Common Sense, a Logical Fallacy.

In Chris Jordan’s short video, “Midway a Message From the Gyre”, the creator asks his audience a powerful question,

“Do we have the courage to face the realities of our time and allow ourselves to feel deeply enough that it transforms us and our future?”

A powerful question to all of mankind. With his challenge to us all to become courageous and bring about change within our society, and ourselves to stop needless death from our senseless waste, he leaves his viewers steeped in introspection.

One is left questioning the ways that they can be courageous to help bring about change, for myself, I continue to wonder how it is even possible to stem the tide of destruction unleashed by mankind, not only upon the environment and animals of the world, but on members of our own race. We are disgusting animals; as demonstrated by many environmental catastrophes, but the Pacific Garbage Patch is probably amongst the most ugly and deadly examples.

Change needs courage. I know courage well, as you see, I have no common sense, or rather my common sense makes no sense to others. Courage is having your own sense, nothing common about it. You take a look at the way things are and make a decision to not abide it. It begins first within you. You accept your mistakes in the past, and then you look at how those mistakes have contributed to what is happening. Then the hardest and most courageous part begins. You make the changes in yourself.

Real change requires small steps, with a lot of courage. First you stop yourself from contributing actions and attitudes. You stop blaming and hating yourself and others as well. You begin to forgive. Once the self and others are forgiven, then you can move forward to the most difficult steps to change, speaking and acting from the centre of your personal change within.

Though much of my life could have been worse, as I could have been born in Africa starving with aids, my life has not been a bowl of cherries either. Early childhood molestation, physical, mental, emotional abuse, bullying, rape and the subsequent wrestling I've had to do with myself to not allow that damaged child within to run my life. A battle that I have had mild degrees of success with as I am not hiding from my pain and shame within a narcotic induced haze nor at the bottom of a bottle or wine glass. Though I did try to do exactly that many times, the sense within me demanded I rise above. So I did.

I began to speak. Many would argue that common sense dictates you don’t publicly speak of these issues. Well I disagree. My sense says we should all be speaking about these issues. If they weren’t hushed and shoved under the carpet, and victims of sexual and mental abuse publicly discussed the issues, this kind of behavior would be much less rampant in our society than it is today. Society would make changes and become much more understanding. Social pressures would force change upon perpetrators and take the onus off of the victims. The victims of these crimes would be given a fairer shake if they were allowed to speak without fear of being blamed, or labeled crazy. I can assure you that if you have experienced the effects of any kind of abuse, you would know,  the mental aerobics required to overcome the effects in your personality are exhausting, and can contribute to making you vulnerable to further abusive situations.

So you see, I have no common sense. I do, however have a sense of myself and what I believe to be right and wrong and I will continue to discuss these issues openly because I want to make changes. I want to take away a child’s pain before it begins, before they end up in a drug induced coma, before the alcohol kills them, before society labels them crazy and unstable, before they have to lose their common sense.