became businesses, criminals received more rights and better treatment than victims Common Sense drifted in and out of logic, but was kept informed of developments regarding questionable regulations concerning a variety of social ills. Common Sense passed away in great pain when told that the homeowners association restricted exterior furniture only to that which enhanced property values.

Common Sense was preceded in death by both parents Truth and Trust. Spouse, Discretion. daughter, Responsibility, and sons Respect and Reason. Survived by stepbrothers Rights and Tolerance, not many attended the funeral cause few knew of the demise.

(source unknown)

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: GUEST
Date: 31 May 01 - 12:33 PM

It's an amusing piece, but I can't help but notice that many of the things that supposedly killed Common Sense seem quite sensible to me -- the banning of school-sponsored prayers, the protection of the rights of the incarcerated, etc. If there's no consensus on what constitutes "common sense," I wonder whether it ever really existed?

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 31 May 01 - 12:48 PM

That Guest was me, by the way.

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 31 May 01 - 12:58 PM

Dave, good post, unfortunately true.

Whistle Stop, read it again. It says "criminals received more rights and better treatment than victims"--considerably different from "protecting the rights of the incarcerated."

Lin

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Dharmabum
Date: 31 May 01 - 01:05 PM

Good one Dave,thanks for sharing it.

DB.

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: RichM
Date: 31 May 01 - 01:09 PM

We are in the midst of a great change in Western civilization; Community values had greater importance in previous generations.
Now the individual and his(her)rights are supreme. This is not a bad thing; but community will always be important in human societies. We on Mudcat discuss many aspects of this, in religion, politics, music, copyrights, computers, schools, public programs vs private programs.... The common theme in many of the threads is just that: group values, versus individual rights.

As I get older, I find it less simple to champion the supreme rights of the individual.
Human societies don't function as merely a group of individuals.Very few people choose to live in complete isolation from others--there must be something natural and healthy about community. Yet the 'good old days' were not perfect; we now more quickly hold organizations responsible for their activities and transgressions.For example, religious organizations are being judged on their past "sins", here in Canada. Ironically, they are being accused of notfollowing their own precepts!

Rich McCarthy

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 31 May 01 - 03:25 PM

Lin, thanks for pointing that out, but if you take it quite literally (without reading between the lines, as I did) it's hard to figure out exactly what that statement means. In what way do criminals receive more rights and better treatment than victims? It certainly isn't that the criminals have the right to walk around in public, or to choose their own meals, or to decide what time to turn out the lights, where to live, whom to live with, what to do for work, etc. In these ways, victims have more rights than criminals (the incarcerated ones, anyway). Now I suppose you could say that the criminals are treated better because the victims were treated pretty horribly (by the criminals when the latter committed their crimes). But that's pretty circular logic.

In the US of A, criminals are incarcerated in some real hellholes, where they are routinely victimized by their guards and other inmates. It has gotten to the point where the gang-rape of incarcerated criminals is accepted as routine by society as a whole -- to the point where any reference to prison on any lame TV sitcom you care to watch is immediately followed by jokes about rape. [Can you imagine any other situation where joking about gang rape on network television would be tolerated?]

This is an issue that disturbs me greatly, so pardon me for getting on my soap box. Our society treats criminals pretty brutally. Now, you might argue that some of the criminals deserve this treatment -- but even if you feel that is the case, it still does not follow that they "receive more rights and better treatment than victims."

Back to the issue at hand, I would submit that "common sense" belongs in the other current thread about truths that are not true (or whatever it's called). Sure, it's fun to pretend that we all used to know what common sense was, and now we don't. But it's clear from the humorous little essay that starts this thread that we differ pretty profoundly on the definition of common sense, at least when you try to apply it to specific issues (our treatment of criminals, prayer in schools, notifying parents when school-age kids want to abort a pregnancy, etc.). Again, if that is the case, there's no such thing as "common sense" -- there is simply nothing "common" about it.

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Spud Murphy
Date: 31 May 01 - 05:01 PM

Scuze me. Does less simple mean 'more difficult?'

Spud.

