Uncommon sense

By Klaus Döring

Common sense is not common because it is actually a collection of subjective, hard-earned life experiences, cultural norms, and personal biases rather than a universal set of rules. Because every individual’s upbringing, knowledge, and environment differ, “obvious” judgment varies, making what is considered common sense deeply personal and rarely shared by all.

“Uncommon sense” refers to unconventional, critical thinking that challenges standard, widely held beliefs to gain new insights, often relying on practical understanding, experience, and evidence. It flips standard, or “common,” assumptions, enabling better problem-solving and innovation. It is often applied to fields like education, sociology, and business management to improve results.

While common sense is considered conventional wisdom, uncommon sense is a reexamination of that conventional wisdom. In our business life and personal life, following common sense is usually the safe way to go.

As I ponder the back and forth and up and down in my surroundings and the whole world, a book from my library falls into my hand: Peter Cochrane’s “Uncommon Sense,” with the subtitle “Out of the Box Thinking for an In-the-Box World.”

“Peter Cochrane is one of our most far-sighted visionaries, and brings brilliant clarity and focus to our understanding of ourselves and our technologies, and of how profoundly each is transforming the other,” wrote Douglas Adams, author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

In “Uncommon Sense,” Peter Cochrane’s follow-up to the radical “108 Tips for Time Travellers,” Peter explains how very simple analysis allows the prediction of such debacles as the 3G auction and the subsequent collapse of an industry, while simple-minded thinking is dangerous in the context of a world that is predominantly chaotic and out of control.

People balked when Peter suggested a wholesale move to e-working, the rise of email and text messaging, and the dot-com regime mirroring the boom-and-bust cycle of the Industrial Revolution. His predictions of the use and growth of mobile devices and communication, the use of chip implants for humans to replace ID cards, passports, and medical records, and iris scanners and fingerprint readers were all seen as unlikely. Today, they are a reality.

“Uncommon Sense” guides you to unique, little-known, and commonly misunderstood strategies that generate lasting revenue and sustained results by going against the tide.

I don’t know how you feel nowadays, my dear readers. As a Christian, the Bible — and here especially Proverbs — helps me a lot. As I mentioned in one of my previous write-ups, Proverbs is probably the most down-to-earth book in the Bible. Its education prepares you for the street and the marketplace — somehow out-of-the-box thinking for an in-the-box world, too.

Proverbs offers the warm advice you get by growing up in a good family and successfully making your way in the world. It covers small questions as well as large ones: talking too much, visiting friends and neighbors too often, or being unbearably cheerful too early in the morning. Proverbs simply tells how life works most of the time.

People, and count me in, love to quote Proverbs, which often expresses the truth about life in an elegant, witty kernel. You’ll find more humor in Proverbs than anywhere else in the Bible. And humor often seems to have passed in this day and age.

So common sense is not common because many people have differing views on the same things, making it uncommon sense instead of common sense.

This is the principle of asymmetric knowledge — that is, any situation when somebody in a market knows something that nobody else in the market knows and then has the courage to act on that knowledge. We call this type of knowledge “uncommon sense.”

***

Email: doringklaus@gmail.com, follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, or X — Twitter — or visit www.germanexpatinthephilippines.blogspot.com or www.klausdoringsclassicalmusic.blogspot.com.