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Have We Lost Our Common Sense?

The world is in a desperate state of affairs. Social institutions – the family, schools, and churches – are falling apart. Society is breaking up into warring factions. Truth has become irrelevant and unfounded rumors and opinions take precedence over facts and knowledge. There are no genuine standards of behavior anymore because all morality has become merely relative. People are becoming increasingly uncivil toward one another. Money and power appear to rule the day. We seem to have lost our common sense. Can we do something about it?

Yes, we can! We need to return to Realistic Philosophy, the philosophy of Common Sense, Examined and Expanded. This return to genuine realistic thought, which was both the source and the rationale for Western Culture, is exactly what is needed if we as a nation are to protect ourselves from the “intellectual barbarism” that is so prevalent today and is the major influence on contemporary affairs.

Philosophy is the attempt to understand the most basic facts about the world we inhabit and so far as possible to explain these facts. This enterprise is not the exclusive concern of certain specialists, but one in which every human being is deeply involved, whether or not he is clearly conscious of it.

Every way of life is based upon a way of looking at life. The way you look at life is your philosophy. Just as there are many ways of life, so are there many philosophies, some more true and some less true. So important is this basic enterprise of man, so much hinges upon the avoidance of confusion and error, that since the time of the ancient Greeks a certain discipline has been set aside for the concentrated consideration of philosophical problems and for the careful comparison and criticism of different ways of answering them. This discipline is called philosophy.