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 31 May 01 - 09:09 PM

Several years ago I lived in a 150 year old farmhouse. We had a modern forced hot air furnace installed in a side building attached to the house. During a power failure an eighteen year old student could not light the ordinary fireplace to keep warm "because there was no kindling". We had paper and cardboard galore, and twenty cords of wood cut and split.There were four axes of varying size and a machete in the shed. Approximately 10% of the wood was Birch with plenty of bark for peeling. There were metal shovels and buckets to carry hot coals from the furnace to the fireplace but the student (wrapped in blankets) could not figure out how to stay warm. The house was just above freezing when my wife and I arrived back home. Thats when I knew Common Sense had died; and that our education system was seriously flawed. As for the inmate issue Whistle Stop, the vast majority of repeat offenders are there by choice; the rest may be salvagable, society does try hard to keep them out in my opinion. Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 31 May 01 - 09:21 PM

Perhaps the point here is that the term "Common Sense" has become so devalued by abuse -chiefly, it seems, by right-wing politicians, both in the US and UK- that it is no longer easily possible to agree on a meaning that would enable people to discuss it with any guarantee that they were actually talking about the same thing.

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Amos
Date: 31 May 01 - 10:07 PM

I have always enjoyed the fancy that the true semantics of the expression could only be found if you remembered that the word "Common" means ordinary, unvarnished, plain, as well as meaning widely distributed. There is a plain ability anyone can have to see clearly what the ramifications of a given course of action are. But to use it, you have to be willing to do that underrated but ordinary act of will called looking.

A

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: JeZeBeL
Date: 31 May 01 - 10:26 PM

I like that. It is true, common sense has died a death, well, in me anyway.....I have none....that's why I'm a mudcatter!! ;)

Emma xxx

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: CarolC
Date: 31 May 01 - 10:43 PM

Dave (tam),

By one of the criteria you are using, the anecdote of the student who couldn't start the fire and your subsequent statement, "Thats when I knew Common Sense had died; and that our education system was seriously flawed", I think your premise needs some serious re-examinination.

...I am a living, breathing, demonstration that common sense as you define it did not exist long before your experience with the student. I graduated from high school in 1973 entirely unprepared for life. I couldn't even do third grade level math. This was not because of any lack of desire to learn on my part.

It was because the school system in which I was educated did not recognise that some students learn differently than what we consider 'normal'. As it turns out, I have two learning disabilities that prevented me from learning at the level that was expected of someone who tested as high as I did on my aptitude tests.

My son faced the same problems when he was in school, as well. And that was after educators supposedly knew what to do for kids with learning disabilities. The method of choice that teachers used to try to motivate both my son and me was ridicule and humiliation.

And guess what? I had to withdraw from a class at the college level last fall because (despite my 3.66 grade point average at the college level - 4.0 being the highest), my teacher felt that it was necessary to humiliate and embarras me in front of the rest of the class (I am 45 years old), because I have problems with short-term memory and I needed her to repeat things from time to time. And she refused to do it. And this despite laws in the U.S. that are supposed to protect disabled people from this sort of travesty.

I'm afraid you've pushed a very big button of mine and in a very big way. No. Common sense did not exist in the way you think it did in the old days, either. It's just that the lack of it didn't touch your life as profoundly before as it did mine.

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 01 Jun 01 - 03:07 AM

CarolC, Dave simply said that that was when HE realized, etc., etc., not that the event happened world-wide at that moment. I think all of us have reached that epiphany at one time or another--yours was, perhaps, earlier than Dave's; and just possibly later than someone else's...I have a few years on you, for one.

What we're all forgetting, IMO, in our zeal to defend/attack/converse with/convince each other, is that the phrase "common sense" is and always has been an oxymoron--there's nothing "common" (or ordinary, thanks Amos) about "common sense". (Synonyms per my Thesaurus are: rational, reasonable, sound, coherent, consistent. Antonyms: illogical, irrational, unreasonable, specious, unsound, unfounded.)

Apply some of those adjectives of your own choice to any front-page newspaper article or any evening news TV show. Think about it.

Now I'm going to exercise some of that uncommon commodity and go elsewhere and learn a new song.

Lin

Lin

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Jun 01 - 03:18 AM

Sorry Lin in Kansas. I don't get that from the discussion that preceded my post.

The operative word being 'died', as opposed to 'never existed'. As much as I respect and admire Dave (tam) as a person and fellow Mudcatter, I find myself disagreeing pretty strongly with the basic premise that common sense is any more or less evident now than it was before.

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 01 Jun 01 - 07:57 AM

That's my feeling too, Carol. Common sense didn't die, because it never really existed (outside of the realm of nostalgia, anyway). It seems to be human nature that we fondly recall the "good old days," when people treated each other fairly, we all had our priorities straight, and "common sense" guided human behavior. It's a pleasant fairy tale, nothing more.

