Common sense: once fairly common, today quite rare
Of all the elements of today’s culture versus what I observed a generation ago, I believe the most disparate is in the area of common sense. While this element used to be fairly common, today it seems to be quite rare.
It is only by experience that we gradually acquire this ingredient. For me, this acquisition process was greatly accelerated during the several years I spent on our farm. The early lessons learned in that experience have served me well in all the experience I’ve been involved with since.
It now occurs to me the reason for the rarity of common sense today is tied to the decline of the yeoman farmer in our culture.
Where most people fell into this category in our early republic, the mechanization of agriculture has caused the near disappearance of this once common class of worker and with it, the opportunity to learn a broad range of knowledge: not the academic knowledge learned in urban schools today, but hands on, applied and practical knowledge that once was learned in rural areas across the country. Apprenticeship programs used to pass knowledge from one generation to the next.
Adam Smith’s division of labor concept has also contributed, I believe, to the decline of general knowledge for the worker. By dividing work into narrow categories, the worker becomes expert at his particular job, but ignorant of the overall process.
By breaking labor down into precise classes, unions have also essentially destroyed the “jack of all trades” idea. More than anyone I’ve ever known, my father was the quintessential jack of all trades.
At various times in his life he was a farmer, truck operator, carpenter, inventor, electrician, dam construction foreman, cabinet maker, toy maker, mason, shipyard foreman, building superintendent, mechanic, rancher, blacksmith, architect, logger, post and pole peeling machine fabricator, machinist, general fabricator, hydraulic engineer, investor and businessman.
The rest of the world presented a much easier sell for socialism. They lacked the fierce independence and self reliant qualities that enabled our fathers to build the greatest nation in all of history. But even my father (the most independent and self reliant person I’ve known or read of) was persuaded to accept Social Security.
Once this first step was taken, the rest of socialism was given legitimacy. Today the concept of collectivism is ubiquitous throughout our culture. Unions, tenure, affirmative action, food stamps, Obamacare, subsidy, class action lawsuits: all are forms of collectivism.
The rights and responsibilities of the individual are in great decline in our nation and the results of this are predictable and ominous.
- Bil Payne, Libby