Monday, February 17, 2014

Chapter #4 - Common Sense

The chapter this week focuses on Common Sense, Learning and Theories. One of their most important ideas is that the only common sense is that there is no universal common sense. With that idea in mind, it provides us with new opportunities for understanding and exploring. In which we should embrace and actively take part in "Learning". In order to create a space of common sense, we teach theories. I agree that theories are "public confessions" or "public memory" to promote and protect a common good and these "confessions" are what we use to guide us through life.

An example of common sense that I found relative to my life is the circulation in media/social network of "memes." A meme is a picture that has some sort of phrase or words in white letters on the top or bottom of the picture that implies a cultural reference. The beginning of the Common Sense section, we read about "enthymemes" which is a rhetorical tool introduced by Aristotle, in which creates an argument that the audience must "fill in the blanks" to (pg. 66). There must be a shared knowledge between the speaker and the audience in order for the argument to make sense. That is where I found the connection of the memes we have floating around in our culture today, with the technical term enthymemes. Some people may find a meme hilariously funny, while others read the meme and look at the picture and may have no clue what it is about. Memes can be used to tell an unspoken truth about culture, and if people don't have that shared knowledge of a culture, they would think the message is mean or confusing. For example, a meme that says "That moment when you beat the candy crush level you've been stuck on Forever," and shows a picture of Lebraun James with tear coming down his eyes. Those that don't play candy crush won't relate to the meme as others because maybe they don't play candy crush. For others, they may understand how hard some levels may be and how addicting it could get, so they feel tears of joy when they beat that level.

However, throughout time and space, there will never really be a universal common sense. You may not always understand memes, or understand why someone doesn't understand a form of "common sense". But you must always be aware of others' differences and the only way to create and understand common sense is to know and engage in similar activities as a group of people. It's sort of a like an inside joke with your family members, and once your baby sister grows up, she will take part in the joke as well and she understands it like common sense. OR, it may be so out of context, the joke is not a joke anymore. The same way that common sense can change.

1 comment:

  1. I don't always understand memes, but when I do, they are hilarious. I really like that you incorporated the use of memes in this because recently there has been a culture of people who know all the different kinds of memes and what they mean. They are agreed upon to be categorized. Like confession bear, Mr. Bean (if you know what I mean) etc. Many people have said that 'common sense' is mainly context or agreed upon/similar or shared past experience. Such as 'common sense' being 'common sense' people talk about it all the time and most people do have a general idea of what it means. Which is interesting to me.

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