The Common Sense Myth
How invoking common sense undermines mental health
As he recovered from his close encounter with coronavirus and adjusted to life with his newborn baby this May, Boris Johnson made the pragmatic decision to delegate much responsibility for virus control to the people, and our 'good solid British common sense'. [1]
The effects of changing government guidance from 'Stay at Home' to 'Stay Alert' have been much criticised on social, political and economic grounds. [2, 3, 4] What I'm worried about is how this shift in the message could undermine the mental health of many, many people.
In my experience as a therapist and teacher, I’ve noticed that the most innocuous-seeming expressions can have the most damaging effects on people's sense of self. Verbal abuse sounds like something we would notice, but there are more insidious forms of destabilising language that are part of our everyday speech, one of which is 'common sense'.
I believe there are three significant ways in which phrases like 'use your common sense' and 'it's common sense' unsettle, disrupt and damage people's sense of self and mental wellbeing.
1. Common sense and self-esteem
Common sense is not common. That may sound like an in-joke from an after-dinner speech, a neat rhetorical device to reiterate social hierarchies: If only everyone were as clever as we are. And that is precisely the problem.
When I say 'it's common sense', I am telling you something is so obvious that you'd be a fool not to know it. So who's the fool? Well, anyone who has had different life experiences from me. Is it common sense to put clean glasses away bottom up or down? Some of us hate the idea of trapping stale air; others would argue that's better than taking the risk of insects crawling into their drinking glasses. Am I a fool, or are you?
That's a trivial example, but when we are persistently outside of someone else's definition of what is obvious and right, we are likely to start questioning our judgement and suffer a loss of self-confidence. For one person, it's common sense to take the opportunity of the relaxation of lockdown rules to visit a relative who has been alone since March; for another, the risk of transmitting the virus is too great. Which person is the fool? The one who leaves someone lonely alone or the one who breaks a protective seal around a vulnerable person?
Common sense is uncommon because the experiences that inform our judgement are not universal. Pretending that we have sense in common can only divide us, and I notice that Johnson claims the common sense attribute as 'British'. Presumably, people with a different nation on their passports will make the wrong choices.
2. Common sense and anxiety
There will have been many people who breathed a quiet sigh of relief when it was announced that they had to stay at home this March. For those of us with any form of anxiety, clarity helps; ambiguity unsettles.
The role of anxiety, as I have written and spoken about before, is to keep us safe. Anxiety is never optimistic. Your anxiety will never say, 'Sure, visit your gran, she'll be fine!' It will say, 'If you visit your gran you'll pass on the virus you didn't know you have and you'll be responsible for her death.'
Anxiety likes: 'Stay at Home'. It's clear, and it keeps everyone safe. Anxiety does not like: 'Be Alert'. Be alert for what? Microscopic airborne parasites?!
When Johnson advised us to use our common sense and stay alert, he undoubtedly increased the stress levels of the nation. Stress drains our energy and makes it difficult for us to make confident, clear-headed decisions. In fact, stress has been shown to kill brain cells and reduce the size of the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for memory and learning. [5]
3. Common sense and despair
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way’. Victor Frankl - Man’s Search for Meaning
Lockdown has not affected us equally. Some people have found in this pause from the norm an opportunity, others a crisis. For people who mere months ago were doing well, or at least getting by, and who have lost people they love, lost their jobs, their homes, their security, their dreams: 'use your common sense' is not a helpful message.
Despair might be defined as a profound lack of belief in one's ability to find meaning, fulfilment, and happiness, or to create a satisfactory future for oneself. My fear is that many people are quietly suffering from the sub-pandemic of despair and that this dis-ease is yet to reach its peak.
References
1. Coronavirus: Johnson on 'good solid British common sense' (BBC)
2. Boris Johnson’s ‘common sense’ lockdown logic has an obvious flaw (Financial Times)
3. Why Boris Johnson must stop talking about ‘good British common sense’ (The Conversation)
4. Coronavirus: Boris Johnson may regret his choice of words as how can we apply common sense communally? (iNews)
5. Stress can impair memory, reduce brain size in middle age (Science Daily)
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