Makes Perfect Sense Right?

Today's Marketing Cookie is about common sense, which for some seems to be unfamiliar, unusual, and even uncommon.

What is common sense? Do you have it? If so, do you remember when or where you first learned it?

Albert Einstein once said, "Common sense is a collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." When you think through his wise words, you'll realize it's quite true. We learn most of what is "acceptable" to say, the "normal" way to stand, run, and play in the schoolyard. If someone acts, speaks, or dresses differently from what is "common," they are filed away, beaten up, or cast off as strange or weird. The "common sense" we learn in life is largely based on the responses we receive for who we are. The most rewarding responses we got in those formative years were usually for the times when we fell in line with the common, popular, and mainstream thinking.

Before the nineteenth amendment was signed in 1920, women were not considered equal to men and were prohibited from the privilege of voting. It would be considered counterintuitive and against "common sense" to think of women as capable of voting. Makes perfect sense, right?

Before the thirteenth amendment was signed in 1865, it was considered perfectly reasonable to capture, buy, sell, breed, and harvest people as slaves based solely on their color. James Madison, the father of our Constitution and the celebrated author of the American Bill of Rights, was among the largest slave owners. He, like George Washington and the more than a dozen presidents who would follow him, were upholders and believers in the "common sense" of their day. Makes perfect sense, right?

What then shall we think about the "common sense" thinking of today? It has long been common sense that every citizen should own and carry a loaded gun to reduce shootings. It has long been considered common sense that only some Americans should be allowed to get married. What else have you been taught as "common sense"? Is common sense really all the sense there is, as today's fortune suggests?

I grew up in Whitinsville, Massachusetts, a quiet village established by Dutch settlers. Ironically, Whitinsville was also a Caucasian community. As a result, I hadn't met any African Americans until my first day of college. When I first walked into my new dorm room, a young African American man and his parents were helping him unpack his belongings and set up his half of the room. I introduced myself and set my suitcase down on the bed.

Just then, the resident assistant walked into the room and declared that a mistake had been made in the room assignments. He requested that I pack up my things and move to a different room. A short time later, a white kid walked into the room where I sat alone for a time and was introduced to me as my new roommate. Later in the day, it was explained to me that because of my name, "Myles," the administration had accidentally thought I was black, and had incorrectly placed me with the wrong roommate.

Makes perfect sense, right?

Apparently, the "common sense" thing to do was to sort and separate college students by their color. Somehow, the only prejudices I had acquired by age eighteen, as Einstein suggests, had to do with "normal" hairstyles, the "right" clothes to wear, and the "acceptable" way to act. My "common sense" training absolutely excluded what to think about color. Today's fortune suggests that, "If a man has common sense, he has all the sense there is." I, for one, am glad I missed this particular lesson until I had reached an age to know it didn't make sense at all.