Common Sense Is A Super Power

"Don't worry - God (or technology, or the Gods of technology) will save me."

At one time common sense was common. Then common sense became not so common. Now common sense is so rare that it's considered a super power.

We ignore what we see around us and the gut instinct it triggers, and instead choose to believe the same old lies that pushed us to the brink in the first place.

Common sense will tell us that 5 planet lifestyles are not possible indefinitely. That the ongoing social, spiritual, and environmental destruction wrought upon the world in the name of profits before everything else is leading us to an appointment with collapse.

The disasters are mounting. The Canadian tar sands are an ongoing disaster, the weather is mighty suspect lately, and the rich are getting richer at a faster rate while the rest of us are heading in the opposite direction.

Catastrophic flooding, endless war, runaway oil trains exploding and wiping out a small town with great loss of life, illegal global surveillance, the destruction of the middle class - and those were just this week's headlines.

I don't know about you, but my spider senses have been twitching for a while now. That was one reason Linda and I began taking more earnest actions in changing our lifestyle back in 2001 - we had a feeling that things were not right and were likely to get wronger before they got better. We wanted to return to sanity.

How many more warnings will we ignore before we awaken our slumbering super powers and heed what we can see and feel in our bones? It is like the old joke which I interpret as being about failing to take action when opportunities present themselves.

A city is experiencing a terrible flood. A man is sitting on his front porch watching the water rise when a fire truck pulls up.  

“Get in! Everything’s going to be underwater!”  

“No thanks", the man says confidently, "God will save me. The firefighters drive away, siren blaring. 

An hour passes and the water is now lapping on the porch. A boat comes by.  

“Get in! You’re going to drown!”  

“No thanks", says the man. God will save me.” 

The water rises over the house. The man is now on the roof. A helicopter flies overhead.  

“We’ll lower a line. Grab it or you’ll die!”  

“No thanks. God will save me.” The man drowns.  

When he gets to Heaven and meets God the man asks, "Why didn’t you save me?” 

“First I sent a fire truck. Then I sent a boat, and finally a helicopter. What more did you want?”

It doesn't matter if one believes in a spiritual god sitting on a cloud, or the financial gods of capitalism sitting on the bull of Wall Street, or the science and engineering gods of infinite technical wisdom perched upon their super computers and rocket ships, we are going to need to save ourselves.

It is up to us to do what looks right, and what feels right.

The warning signs are there. It is time to reclaim our birthright, our super power. It is time to return to using our common sense and start making much-needed changes.