stone savage

zeitgeist: late 1700s
ortgeist : The British Colonies known as “America”

If I try hard enough, I can still hear my mother - muttering under her breath as she often did - that I have “no common sense". How was I supposed to know, at the age of 7, that the colder water from the Sparklett’s water dispenser wasn’t any more effective at putting out my small backyard fire than water from the tap? Hrmph!

To this day, it is often said about me that I am plenty “book-smart” but I have no “street smarts"… which is just a way for my friends to chide me about how incredibly intelligent I can be at times, while also being incredibly naive (aka “stupid"). I don’t mind that they chide me; I’ve grown used to it over the years. In some ways, I suppose it’s true that I rather take pride in it.

[More:]

You see, I like being able to explain string theory to my befuddled friends, while blinking rapidly at their consternation over my inability to remember where I put my car keys. I’m aware that it’s not funny to them - but I take satisfaction in it nonetheless.

I shouldn’t wonder, then, that our entire country has been running free of common sense for a little over 200 hundred years now. Obviously our country is taking some sick amount of pleasure in acting like it’s stupid.

Back in the day - in January of 1776 to be exact - a small and unobtrusive anonymous pamphlet, filled with lots of big words - and even bigger ideas - hit the streets. Within a month it was amended with lots of new big words and a few more big ideas.

It sold 600,000 copies (in a population of just 3 million people), and became the foremost document from which Thomas Jefferson pulled, along with the writings of John Locke, to form the Declaration of Independence.

That pamphlet was entitled Common Sense. The author, anonymous at the publication of the pamphlet, was later found to be none other than Thomas Paine.

Paine started out his amended pamphlet by stating: “PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”

If you reflect long enough on that passage, you might come to the same realization that I have. What realization, you ask? This one: not only does time indeed make more converts than reason, but reason has a much more difficult time of keeping its converts than does time.

While the aim of the pamphlet was to encourage citizens to enact a government that was not oppressive to society - I find a wealth of thought-provocation in just the preamble to the pamphlet!

• In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves.
• Yet it may not be unnecessary to say, That he [the author] is unconnected with any Party, and under no sort of Influence public or private, but the influence of reason and principle.

I don’t know about you, but I think those are some pretty tremendous statements - especially when you consider how important this pamphlet became to the philosophical approach taken by our country’s founders. Yet, even more interesting to me, is what goes through my mind as I flip on the nightly news and innundate myself with media blitz during this election year.

What would happen if candidates for our elected offices (from local to federal) decided to “avoid everything personal” while committing themselves to only the “influence of reason and principle"? Can you even imagine what a revolution that would be in American politics?

Gone would be the Kerry-Edwards pathetic need to appeal to the Moral Majority. Gone would be the Bush-Cheney infuriating deprecation to Big Industry. Gone would be the smear campaigns, the mud-slinging, and all the reasons we shouldn’t vote for “[insert candidate here]".

Indeed, gone would be everything so many people detest about politics and the vying for public office. What would we have, instead? We’d have some folks standing up and talking about what they honestly believe, how it honestly makes sense, and what that honestly means to every citizen within the “Big Picture” of American politics.

I’m not sure America could handle that sort of honesty today… where reason won her converts to begin this country so long ago, it seems she’s lost them to the whimsical sands of time. We’ve come full-circle in some ways, and by my count I think we’re setting ourselves up to cause Boston Harbor yet another violation.

I wonder if we should use Starbuck’s coffee this time - instead of tea. It probably would dilute about the same, and it would definitely make a better statement, especially if we dump it into a giant lake of bottled-water.

Hrm. On second thought, I think my mother was right - maybe common sense isn’t so common, after all.

Now, if I could only remember where I set my car keys…

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