Yopele,

We can go back and forth with clever parries and redefining words.

I'm going to give you my personal reasons for disliking the term common sense, so hopefully you'll see where I'm coming from.

For 3 years I dated a child abuse survivor. She thought it through rationally and decided that in order for someone to have recieved such abuse, she must have deserved it.

It was common sense that she was a terrible person and not worth anyone's time or effort. I struggled with her (and against her) through our relationship to help her believe in herself once more. The breakdown came when her common sense viewpoint started to work on me instead of the other way around.

I started catching myself thinking that maybe she was right, maybe it was her fault. I started to feel strange because I didn't punish her when she 'deserved it'.

I'm not strong-willed enough to resist that kind of environment indefinately, I started to yell at her when other things made me angry, I would occasionally blame her for things that had nothing to do with her. And this was all natural, the way things were supposed to be, the way her parents were.

I am not a violent person, but if I'd stayed with her I probably would have hit her eventually, because that's how it seemed I was supposed to express love. But I still really loved her. I decided the only way to save us from this madness was to leave before I got pulled into that.

I could never express that to her, or to my current love, but here I am telling you.

Common sense, common knowledge, common morality.

All are nothing.