(The older generation of) people have been moaning about the "death of common sense" ever since the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. They wrote similar heated complaints about the rise of "his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone
Else Is To Blame, and I'm A Victim" on the walls of ancient Egypt, Assyria, Greece, China, Constantinople, Tenochtitlan, and Rome.

It's a frustrated rant that is as old as humanity themselves and it expresses the angst, frustration, and often ill-concealed bitterness of people whose days of youth and adventure are in most cases behind them, and who are constantly irritated by the fact that things just "aren't what they used to be". Things have never have been what they used to be, and they never will. ;-) That's life.

But ..."Oh, God, it's such a drag! The world is so fucked up now, and no one takes responsibility! Oh dear. If I only had a rocket launcher, I'd make them take responsibility, damn right I would. Grrr!" (the sound of teeth grinding)

You never hear whiny self-righteous reactionary crap like that from the young people, because they suffer from a very different form of angst, the angst of the young, hungry, often insecure and impatient...so from them you instead hear a load of whiny crap about how the old people (their parents) fucked the whole world up so badly that now a young person has 8 strikes against him and it's all going to hell.

Now here's the ironical part of it all. On the one hand, they are both about half right (and always haved been). That's because common sense is always imperilled, in any human culture, at any time, because people have a weird way of doing things that are nonsensical. They always have done so. They always will. Sometimes it's because of politics, sometimes religion, sometimes sex, sometimes money, sometimes just plain goofy ideas and archaic customs that are taken as gospel, but you can count on it that common sense will take a beating in any society at any time.

And on the other hand, they're both half bloody well wrong too. Why? Because they've both got a bad whiny flipping attitude about it, they're puffed up with righteous fury about it (as if they could see through it all, but the "society" around them can't), and they think it's all the fault of "those damn people", whoever "those damn people" are (liberals? conservatives? businessmen? lawyers? politicians? men? women? kids? old people? football fans? hairstylists? the poor? the rich? the middle class?), and they won't shut up about it and find a way to enjoy their lives instead and stop blaming others for everything. Nope. They'll just whine and rant and carp and complain about how bad everything has gone.

I predict to you that this ancient announcement of the demise of common sense will be repeated frequently in the years to come, and again in the next century, and again a thousand years hence, so when you reincarnate, expect to see it again soon. You may even be the one who posts it the next time. ;-) You may also be the one who objects to it because it's a tired old rant that's been heard too many times already....that's what I have chosen to do this time.   

Either way, you'll get to bitch some more about the people who bug you and you'll have some more fun expressing yourself and airing your frustrations for all to hear. That's the up side. The downside is...it will just plain piss off the various people who instinctively decide to swing the other way on it.

Kind of like politics that way...