Common Sense 2.0 – A ‘Human Kind’ POV  

July 9th, 2025

June 4, 2024

I grew up on Paine Avenue. In New Rochelle, NY. Only a 20-minute train ride to midtown Manhattan and just a five minute walk, down the hill, to the Thomas Paine Cottage. For those of you who aren’t as much of a history geek as I am, you may not remember learning about Tom in your HS History class. He was mostly famous for writing his renowned 47-page book, Common Sense. Google it and you’ll see that it was, when you consider the population of the colonies at the time—roughly two and a half million— the largest circulation of any book published in American history. His message was basically a call to arms to all Americans to pursue independence, by attacking the ideological obstacles that were separating us at the time.

Why am I sharing this with you?

Well, here we are again. A nation divided. With so many daunting ideological obstacles to overcome.

And yet… if you look around, and bother to look a little deeper, you’ll find that for the most part, not only as Americans but as co-habitants of this bubble we call Earth, we are a species that practices kindness, thoughtfulness and yes, even compassion. On a regular basis.

I know, I know. If you’re reading the newspapers or watching the networks, it sure doesn’t seem that way.

And yet… as I look around, I am continually finding people, and not just my friends and family – but my neighbors, and strangers, the shop clerks, emergency responders, my local farmers – almost ALL of whom are for the most part being kind and generous, caring and even compassionate.

So, I propose a Common Sense 2.0, grounded in the basic definition of the term ‘commonsense’ – sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts.

Look around you. NOT at the news or what people might be gossiping about. But at how people around you are behaving. At least for the most part (we all have bad days occasionally).  I’d say, from a commonsense perspective, the world is in a pretty good place. I am, oh so grateful for that.

Gratitude. A practice. That helps too. Commonsense? Maybe. I think so.

If you’d like to know more about how our current situation stacks up against where we’ve been historically, and feel a lot better about where we are now, I recommend Frederick Laloux’s landmark treatise on this very subject, Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness. Skip the forward, skim some of the rest, but definitely check out his historical perspective and his case studies that show how much better we’re doing than we ever have done before (even though, yes, we’ve still got a LONG way to go).

Thanks for listening. As always, please shoot me a line about how you’re doing, and/or, if you’d like to hear about other resources for positive thinking, mindfulness and/or selfcare.

Peace, and love,

Peter

P.S. For a little more inspiration, I’m forwarding this poem from a colleague’s post. Enjoy…

The longer I live, the more deeply I

learn that love

whether we call it

friendship or family or romance

is

the work of mirroring and

magnifying each other’s light. Gentle

work. Steadfast work. Life-saving

work in those moments when life

and shame and sorrow occlude our

own light from our view, but there is

still a clear-eyed loving person to

beam it back. In our best moments,

we are that person for another.

– Maria Popova