Common Sense or th Obvious

Common Sense or the Obvious ©

By Michael Casey

I just read that the Oxford Dons were not very impressed by the students, no common sense. I should declare an interest straight away, one of my brothers went to Oxford and another to Cambridge. As a matter of fact our little cluster of streets in inner city Birmingham had 4 Oxbridge and 2 PhDs. Four families all going to the same Mass on Sundays. I won’t claim going to Mass at our local church makes you clever, staying up very late and hitting the books, that is the really important thing.

Logic does help you along the learning path, my old school friend, he’s a PhD by the way, he used to say the “Casey Logic”, to be honest I cannot remember what he was on about, it maybe 45 years ago. I do know that a lot of clever people have no common sense. They have spent too much time with their noses in books, or maybe making spliffs.

Logic helps you plan and organise what you are doing. The Augustinian way  helps too, our old priest Fr.George was a great one for the Augustinian way, he was at the Augustinian church in Harborne after all. Fr.George had a tremendous accent, the deepest Brummie you could possibly imagine, he used to work on the track at the car factory, he used to go up Broad St at the weekends before the call came. Now what Fr.George used to say was that you have to put your feet in others' shoes, you have to have 360degrees of knowledge. Modern companies have 360 degree appraisals, so when you are looking at a problem you must look from every angle, just as staff are assessed by their bosses as well as their co-workers.

If all you do is read the formula then you’ll only have one dimension, you’ll have the answer but no understanding, and the answer may not be the answer after all. When I worked in a hotel people could be busy chatting in the foyer while their toddler could get his head trapped and hit by the revolving door, so obviously I was their eyes while they were chatting. If you have time to chat in a sales job you do not look at who you are talking to, you can actually stand back to back then between you the full 360degrees of potential customers is covered. It’s logical its common sense, basic common sense.

So common sense is what parents have while their kids don’t think of danger, or potential danger, my girls said I was like Mr Brown in Paddington, I did see some similarities but without parents watching kids do walk straight into traffic. You don’t use your phone as you are crossing the road, you do look both ways before you cross the road. You do wear a warm coat in winter, though fashion and young girls say otherwise. You don’t use your phone while you are driving either, though pigs will fly before this will happen.

Logic should be taught in all schools, a couple of hours may be enough. Before we were let loose on the guests at CPNEC back in 2002 we had training, Anthony did actually ask me had I read his notes or a book beforehand, as to me a lot was obvious, it was common sense. Basically its STOP and THINK, but getting teenagers to do that is another matter entirely.

In Coding as they call it nowadays there are IF/THEN options, or if you are going to the bar you get cheese and onion crisps as that’s what you always have, so knowledge helps with choices. If your friend had a crisps allergy then you buy nuts instead, or if your friend does not drink alcohol then you buy him a whisky, a 40 year old whisky, well that’d be what my friend would expect.

Knowledge helps with choices, you don’t give a bacon sandwich to a Muslim or a Jew or Beef to a Hindu. If you were feeding me everything would be ok, though this year post-operation I have given up meat. So you have to do your research, it’s logical to do research. Event planners  find out what is needed and then serve that. If you are selling your house you get rid of all the tat that you may like, you turn your home into Ikea land, then it’ll sell, otherwise it’ll stay on the market for years. Again put yourself in the buyers’ shoes, is this tat or is it neutral. Neutral sells, tat such as a space mural in purple with matching carpet means your house will stay on the market, and yes I really did see that in one house I looked at.

Think before you act, I need to move that big big box, so do you just lift it and hurt your back? No you nudge it with your foot, or push against a corner to estimate how heavy it really is. Then get a trolley and some help if you need it. Planning your route so you don’t have to carry the item for a second longer than you need, and so that you avoid blocking off any area. A golfer will do a practice shot before he takes the real one, ditto with anything you are thinking of doing. What are the consequences of your actions, action and reaction as they say in science.

Common sense can be taught, it can be learnt, you need to sit down and have the teacher explain the worth of it. It can be boring for the teacher to have to explain it to dullards, but once learnt it is a skill for life, just as important as leaning the Times Tables when you are 8. Dirk Borgarde when he was growing up used to play a game with his parents, the look in the window game. Then he had to turn his back on the window and try and remember what he had seen, years later he was a photographic interpreter, because he was observant.

Think for 5 seconds before you take any action, that’s the key, sadly some people think being quick is classy, when they just fall on their ass. What matters is the result, the tortoise will always beat the hare, because the tortoise is logical.