Common Sense Raiders
The crisis of common sense is like a cancer that is eating away at the joints of our nation's life today. In many fields, we can immediately find ridiculous decisions that, unfortunately, can affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
Politics that is undermined by corruption, because the officials lose their minds, and drift into the grip of money and power for a moment. The product of the law, which will determine the lives of so many people, is born from shallow thinking, cultural prejudices that are so ugly, and the inability to distinguish between public and private affairs.
The field of education, which is the key to the nation's progress, has fallen back into the process of producing robots that don't think, and are good at spewing other people's opinions. As a result, the level of human resource capability in general is barely able to compete at the global level.
When this happens, our nation will be trapped as a master user of the thoughts and products of other nations, and unable to become the creator of ideas or goods that can make the world a better place. As a result, we will be poorer, and with poverty, various other social problems, such as crime and social conflict, will thrive.
The root of all these problems, in my opinion, is a crisis of common sense that makes us no longer able to think clearly, and drifting more and more in fear and stupidity every day. Our common sense is taken away by the situation, and make it dull, maybe even disappear. When common sense is lost, other crises appear before our eyes, starting from the economic crisis, the political moral crisis, to the personality crisis. Living together or private life will always be on the verge of destruction.
The Robbers
When people are unable to distance themselves from public opinion, they will get caught up in what people say, and lose the ability to use their common sense critically and independently.
Everyone in their life has a traumatic experience. His past kept coming and pounced on his consciousness. As a result, he continues to live in anxiety and fear of the future that is yet to come.
Past experiences make us afraid to try something new in the present and in the future, because we are haunted by failures that have occurred in the past. The experience of failure traumatizes us, pounces on our senses, and torments us with fear and anxiety every day.
Tradition also often robs us of our common sense as humans. Tradition confines a person's way of thinking, so he is unable to think outside of tradition. Tradition develops in the assumption that the world is fixed, so there are universal ways that can be used to organize the world.
However, this assumption is clearly wrong, because the world is constantly changing, and tradition is not always true. The absolute worship of tradition robs us of common sense, and leads us to various crises born of narrow thinking.
Our common sense is also often robbed by prejudice, especially cultural prejudice against other people or other things that are born from a culture different from our own. For example, all Ambonese are thugs (I am Ambonese, so I am criticizing myself), or all Javanese are hypocrites (I am also of Javanese descent, so I am also criticizing myself).
Prejudice develops into generalizations that appear in the word all. This prejudice robs us of common sense in relationships with people from other cultures.
Picking up Common Sense
We will continue to live in anxiety and fear, and unable to step up to make important and courageous decisions in our lives. We will be attacked and colonized by traditions, past experiences, what people say, and prejudices that we have never studied further. When people continue to be attacked by anxiety and fear, then they live in suffering, even though that suffering is often hidden from the eyes of society.
We too will live in acute error of thinking, because our common sense has disappeared. Errors in thinking produce analytical errors, and will lead us to wrong actions and decision-making errors. All of this will certainly lead us to various crises that not only torture us, but also torture others, especially if our decisions and actions have a wide impact, such as the actions and decisions of a public official or company leader. These four usurpers of reason, of course, cannot be ignored, but must be transcended. How to?
Of course, we need to be aware of the presence of these common sense usurpers in our minds. If we are aware, then we can take our distance and consider whether to continue to follow them, or to act otherwise. The ability to take this distance and consider is very important, so that we can still use common sense in our daily lives.
What does it mean to be human, when we are no longer able to think and act using our common sense? The problem then is, do we dare to use common sense, and question public opinion, traditions, our personal past experiences, and the prejudices that roam in our minds? Or, are we cowards?
