Uncommon Sense

Talking to people I’ve discovered many tend to downplay intuition. Why bother worrying about it right? "Oh, it's just some subconscious thing. Whatever." Functionally, this does work in the short term, but philosophical questions persist because certain thoughts persist. Hunches. Unusual feelings, they casually nod in a particular direction.

To me intuition seems to underlie creativity, memory, everything. It is the tether to the unconscious and the subconscious below. A distinct mental component, and for all our advancements, we still don’t know that much about this strange, powerful place. We acknowledge it scientifically, but we don’t know it personally. I mean, we never finished mapping--which is a shame, really.

Do you find it odd, sitting on your bed, waking up? What just happened there? This is a third of our lives.

We cruise around, a conscious observer to some linear attention span, but the unconscious mind takes it all in without bias. It’s all there. To enter the unconscious is to enter the entirety of your life. Is there even a past or future in this place? One would hope this to be not inferior or irrelevant, but the second half of the human experience. Complete, holistic; the lines between time up here. The difference between knowledge and information, learning and understanding. Between personal formation, and in-formation.

The world today surfs the crest of potential manufactured. The amount of raw data which now exists in autopoesis is staggering to what has come previous, and still continues to grow rapidly. This is the age of information, surely, but quickly overlooked is what it has done to us, still stumbling near the darkened cave of ignorance. We sometimes act as if we didn’t just find the exit. We have watched the (sub)cultures of the world unite, transforming with each other, but a subversive nihilism seemed to blossom. Where people once felt constrained by the tradition and politics of the locality, modernity brought an exit to anywhere else: the global view. We filled the gaps, but it seems that regional ethical systems, while arguably faulty, were replaced with a lack of morality at all--a sort of go with the flow hedonism. We’re all famous now. Songbirds.

Here we are, connected so well.

What I want to talk about is common sense, but more importantly is our sense; where we want to go as a species. Historically, the windows of opportunity which lead to peace and abundance often close long before the coming nightfall. While it is still light out. I do not mean to sound like sound epic orator, but we’re all here--a global system, self aware--and if we mess it up, future generations will never forgive us. To climb so close to heaven, only to have drunken daddy crash the car on the family trip.

So I propose we just look at the basics here--the general day to day, what's up, who won the game? you’re late for work type stuff--because there is something I don’t understand. Why does this part take so much priority? I mean I love joking around and keeping things light, but this is a big part of life and we rest on it--as much as sleep. Now look at the logical structure underneath the everyday: common sense. Where one is told to use some common sense they are confronted by a statement which exists outside of self. Some sort of communal logic stall frequented by all. It works in theory, but is often clogged or gross. Sometimes someone tells me to use some common sense and it feels like they just dropped a turd for a trump card. The crowd gasps. Why abandon your own developed view if you think it is logically sound? For the collective? Are they right? Remember that people go to school to escape common sense, and all new ideas are nonconformist. Sometimes it’s just bad news. This useful illusion is so real a gatekeeper of knowledge. It is often a hand to the mould of the social mind. How much of our culture still rests on common sense? How much of science, even? Alphabet news, iconic ideologies; some things by their very nature point to common by design.

We see such an emphasis on the external world, but what of the inner world? That intuitive guidance is something some of the accomplished people often swear by. The ones who seem to just live in the right spot. It is perhaps the birthplace of grace.

“How did I make my millions? Just trusted my gut.”
“I dunno, when I play I get into this zone where it’s like I’m not even thinking.”
“All good art is familiar.”
“When I dance I feel everything.”

Most accept this force because most seem to feel it. It persists. Just like those odd thoughts we have from time to time. Urges, curiosities, the hunches that lead some into detective work, or deeper into the scale of possibility, perhaps some all-out clairvoyance, an arbiter of the veil.

I guess my point is that when we look around in apathy, thinking that all of our problems are so large, and complex, I have the feeling that they scatter like darkness at sunrise as we slip into sleep and into our personal worlds. Maybe we know all the answers to that which trouble us already? Maybe it’s all there? There is always the possibility that we’ve just been looking in all the wrong direction. It’s funny: some people claim that the needy and easily manipulated should ‘wake up’ to the various power eventualities, but really we need to go down. Down. Further, to the planet whereupon stands the God of War. In this place we are the supreme being.