Health & Fitness
Why Is Common Sense No Longer Common?
"Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done." C.E. Stowe
Common sense (n) - sound and prudent judgement based on a simple perception of the situation or facts. Easy, right? Some might say instinctual. Maybe not.
We live in a era where someone can sue McDonald's for not teling her that the coffee she just purchased is hot. Now everyone in America is served coffee from the fast food giant in a cup marked "caution--contents hot." Being open minded and giving the benefit of the doubt, a person may ask, was the woman who brought the suit from a foreign country and did not speak the language to know what she was being given? Was she physically impared (perhaps blind) and didn't see what was being handed to her? Or, alternately, was the coffee maker defective producing scalding java capable of melting the cup it was contained in? Did an employee not place a lid on this lava-like substance? The answer to all of these questions is NO. In Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants we find that the 79 year old woman who ordered the non-defective beverage in a New Mexico drive-thru was trying to drink it while driving in a car. She opened the coffee between her legs and it spilled giving her second and third degree burns over her body.
Shouldn't a grown person know that coffee is hot? Can't drinking a hot cup of coffee in a car be a risky proposition even as a passenger when it is initally served?
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Watching the news, we can see daily the lack of common sense. Kindergarteners are being expelled from school for forming their Pop-Tarts into guns, an Ohio prosecutor sues the groundhog for incorrectly predicting an early spring, a man in Florida is arrested for releasing 12 heart balloons into the air on Valentine's Day for his girlfriend for felony pollution, a woman in Chester, PA is levied with a $600 per day fine for giving out free lunches and snacks to poor area school children.
Do people act this way for attention or money? Perhaps, that is the case sometimes. We do live in a reality TV world today. However, more times than not, I believe society has simply lost the ability to use common sense and take responsibility for their own actions.
