Common Sense and (Northern) Composure

a December duet

1. Common Sense

A recent exchange on a Substack comments thread addressed the perils of researching competing narratives (e.g., the Covid or Climate Change controversies), where the discerning citizen must evaluate competing evidence of so-called experts, data from science, and political agendas. In the end, I concluded our bottom line must be common sense.

Common sense is not to be confused with “conventional wisdom,” arising from ignorance reinforced by stale tradition; nor with “official consensus,” too often manufactured or presented to preempt further debate or skepticism.

Common sense (as I would prefer to reclaim it) represents a deeper level of intuition, intrinsic to our nature before and beneath its superficial indoctrination to second- and third-hand “facts” and theories about what is true.

‘The postmodern news consumer has to build mental Excel sheets, first making lists of claims (Providence shooter is a guy from Wisconsin, Nick Reiner is trans, the Bondi hero was really a Christian), then sorting them into sourced and unsourced categories, and finally waiting to see in which side of the TRUE/BULLSHIT divide to dump the final check mark. The number of checks in the latter column seems to get bigger with each of these horrors.’ —Matt Taibbi

Is there really a plague afoot, and are the measures introduced to test and cure it actually safe and effective? Is the climate really going to kill us all if we don’t stop breathing, driving cars, and eating meat? Is Trump a hero or villain? Was Biden a doddering basket case, Obama a bona fide knight for Change, George Bush a savior from the evil Arabs?

These and a thousand more propositions are thrown at us like wet spaghetti at drywall, to see what sticks. What do we choose to absorb, or wear on our sleeve as truth? Is it what our parents taught us to believe, and their parents before them? What our elementary and high school teachers and coaches drilled into our malleable brains, and the priests and gurus in their turn? What of our beloved peers, and the rebels we have known and loved, demanding alternative truths, new leaders, new faiths, while burning the old ones down?

Do we hold true to our inner light, or revelations from walking in nature? Stick to the basics of life and livelihood, leaving abstract speculation to the dreamers and idlers, the mountebanks and ne’er-do-wells?

Around the coffee shop table, in barber shop and hair salon, bus station benches or across the aisle of the jet to Mexico, what wisdom passes from mouth to mouth like a mythical virus? What sense is distilled, or stimulated, or damped down, in the exchange of common communication? Do we take in everything at face value, and let the experts figure it out? Do we assume instead that we know everything, just because? Do we hope to get to the end of the research project to arrive at the grail of clean data, free of bias and controlling interest?

Questions and more questions, we do our best until it’s time to vote. Or not, as the case may be. There is always another solution, another truth, waiting over the horizon.

2. Northern Composure

Interior space, interior world. Stillness in a winter darkened room, as in the quiet hills beyond.

While the world rages, where does it rage? In what bubble of concentration, what corner of the mediasphere, ever shrinking yet ever louder shrieking, as its theatrical voice fades into the wings?

Countervailing voices rise and fall, like the waves of rain that pass by. In monochromatic mist, days slumber, or sidle by unannounced.

Space intrudes upon cloudy thoughts, dispersing moisture into clear dry air, electric heated, vitamin fortified, Wi-Fi infused, empty of urgency yet awaiting, ready.

Where is the story thread liable to lead, in a dark forest lacking wise wolves? Words are wanted, words to share: like music they spill unbidden, like waterfalls. Without judgement, the words come, just as the world comes: just as you and I do. Naked into this world, deserving nurture, protection, loving care.

The war games can be set aside. The council debates, fencing and sparring, lampooning and jousting, slinging epithets and ad hominems. Better to baste in the marinade, as Mooji would put it, of our true nature. Better to wait upon more sustainable fare, cooked in its own time, slow roasted in the sleeping volcano of our soul. Better to dance merrily when we can, if only in our dreams.

In mine I befriended a talking horse with roan coat, sinuous neck and blue eyes; recovered my stolen instruments by redreaming (Take 2); defused a demand to drive a guy to Kansas City, by waking up. Not that these accidental artifacts matter to anyone else, perhaps not even me. Though maybe Jung was right and our personal unconscious is a doorway to the collective unconscious, archetypes of us all.

As one man goes, so go we all… in the words of legendary footballer Ed Reed (paraphrased by his rookie listener, Raven Teddye Buchanan):

“It’s great motivation to go all-in with preparation and all-in every day and every moment to be ready on Sundays,” Buchanan said. “Football is the ultimate team sport and you have to rely on everyone. But at the end of the day, that starts with you as an individual and what you bring to the team. Once you take care of yourself, bring others along with you.”

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