Gesunder Menschenverstand

Dear common sense,

I’m addressing you in English, because my letter is based on something I heard, which took place in America. Thus I guessed that it would be best to use the English language, just in case you would like to forward it to your local branch over there.

So, why am I writing? Well, first of all let me say that I’ve always been one of your biggest fans and supporters. What you have done for mankind since its dawn can hardly ever be appropriately appreciated: Giving the first men the insight, that you need to socialise in order to survive or gently leading the great philosophers throughout history and pushing them into the right direction (such as Sokrates, Rousseau or Kant). Your influence on those great men and thereby trying to make our world a world worthwhile living in, can only be described as priceless.

Yet, there is something I don’t understand, especially when hearing stories like the one I would like to talk about. How exactly do you choose the ones you want to support and enlighten? And why is it that those who are supposed to own the lion’s share of what you are giving are most often those who seem to totally lack it? I mean, look at our world. Politicians, judges, religious men or leaders or, generally spoken, everyone in a leading position, wielding the power to make decisions which will influence or even dictate the lives of those under their control, are supposed to own and make use of common sense, but most of the time they simply don’t.

The only thing I can make up to somehow explain it is, that you are getting more and more overburdened due to the fact that the number of people is growing so fast. I mean, let’s face it. When this whole thing started you had to take care of some thousands? And nowadays it’s more than 6 billion people. And the growth rate is accelerating.

Well, that would be no problem at all, since you ARE common sense and thus you are the first one to tell you, that you need help. So I guess that you have done, what anyone owning common sense would have done if they were trying to run a, no, to run THE global player company in the world. You founded local branches and I’m sure that you have put in charge those who, according to common sense, were the best for the job. But nevertheless, somehow something screwed up and now I’m desperately trying to figure out what went wrong and how it can be fixed.

The only thing I can and want to imagine is that this whole thing is a systematic issue. You yourself simply cannot be everywhere in the world at the same time. Thus you founded local branches and established locums to run the business according to your vision. But obviously, those guys failed, though I don’t want to say that they were a bad choice right from the start. Nevertheless, it all finally came down to the point we’re at right now. Those locums made some faulty decisions and so men were put in charge who seem to lack common sense, which leads me to the final question:

Does common sense have common sense? Was everything you did really based on common sense or did you somehow degenerate and aren’t capable of doing your job properly any longer?

I really don’t want to offend you, but these days it seems that you have somehow given in and aren’t really worth the paper your written on any longer.

Oh man, this letter has become longer than I had intended it to be. So many thoughts and words and still I haven’t come to the point that started it. Well, unfortunately I don’t have much time left and thus I will now just give a short summary of what I had heard and that made me write down this letter.

In America a pupil has been sentenced to be sent to a boot camp for about 40 days. The judge made this decision because the boy had brought a multifunctional knife to school, which is prohibited by law. It was one of those knives, including a fork, a corkscrew, a bottle opener and the likes besides the blade. He wanted to use it for dinner in the school cafeteria. According to what the boy said, he took it with him, because he was so fond of it and thus wanted to use it. Nevertheless, legal regulations state, that this is an offence against school laws, which clearly prohibit bringing such dangerous devices to school.
Oh yeah, least I forget: That boy is six years old…
So, in the name of common sense, let’s hope that being stuck with criminals such as drug dealers, thieves, robbers or guys doing battery, which are all more than twice as old as him, that being treated like that piece of shit that he obviously is and that being pushed beyond his physical capabilities for about 40 days, will finally make him the kind of citizen that completely fits into that glorious society – free of all evil thoughts as well as morally and, even more important, mentally stable.

Yours faithfully
Irony aka Sarcasm aka Cynicism