Common sense: a powerful weapon against hate

A blend of balance and wisdom. But also of simplicity that doesn't exclude depth. The risk is that it remains hidden within us. For fear of common sense.

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importance of common sense
Balance and moderation. Reasonableness and wisdom. But also simplicity that does not exclude depth. The common sense It is really a very powerful weapon for dealing with the complexity of reality and to mitigate the temptation to make hasty judgments or decisions based solely on instinct and opportunity.
Common sense is a possibility that affects various spheres of our daily lives: from our behavior towards others to the way we observe and evaluate everything around us. But it's still something we have inside us and we could even waste, as he said. Alessandro Manzoni, “keeping it hidden for fear of common sense.”

COMMON SENSE

Yes, common sense. That is, the trend of the moment, fashion, the single thought, like a herd. In this respect, common sense is a revolutionary response, a move that disrupts the conventions. And it becomes very useful, for example, to address and defuse phenomena such as violenceFirst verbal and then, maybe, even physical.

IMPORTANCE OF COMMON SENSE

We are sure that we can't do anything, except to complain to each other almost to share the disappointment, for stop, contain, reduce, theverbal hatred that is spreading everywhere? In individual and real relationships between people, in civic and civil life, in the swamp of the web. We are sure that we need to delegate, with a clear sign of surrender, the problem, now one of the strongest and most viral in our existence, to the usual third parties, laws & magistrates, regulations & supervisory authorities?

My answers, as you will have understood, are both very dry: No., I do not believe that verbal hatred and online hatred, two sides of the same coin of horror, can be reduced only thanks to interventions external to our behaviors, to our lifestylesTo our ordinary education (or rudeness) and our ordinary common sense (or irresponsibility).

It doesn't take much

VERBAL HATRED LAW

I'll give just two examples, to make it clear. You may have noticed that our life in the mobility circuit (the means used is a detail: car, bicycle, motorbike, on foot, public transport) it's polluted, every day, every hour, every minute, from a sort of creeping foul languageWhere swear words, insults, blasphemies, and vulgar threats are no longer exceptions, but have become the rule. We already speak poorly, we've already pulverized Italian, and we've even introduced foul language into the lexicon of citizens and communities, replacing Dante's language.

Second example. The swamp of the web generates, fuels, and amplifies even monstrous rumorsA truly toxic environment, as we have often denounced, where the fake news (what we Italians call "hoaxes") go hand in hand with venting on the social media universe, a source of all kinds of anger and/or frustration. It goes without saying that around online hatred, a true waste of the human person with respect to his identity and his fullness, a "market of hate". That is, this language, so devastating in its rituality, brings consensus, contacts, influxes, and therefore all things that someone monetizes. It's the same law, apparently of the jungle, but in reality of that thing that some still consider the Word, namely the market, the same law, I was saying, that has now passed into television programs. Those who insult, those who display and stir up hatred, those who sow it and cash in on it, are a roving troupe of characters who generate ratings, for example in talk show of information and its surroundings, and as such are considered stars by the system. Stars who collect dividends, for their wallets, and give dividends, for example, to the cynical television host who pampers them and sends them into the arena, like bloodthirsty bulls in the bullfighting ring.

TO KNOW MORE: What does it mean to have empathy?

COMMON SENSE IN EVERYDAY LIFE

If, therefore, the response to verbal and online hatred isn't just the norm, the fine, the law, the supervisory authority, and everything else you want to point out in legal terms, what category should we refer to? In his book Online hate (Cortina Editori), John Ziccardi, professor of Computer Science at the University of Milan, among the various solutions, he invites us to "re-build the rules of communication"It seems difficult, and even cryptic as a goal, but it's as simple and natural as one can imagine. It's just a matter of starting from the first step of this comeback (engraved in the verb re-build): the goodsenseSomething that sometimes seems, but fortunately is only an optical illusion, to have truly disappeared from our radars as men and women dragged into the hell of hatred. Verbal and online.

COMMON SENSE FAMOUS QUOTES

  • < Common sense was there, but it was hidden for fear of common sense> Alessandro Manzoni
Common sense is so simple that we are capable of wasting it by not recognizing it, as if it were a reprehensible attitude. We prefer to follow the herd, what Manzoni calls "common sense", precisely in contrast to common sense: it is nothing other than the conformism of manner. Today fueled by the diluvial messages via Internet.
  •  Ralph Waldo Emerson
The American philosopher's phrase may seem like an exaggeration. But we live in times in which common sense is certainly a rare commodity, andintelligence At the highest levels, by its very nature, it is scarce. The scarcity, in this case, is not that we are not equipped, according to some perverse design of Mother Nature, with common sense, but simply that we avoid it. We don't consider it useful and, with a certain amount of presumption, we think we can do without it.
  • Descartes
In his famous Speech on the method, The French philosopher warns us that we are all endowed with common sense. But do we know how to use it?
  •  Ennio Flaiano
Calling common sense "ridiculous" just because it seems simple isn't senseless, just stupid. And stupidity, as we know, can cause great harm.
  •  Giorgio De Chirico
Genius is always an exception. And in this case, common sense can be a limit to its ability. creativity and to its freedom of expression, just like logic. But beware: geniuses are rare, and it's best not to feel part of this very small minority of women and men.

SOME WONDERFUL PREVENTION AGAINST HATE:

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