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: LR Mole
Date: 01 Jun 01 - 10:15 AM

Yeah. I think "common" may have been a way of distinguishing it from "taught" or "trained"-- something like "natural" or"uncorrupted". The implication that it's widely evident or available may not have been meant. As I understand it, it's more like the capacity for useful curiosity, which may be too nebulous to teach, or certainly to test anyone for.

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 01 Jun 01 - 10:53 AM

When I left school (sixteen) with very low grades Logarithms was a birth control method for trees, and calculus grew on your teeth if you didn't brush em. Like you I too have a learning disability, and suffered huniliation and physical abuse from the "System" (and still do) Learning is a very personal accomplishment, I learned despite the System. I was promoted as the third navigating officer of a foreign going merchant ship when I was nineteen. I have never been to college or university full time, except the hard school of the North Atlantic Ocean. Now I work with extremely well educated professionals. Part of my work is to teach people who already graduated university, some of the more practical aspects of my speciality. I appologise if my post has struck a nerve in CarolC and Whistle Stop those who know me would tell you it is never my intention to upset an individual on this forum. My policy is never ridicule or humiliate my students, perhaps thats why I am in demand as an instructor. CarolC you have obviously mastered your difficulty and seem to be a very pleasant and articulate person "Experto Credite" ("credit one who has proven") Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 01 Jun 01 - 12:57 PM

Dave, you certainly didn't upset me -- I was just musing on the topic of your original posting, making a point (in my usual labored fashion) that the meaning of "common sense" is in the eye of the beholder, and that nostalgia isn't a very accurate lens through which to view the past. Sorry if I seemed to take it personally, but in fact I quite enjoyed what you posted.

I also left school at 16 with very low grades, and now work with very well-educated professionals. In my opinion, experience is still the best teacher -- and given that, I have to think you're a pretty well-educated man. Regards,

Whistle Stop

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Jun 01 - 01:03 PM

Thanks Dave. One of the things about you that I most admire is your unfailing graciousness.

Carol

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Jun 01 - 01:34 PM

RichM posted: "We are in the midst of a great change in Western civilization; Community values had greater importance in previous generations. Now the individual and his(her)rights are supreme."

It does appear that way, but in some respects I think the opposite has in fact happened as the population has grown much larger and technology has become a dominant factor in people's lives.

I have the impression that the modern individual is in many ways profoundly less free nowadays than in centuries past. People are more rushed, and often under more stress, because of how technology intrudes on and complicates their lives.

Consider the telephone, for example...constantly allowing people to intrude upon your private space. Consider the TV, inanely chattering away at people all day long...for the specific purpose of selling them things that they do not need.

Consider the problem of finding a place to park, and of avoiding getting a parking ticket because you got back to the meter 5 minutes too late, and of getting stuck in traffic jams as you commute to work.

I think all this blah, blah about the rights of the individual is a sort of camouflage to conceal the fact that most people are more hemmed in and more trapped in lives of complication and desperation than they have possibly ever been before in history.

Traditional small businesses, which expressed themselves in a free and unique manner are being crowded out by characterless malls filled with the same damn chain stores you see everywhere else. Is that individual freedom? Nope. It's freedom for giant corporations.

What I see around me is not the development of individual freedoms in TRUTH, but the spreading of mass conformity, masquerading as freedom of choice.

Brave New World, indeed.

It was a lot freer here 100 years ago, and a whole lot freer 500 years ago.

Not that I'm suggesting we have not improved life in many areas, at the same time...we have. but I don't like what I see happening in the name of "freedom of choice". It's mostly a just gambit to increase someone's profit line. Someone BIG, I might add.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Jun 01 - 01:39 PM

AAAARGH! I meant to say "just a gambit", not "a just gambit". Yikes! Now I know how Dubya must feel after he gets a second look at some of the things he's been quoted as saying! (grin!)

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: mousethief
Date: 01 Jun 01 - 01:51 PM

Nah, he doesn't notice it the second time either.

Alex

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 01 Jun 01 - 02:47 PM

A young boy was suspended from school for pointing a school lunch breaded chicken stick at a classmate and saying "Bang" Instead of the teacher taking him to one side, and explaining that due to recent incidents of high school violence such gestures are frightening, the kid was suspended (mind you Cafeteria food could be considered a dangerous weapon *BSG*) The most popular excuse you hear from people today is "I just dont have enough time" I watched a lady in front of me try to drink a coffee, talk on the cellphone, and do her makeup at a stop light yesterday; and said to myself, there is really no hope for us as a species! As stated at the begining of the thread "Common Sense is also the sense that tells us the world is flat" *BSG* Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Jun 01 - 04:28 PM

Well, the world is more or less flat for all practical purposes from the point of view of a biped moving on its own feet...

