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Not so Common: Common Sense

I've been thinking about this idea of a thing called "common sense." I've been accused of being too full of common sense. But really I'm not sure how that's possible. I think common sense is or should be doing what's right in the situation (i.e. I'm hungry to I get food. I used the last of the toilet paper so I get a new roll out). But the more people I interact with I'm fairly certain that common sense is dying from American culture today. As an example I offer this phone call I got from a co-worker. "The van is on E but the orange light isn't on yet. Do I have enough gas to get to where I'm going or should I put gas in the van? I didn't know since the orange light wasn't on." I know that this person drives to and from work every day in her own personal vehicle and has driven the work van many times. I would like to assume that this person doesn't drive until she is out of gas because that's one hefty tow bill she's creating. Another example is when I get to work I check all of my clients. They're adults and they get dressed in the mornings in clothes for the day. Repeatedly I find that either some or all of my clients do not have pants on. All of my clients are not able to dress/undress themselves so they were helped. Common sense would say that if you take off someone's pants you put them back on but nope. This is just plain stupid folks. Common sense should kick in and say before you are out of gas in another 20 miles that you need to put gas in the van but instead lets call and ask. It makes me concerned that this seems to be a growing trend in my experiences of interacting with people. Who is responsible for teaching common sense? How do we fix this as a society? Do we need to start having common sense classes for people of all ages? I pray that we can find an answer for this or there are going to be a lot of vehicles on the side of the road with no gas and lots of people walking around without pants on. That scares me.

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