Is or Is Not, the Soul of Every Judgment

It's just common sense that common sense is a good thing. But exactly what is common sense? 

Not to immediately descend into pedantry, but is is not only an interesting little word, but probably the most important word in all of philosophy, since it is -- as Garrigou-Lagrange has written elsewhere -- the soul of every judgment.

In other words, a thing either is or it is not; every argument, philosophical or otherwise, ultimately reduces to whether or not something really exists and is therefore "really real."

For example, everyone is talking about President Biden's moral culpability for the Afghanistan fiasco, but they forget that he cannot be held responsible since his mind no longer exists. It is not.

Nor can it be the fault of the 81 million who voted for this decroded turnip, since they never existed. 

So, who is to blame? We can't yet know, since we do not know who is actually making the decisions. 

Philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, science -- all, in different ways, revolve around this business of isness.  Followed by why, how, for what end, etc. 

Back to common sense. Let's begin with the plain dictionary meaning before digging down to a more precise definition: "good sound ordinary sense." That's a bit circular: what's common sense? Good sound judgment. What's good sound judgment? Common sense.

Then there's this: "good judgment or prudence in estimating or managing affairs," which connotes being "free from emotional bias or intellectual subtlety; not dependent on special or technical knowledge." 

These are better, but they raise as many questions as they answer: common sense is something that is "evident by the natural light of reason and hence common to all men"; it involves "ideas and conceptions natural to a man untrained in technical philosophy."

But if common sense is natural to all men, why is it so uncommon? For if it is common to all men, then the left does not exist. But the left obviously exists -- it is -- so where does this leave us? It leaves us with an ideology that is intrinsically "unnatural," i.e., not an accordance with man's real being. 

There is also the more technical definition of common sense, which is the native faculty that unites all the senses into a more general judgment. It's so fundamental that we don't notice it, but none of our senses knows about the others; the eye perceives light but knows nothing of sound; likewise ears and color or touch and taste. 

Raw perception is a material process, but the synthesis of perceptions into a unitary judgment is an irreducibly immaterial process: our common sense is not itself a sensation.  We know that the yellow bird sings -- it both is and is doing something -- even though the eyes know only yellow and the ears only birdsong.

Indeed, the senses don't even know anything about isness -- being -- since that is an abstraction from them. My dog doesn't know she exists. Nevertheless, she does. She is.

Did I just assume her gender? Speaking of the death -- or murder, rather -- of common sense, transgender activists teach us that the only way we can ascertain a person's gender is to ask them. Otherwise we're left without a clue. 

Do you see how this again comes down to the question of isness?  What is a man? We do not, and cannot know. Unless we ask. This person's opinion of what he is reveals what he really and truly is, notwithstanding superficial appearances such as a johnson. Therefore, what is is just your opinion, man. 

It is no exaggeration to say that this goes to the essential rift in our civil war, AKA Woke War I. To cite a most conspicuous example, our side insists that a natural right to free speech really and truly exists; it is not an opinion, a preference, an expedient, something for the sake of something more fundamental. Rather, it simply is. It is self-evident. It is common sense.

Let's turn to scripture for some additional illumination, page 25:

LEBOWSKI: What... What makes a man, Mr. Lebowski?

DUDE: Dude.

LEBOWSKI: ... Huh?

DUDE: I don't know, sir.

LEBOWSKI: Is it... is it, being prepared to do the right thing? Whatever the price? Isn't that what makes a man?

DUDE: Sure. That and a pair of testicles.

Lebowski turns away from the Dude with a haunted stare, lost in thought. 

LEBOWSKI: ... You're joking. But perhaps you're right... 

Of course the Dude is right: for it is common sense. It is not a matter of opinion. It simply is, and it devolves upon us to know what is. Any alternative ultimately reduces to nihilism -- or worse, to a nihilist who thinks nothing of cutting off your johnson.

Speaking of lunatic opinions in the Land of What Is Not and Cannot Be, I heard a good explanation of the whole transgender fad the other day. First of all, the real thing -- the thing that actually is -- is exceedingly rare, affecting fewer than one in 10,000, most of them male, and most of whom will become homosexuals or cross-dressers if left alone.

But according to Abigail Shrier, in the last decade or so we've seen an exponential increase in young girls and women claiming gender dysphoria. She cites one UK clinic where there has been an increase of over 4,400 percent! What's going on behind the hysteria?

Hmm. Sounds like plain old hysteria. But there's something else: it's in that little prefix, trans. It goes without saying that the person with "gender dysphoria" is unhappy; indeed, the person is dysphoric.

The question is, why? And will self-mutilation help the matter? Or perhaps even aggravate it?

I'm afraid that dysphoria is built into the human condition. Nevertheless, it can be transcended. However, transcendence is by definition from and to the above. I would say that self-mutilation is an attempt at transcendence "from below." Like other varieties of human sacrifice, it is not efficacious.