Joy of Politics - Common Sense - V001
Welcome to the first installment of the Joy of Politics, in this Post/Video we will review and codify three things to support the notion of Common Sense:
What are your Sensibilities and how do they impact common sense?
What is Reason and how can it influence common sense?
How do these impact Individual Sovereignty and ensure common sense steers you right?
Hi, my name is Greg Spehar and I am your host and Federalist Professor for the Joy of Politics. Today we will explore the origin of Common Sense and how your sensibilities, the God given capability that dwells in you called Reason and your Sovereignty as an individual, allows you to have clear and functioning common sense. Let’s dive right in!
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There is so much confusion in the world today, so many options and so many things that we have to choose as a person that walks this planet in search of meaning and purpose. One of the things that we need to get ahold of is our common sense to help us understand what and how we should go about our lives and how we impact the lives of others is to understand our sensibilities. Sensibilities! You might say, that is interesting, what are sensibilities, and how does it impact Common Sense?
Sensibilities are the following:
sensibility noun
1 - ability to receive sensations
2 - peculiar susceptibility to a pleasurable or painful impression (as from praise or a slight) —often used in plural
3 - awareness of and responsiveness toward something (such as emotion in another)
4 - refined or excessive sensitiveness in emotion and taste with especial responsiveness to the pathetic
The root of this word is as follows:
late 14c., "capability of being perceived by the senses; ability to sense or perceive," from Old French sensibilite, from Late Latin sensibilitatem (nominative sensibilitas), from sensibilis (see sensible). Rarely recorded until the emergence of the meaning "emotional consciousness, capacity for higher feelings or refined emotion" (1751)
www.wordsense.eu/
sensibilitas (Latin) Noun
sense, meaning (of words)
www.wordsense.eu/
sensibility (English) Noun
The ability to sense, feel or perceive; especially to be sensitive to the feelings of another. I think sensibility is important in a relationship.
(chiefly in the plural) An acute awareness or feeling. I apologize if I offended your sensibilities, but that's the truth of the matter.
www.wordsense.eu/
So from a philosophical point of view, relative to Politics, we can define a component of “Sensibility”, or common sense, from a Federalist 2.0 perspective:
Sensibility, common sense, from a Federalist 2.0 Perspective and Philosophy, is the emotional impact words have on another human being across society and groups. For context, for some people they are moved by words of love and words of hate. These emotionally directional words, are that of individual likes and dislikes. There is a NEW concept that needs to be recognized, that there is an independent set of knowledge around Politics that is what we can call “Political Sensibility” or Political Common Sense, that tells us that something is not right. A political statement, a political decision, legislation and political efforts, for some reason does not “feel” right, there is a sense that it does not make sense, and when checking with others that you know, they chime in and say the same thing, they too do not feel it is right (This makes the "sense" COMMON). This is your sensibility, an intuitive understanding that something is not going to work long term (or even Short term).
There are two types of Sensibilities from a Federalist 2.0 Perspective, one that is short term perspective and one that is long term perspective, in the short term there is a sensible understanding that something is not right or is right, for the longer term perspective that something longer term is right or not right. Those items that are short term may be sensible, but with long term understanding, does not make sense, or is not sensible.
This definition and understanding we begin to understand the impact of different perspectives, for example in the small (short term) an individual may want to leave their country and go to another country to avoid or flee bad governance, in addition, there is a sensibility that someone might want to care for the environment and see that long term there is NO significant impact to the environment. These “feelings” are anchored deeply in some people and are difficult to move or change.
The second perspective is that of which sensibility around the preservation of the community and of the nation at hand. The examples could be that, yes there is a concern for people that have challenges with their own governance of their own country, but to allow millions to enter your own country, might have disastrous implications to the culture as well as the overall voting base will change and that change might not be “good” even though you might be doing a “good” act. Same is true for the environmental concerns, the short term decision to hand over large portions of the economy to government might result in a less than positive impact to labor and resource distributions for that country.
And this is the impact, those sensibilities we all have can shift to the pain discovered over a long period of time. As the sensibility of allowing someone into the country to help them can shift to the sensibility that there is some “limit” to the number of people we should let in without impact to one’s livelihood.
So we will now look at Sensibility and Reason and how they are partners in defining and understanding our Sovereignty.
Reason, something that we have talked about in previous blogs and in our main Federalist 2.0 papers. We as humans have only two methods to reason and they are:
Inductive Reasoning
Deductive Reasoning
Inductive reasoning is the ability to see many related things and then come to a conclusion that these related things are something that can be grouped. An example would be that we can go to Africa and see many animals, all the big grey animals that have trunks, we can call that group “Elephants”. This is Inductive reasoning in its truest from. But the challenge with Inductive reasoning is that we can be deceived by it. The coordination of media and other avenues can orchestrate a new notion, such as President Trump was responsible for the Russia collusion. The group responsible to investigate that notion found nothing. So in this example, there was immense effort to convey that this was the case in the Media. And in doing so there was a perception that Trump was a “Criminal”. So in the short term there was this Inductive reasoning that was “true” in the media. What was the purpose? To impact your sensibilities. To impact the Trump Brand.