It's only when you are flying or navigating long distances by water that the gradual roundness of the Earth becomes a significant factor.

Likewise, it doesn't really matter a whole lot if you think the sun rotates around the Earth until you begin to reach the ability to travel in space.

However, it is interesting, of course.

I just bet there are some similar "common sense" assumptions we are all taking for granted right now, and which will prove to be equally wrong.

People in some distant future will laugh at us for being so superstitious and poorly informed.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Jun 01 - 08:28 PM

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen Albert Einstein.

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: flattop
Date: 02 Jun 01 - 12:47 AM

Isn't it one of your common senses that lets you smell the bullshit when you are down in the common contemplating the Prisoners' Dilemma?

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 02 Jun 01 - 10:04 AM

I prefer the picture of a little boy running around in a pile of horseshit laughing "because with all this horseshit around, there's gotta be a pony somewhere here, and I'm gonna find him" Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Jun 01 - 06:25 PM

flattop - Please enlighten me...what is the "Prisoners' Dilemma"? It's a reference I am unfamiliar with. Seriously.

Also, why must it always be "bullshit"? There are innumerable creatures other than male bovines which are capable of producing excrement (note the "horseshit" in the post immediately above/a slight variation on the theme).

I do think that a society that constantly uses the term "bullshit" or "horseshit", where another society might have used terms like: foolishness, nonsense, inaccurate information, lies, utter balderdash, claptrap etc....is a society in the throes of some form of cultural devolution.

Needless to say...

The same goes for a society that uses terms like "kick ass" or "kick butt" whereas another might have used phrases more like "win", "triumph over" or "defeat".

Pathetic is what it is...not that my complaining about it is going to change anything. I am just observing the decline of human dignity and commenting upon it. Thanks, Hollywood.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Jun 01 - 08:18 PM

You're right, there Little Hawk. It's people trying to sound tough and down to earth, but at the same time wanting to play it safe and not offend the wrong people, so they stick to a few licensed "toughie" words. Polticians being among the worst offenders.

The thing is, even if you can't beat them, there's no need to join them.

As for the substance itself, horseshit is actually relatively innoffensive stuff to be around (so long as you've had a tetanus injection). With cattle it gets a bit messier, but not too bad. The worst stuff I believe is from carnivores such as dogs and cats and omnivores like humans and pigs.

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Jun 01 - 08:36 PM

Yes indeed. I believe pig manure is the absolute worst.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Jun 01 - 08:49 PM

I suspect that human output can be even worse. Perhaps we should give the bulls a rest and say instead "What you are saying is just a load of night soil." Sounds innocuous, but is highly insulting. That's a good combination...

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: flattop
Date: 03 Jun 01 - 11:49 AM

The Prisoners' Dilemma theory was developed about a common area in a town in England, perhaps Oxford, where local people had the right to graze their cattle. The people grazed too many cattle on the common and destroyed the land for everyone in the community. One smart academic studied the people in the area (not the cattle) and found that the people shared similar attitudes.

The general attitude went something like this. If my neighbours don't put too many cows on the common, I will get away with a few extra cows and squeese out a bit more milk. If my neighbours graze too many cows, I will lose if I don't also graze extra cows. So everyone put too many cattle on the land and destroyed it. (Isn't human intelligence wise and wonderful?) They were prisoners of their dilemma which became known as the Prisoners' Dilemma.

Bullshit is almost appropriate in my message above as it is for most of my writing. Cowshit would be more precise. If everyone brought a young bull to the commons, the bulls would probablly spend a lot of time banging their heads together, as young males are inclined to do.

I will try to increase the excremental variety in my vocabulary. Thanks for the bovine bowel movement tips boys.

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: GUEST,CarolC, at Leisure World
Date: 03 Jun 01 - 01:20 PM

Bullshit is a very good word. Use it all the time, myself. It's not what you say that matters, it's how you say it.

With words like bullshit, you have to say it with *elegance*

Subject: RE: BS: OBITUARY
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Jun 01 - 02:30 PM

Right...I'm surprised we haven't heard from Spaw on this, as I think he could deliver the definitive wrap-up on this bovine excrement subject. :-) - LH