My previous post What is Theory? What is Commonsense? speaks of how to convince people when they see something as theory and not as commonsense.
But what if they find the commonsense threatening? Can you still make them see your commonsense view?
Professor Felipe Monteiro says it accurately in a Knowledge@Wharton article, although in a different context, “You’re more likely to act on opportunities that confirm what you’re doing rather than opportunities that challenge what you’re doing.”
The same applies to accepting “commonsense”. People are more likely to accept your commonsense view if it confirms rather than challenges what they’re doing.
When People find Commonsense Threatening, they find it in their best interest to discard the commonsense. Or worse still, attack you for bringing it to their notice and forcing them to respond.
In this context, how are we likely to respond in the following situations –
- When acceptance means loss of face to one’s own self and to the world? And giving up the current habit is tough work? Like addicts
- When there is fear of peer pressure? Like teenagers
- At work when it threatens how we judge ourselves? Or how others judge us and our work? When the truth places the burden of new action on us, making our current work meaningless.
- When it is diametrically opposite to our beliefs? And our culture?Like widow remarriage propagated in 19th century India by Raja Ram Mohan Roy and opposed by orthodox brahmins.
- When it threatens the primacy of our rule? Like when Galileo said the earth moved around the sun and brought the Vatican inquisition upon himself.
With responses ranging from the difficult-to-get-across to discarding, censorship and physical and mental harm, odds are that if you encounter any of the above situations, it’s unlikely that your commonsense view would be accepted.
Because it is threatening. And most of us would fight tooth and nail not to accept it. Because it would mean admitting that our value system has been wrong. That we need to take action now. That we need to step down from our pedestal. That our followers might desert us, leaving us to nothingness and penury. That our work, prestige, money is at stake – All the things that have been giving meaning to our life.
Who would willingly want to give up all that?
So how does one transmit commonsense with success?
Presenting the facts in bite-sized pieces continuously. Showing the good of it through examples. Listening to their point of view to understand rather than refute them. This shows us the chinks through which our arguments can pass through. When everything fails, to be able to live with the final satisfaction of having done our job of communicating.
It takes patience, determination and consistency to make a dent. Even then, some kinds of acceptance come only with a change of guard and a change of generation – people who aren’t threatened by this truth; people who’ve had the chance to play it around in their minds and evaluate it without feeling threatened – Widow remarriage today is not the banned ideal it was in the earlier centuries; and the Church did accept Galileo’s observations, even if it was over 350 years after the inquisition, long after the inquisition itself had lost its meaning.
But why bother at all?
- Because, every day of our lives, we are here to make a better life for ourselves and for others.
- Because in the give and take of life, you need to carry people along with you. You cannot give up on your people.
- Because it helps you too – even if there isn’t a successful result. It let’s you step back and see their point of view. It can build humility in you if you let it, teaching you about the fear, anger and self-protection that people hang on to.
- It can teach you to listen with humility when others’ commonsense threatens you.
It helps you remain patient. ‘Cause now you know you have to look for the crack in the wall that you can chip away at – until you get a hole big enough for you to crawl through. Sometimes you can’t, nevertheless you would’ve made a hole – one that someone else will begin to chip at.
Because, truth, ultimately has a way of making its way to the front.
Poetry in Life 
People choose to ignore what goes against our train of thought. Basically we hate to admit we’re wrong, even when what’s right is staring us in the face. Call it pride or ignorance.
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Nicely explained !!:) Some parts of your post remind me of a quote by Amos Oz –
“Whenever there is a clash between right and right, a value higher than right must prevail.. and that value is life itself.”
In personal stand-offs, or even societal bias, the lines between common-sense and a point of view are quite blurred, and what is ‘sense’ to one person is just a difference in perspective- Effective communication of perspectives is a two-way process, according to me 🙂
On an aside.. Lack of widow remarriage (what’s the word for it ?!)- as an institution, did it just come about due to a shared community perception that it was the ‘right’ or ‘commonsense’ thing to do, at one point?
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Women were held in high esteem and were learned during the vedic times – invariably this brings up references to learned women like Gargi, Maitreyi, etc. The restrictions began later. Frankly, I’m not sure whether to associate all restrictions on women – and that includes practices other than those of widow remarriage – to foreign invaders, particularly the moguls. While I cannot see a valid reason why widow remarriage should be caused by this, the mogul invasions do seem to be the beginning of child marriage, sati, purdah etc., essentially to protect the women from these invaders.
Was there a case of fewer men with all the wars going on? And hence a larger than normal number of widowed women who became a threat to the unmarried girls? I’m not sure of this, but widowed women do seem to have been viewed as a threat to married women and hence the practice of tonsuring the head, wearing whites, spending their time serving God, being true to one man in life, became the norm.
My view is that once these practices began, it was only a matter of time before women were considered the weaker folk, kept inside the home, their movements and learning restricted and widow remarriage became one more thing on the long list.
Once they began, their institutionalization or hardening as a practice was to be expected – as natural a progression as the caste system had taken. They continued far beyond the point where they might have served some valid purpose in the first place. After that, it’s a matter of the class with the upper hand not wanting a change in the status quo, nor even knowing a different world – a world where women weren’t the weaker gender.
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