I was thinking more about the Facebook ads from yesterday,
and this somehow integrated itself into a topic that Stephan and I have been
discussing for some time now: the death
of common sense.
That is to say, I don’t know if it’s even sporting to make
fun of people anymore for making ads that don’t make sense, or for being a
bonehead musician, or for driving around in a car with the alarm going off, or really, for doing anything that doesn’t make sense, because honestly, I
don’t think “common sense” is common anymore.
It saddens me to say this, but it looks like “thinking things all the
way through/ considering the consequences of your actions” is becoming the
exception rather than the norm.
This must be the case, otherwise how am I able to take
pictures like this one on such a very regular basis?
You wouldn’t think you would need to actually tell this guy
“Hey, this is not a good idea—that stack of slippery, plastic-wrapped
mattresses is too high, and one of them will undoubtedly fall off, causing an
accident,” but….here we are.
I can’t even begin to conceive of the sheer quantity of bad
decisions that led this person to be on the road. Sometimes I see things like this, and I
wonder—did this person not have parents to tell them, along the course of life “That will not work,” or “That
is a bad idea”? I wonder this all the
time, actually, when I see people with, for example, tattoos on their
faces. Really—no adult in your life
made it clear that it is generally NOT COOL to tattoo your face? My parents generally were very good at making me consider all the possible outcomes of my decisions, which I believe has served me well in life.
I know this makes me sound all old and not hip, but I also kind
of feel this way about that teacher who was recently in the news for losing her
job because she did porn at one point in her past. In case you’re curious, here’s a link to a
story about her and how she got fired from her job as a middle school teacher
and lost her appeal to get her job back.
The school board says she covered up her past (no pun intended, but
still funny), she says she’s trying to be a good example now for people who
have changed their lives, and, no lie, last month this very person/ subject
sparked a debate on my Facebook page that went on for 61 comments over several
days,. It was a very heated discussion
that involved opinions about discrimination, women’s empowerment, choices, the
whole nine.
I don’t usually like to
argue on the internet, nor do I care to host arguments, but I posted the
article because I was torn on the subject and I wanted to hear the varying
opinions of my smart friends, and I was not disappointed. Even after 61 comments, though, I keep going
back to this gut feeling that I have that this teacher simply lacks common
sense, because people with common sense know that choosing a life where they
make adult entertainment is going to limit their choices in the future, right?
RIGHT? Or, is this
another example of how common sense is just on the way out? I kind of feel like, if that woman wanted to
pay her way through school (or whatever she was paying for) by selling her
body, common sense should have told her that she could be a stripper, and no
one would have been the wiser. But, she
wasn’t a stripper, dude. She did
porn. PORN, which she could see was
being filmed, and everyone knows that what’s on film / the internet stays
around forever. I think she is trying to
have it both ways, and I’m just not buying it. I would even go so far as to wonder aloud– with common sense on the wane, do we need a person who clearly lacks this quality teaching in our public schools?
I know! I sound so
mean. Feel free to leave your comments
on “the sad state of common sense.”