Now Deductive Reasoning, this is the process of taking that which we have defined in Inductive Reasoning and compare an external item to the whole of that which we have defined. As such, the example would be, given a group of Elephants that exist, a new animal appears and it also is gray and has a trunk. Well it looks and behaves like our group of Elephants, then it must be an Elephant! So we then utilize this thought process in our political landscape in a number of different ways. For example, if we make an inductive reasoning argument for the notion that Trump was part of a Russian Collusion, then we make another layered inductive reasoning premise that anyone that does not believe that this is True is a bad person and should be shamed, we then can find people that do not believe that Trump was part of a Russian operation and then lump them into the category of a Trump supporter or somehow a lesser human than the rest of the population that believes that Trump was a key figure in the Russia effort.
So now we have “Sensibility” and we have “Reason”, how do those move us to the concept of Sovereignty? Well let’s define sovereignty…
sovereignty noun
1 - unlimited power over a country
2 - a country's independent authority and the right to govern itself - national sovereignty; a claim of/to sovereignty
Full Definition of sovereignty
1 a- supreme power especially over a body politic
b - freedom from external control : AUTONOMY
c - controlling influence
2 one that is sovereign - especially : an autonomous state
3 obsolete : supreme excellence or an example of it
Latin
super (not comparable)
-ānus
Of or pertaining to; -ian; usually indicates a relationship of position, possession, or origin.
The overall definition we see is that there is power over a country or over something, the Wordsense.eu definition is indicating that it is power over a country and an independent control and the right to cover itself. If we take the term even deeper, the latin base is the concept of being over something in position, possession or origin. As an individual, you are a Sovereign Being, you have control over yourself and you have then the control over your country as an independent authority.
How does that happen? How can one be a Sovereign being within the context of a Political system? Well the declaration of independence outlined what that means and the US constitution put it into practice. Such that those that want to shift that sovereignty to a Global Entity or to some socialist or marxist plan, are in direct conflict with this notion. Let’s dig just a little bit further and show that when we are Sovereign beings we have the following characteristics that we need to develop and maintain:
Sense that we all have Freewill
Sense of Responsibility for ones life within that Freewill
Sense that we have access to Logic (Reason) to apply that Responsibility
Sense that the use of Virtue will guide that logic that will properly apply that responsibility to manifest the exercise of Freewill in an appropriate manner
As such, this sense is the Sensibility that we talked about previously and that the very notion that we have all sensibilities is usually a given, but from a Federalist 2.0 perspective it needs to be properly addressed so that there is no confusion and disagreement.
What this means is that it is common sense for us to know and understand we all have sensibilities around the notion of Freewill, Responsibility, Logic (reason) and Virtue, but those sensibilities can be toyed with to shift and change those sensibilities to near term focus in the immediate needs of the down trodden to the long term needs of a world at risk from climate change. These issues, when combined with emotional appeals can shift and change the very nature of what we might see as sensible thoughts or decisions.
Additionally, if one can create enough support or anger or anxiety around those notions they can become sticky in their nature that any pain that an individual, group or society might endure that would indicate those sensibilities are miss-guided, can further delay the necessary changes to align to what would make the individual and community healthy.
How do we call out this sensibility issue around scope? How can we use logic (reason) to help align ourselves to right minded decisions? Let’s use the rule of Generalization. Yes, we can use this rule to best understand if our overall intentions and approach is subject to and impacting our sensibilities in a way that might harm us short term or long term.
The rule goes like this:
In general, all <some observation> happens all the time, some of the time, most of the time, never.
Does this statement makes sense, is the logical data to support this statement. If no, then the statement must be discarded
If it does make sense to you, test it, and see if it works within the short and long term perspective. If not, discard and start over or abandon the approach.
Here is a simple example:
All humans breath air on earth (Oxygen and nitrogen)
Does it make sense? Yes. Are there any humans that breath something else? No.
In the short term, do all humans breath air? yes. In the long term, will all humans breath air? Yes, even evolution cannot change that in the next 200+ years.
So this is a congruent statement that has merit.
Here is a political statement as an example:
All humans should abdicate their sovereignty to a world government to protect the climate.
Does this make sense? Not really. Should one human do this? No. SHOULD all humans do this? Yes. WILL all humans do this? No
In the short term, should all humans give their sovereignty to a global government to save climate change? No. In the long term? No.
Why not: There is a challenge from the Federalist 2.0 perspective that an individual sovereignty would be violated - so NO
From Secular perspective: The answer might be YES, but that perspective does not value individual sovereignty through the absence of the notion of a Higher Power
So what have we learned about common sense? We have learned the following:
That sensibilities have a relative scope about them
That common sense needs to utilize Reason and Logic
That Sovereignty is guided by Freewill, Responsibility, Reason (logic) and finally virtue and is the key to congruent common sense
This is what you have in you, your common sense. If you are feeling that your common sense is telling you something is wrong... it probably is. If you do no longer have or believe in Freewill, Responsibility, Reason and Virtue, your sensibilities have been violated and your sense of right and wrong can and will be compromised.
This is the basis of the Federalist 2.0 work. We will rely on our Common Sense to lay out the ground work for how we SHOULD be governed.
Remember, we can do just about anything these days, but we must understand what we should do, the Federalist 2.0 defines the SHOULD.
In the creation of the Federalist 2.0, it is our goal and commitment to you the reader, to share with you the pieces of the original intent of the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence and why it is critical that we claim this moral imperative to ensure the health and safety of our future generations and our capacity to continue as the Originally Planned United States of America.
Come join the Federalist 2.0 effort, help us resurrect the beliefs and understandings that made this United States of America the greatest nation on the planet to date. Let's make America great once more!
In the end, what do you have to lose?.... Maybe you can be Publius too
- Publius
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