Notice

In these troubled times (are there any others?), we are bombarded with persistent calls for common sense as a solution to our common problems.

Pierre Poilievre promises Canadians that he has “common-sense plans” to address multiple national problems, and the phrase has become endemic in today’s backlash politics of “common-sense conservatives fighting for Canadians.” . Common sense, they assure us, will prevail in a common sense revolution.

According to journalist David Moscrop, it is “as appealing to the disaffected as it is tasteless and meaningless.” Aaron Wherry, senior editor at CBC, adds that it is also a “vaguely egalitarian and inherently populist notion that flatters its supporters and advocates while implicitly disqualifying its opponents and critics.”

Indeed, when appeals to common sense become politicized, they derogate from those who disagree and become their own form of “virtue signaling,” a derisive term used by those who want to signal that they have more virtue than those they accuse of doing it. .

Common sense is supposedly common because it is supposed to be shared by all, and sensible because it is supposed to be self-evident and requires no explanation. This implies that even if someone does not have extensive knowledge about a subject or even deep reasoning skills, everyone has enough of both to master the truth. The reality, they say, is not complex.

But obviously, the fact that a certain meaning is common is not enough to make it true, especially when it is based on a false sense of consensus, this cognitive bias consisting of overestimating the level of agreement people have on issues. . Furthermore, common sense varies greatly by time, place, and culture, and because it is entirely subjective, there can be no common sense definition of what constitutes common sense.

The central question is therefore the following: is this meaning common to whom?

More precisely and significantly, common sense to which ideology? What system of concepts gives meaning to the world while obscuring the social interests expressed there? What coherent set of interrelated ideas (about what is) and ideals (about what should be) explains and justifies the current or proposed distribution of power, wealth, and privilege?

Common sense in Canada today stems primarily from the dominant ideology of neoliberalism. A product of the Enlightenment, classical liberalism was a political and moral philosophy based on individual rights, liberties, and equality, as well as private property and free-market capitalism. Contemporary neoliberalism is the re-emergence of liberalism after the 20th century social experiments with welfare and communist states, characterized by renewed privatization, deregulation and globalization.

Ironically and confusingly, it is the political conservatives who are the real neoliberals today, those who want to preserve and renew the classic individualist liberalism of the Enlightenment. For them, this is common sense.

There is also a related sense of “common”. The “tragedy of the commons” is a dilemma arising from situations in which an entire generational cohort of individuals, acting independently and rationally with their own short-term interests in mind, will eventually exhaust a limited shared resource, even if this is clearly not the case. in everyone’s long-term interest for this to happen. This tragedy has occurred repeatedly on multiple fronts throughout history, most recently and obviously with regard to our physical environment.

However, this is common sense in neoliberalism.

And when an ideology becomes hegemonic, it manifests the capacity of cultural values ​​to establish, like common sense, systems of meaning that can justify everything from short-term self-interest to resulting social inequalities. Hegemony is the ability of dominant groups in a society to exert control over weaker groups, not by force, but by obtaining their consent without their knowledge, so that the unequal distribution of power, wealth and privileges appear both legitimate and natural. It’s just common sense.

Just as the neoliberal state is the dominant ideology in Canada, and therefore hegemonic common sense, so too are the welfare state in Sweden and the authoritarian state in Russia. This is why we need more than simplistic appeals to common sense. We must reach consensus on our deepest shared values ​​and then adopt policies that best promote them.

Hopefully, these values ​​and policies will promote long-term collective interest, not the short-term self-interest that leads to the tragedy of the commons. Because that would really be the tragedy of conservative neoliberal common sense.

» Dennis Hiebert teaches in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Manitoba.