One of the biggest challenges I have faced with upward mobility is adopting common sense norms. I grew up on welfare. There are patches of my life where my parents are employed and we did okay. At one point they were both working and money was coming in.
I remember there were years we took the bus and there were years we had a car. I know my parents did that under the table hustle for a minute, allegedly. Mostly I remember growing up on the lower end of the income spectrum. We had a “poor mentality” as is sometimes described online.
What came with this, was a jargon and behaviour set that screamed low class. While I am actively working on my class tier, old habits die hard.
How common is common sense?
It’s definition time! Google, jacking Oxford, says common sense is defined as:
Good sense and sound judgement in practical matters
Woah definition 2 is actually provided by Collins Dictionary instead, let’s learn what practical means:
The practical aspects of something involve real situations and events, rather than just ideas and theories.
We can put these two definitions together to infer that common sense is understanding how to behave. I think once upon a time there was a much more standard approach to common sense. People had similar nuclear family lives and for the most part agreed upon a set of norms and customs.
Then globalization and the internet era of misinformation struck alongside dual income households where parents leverage technology to raise children. Basically the common part of common sense was left to algorithms. Also a lot of faith was left in parents to be up to date on information and share it. Those parents did not live up to their end.
Like I found out recently I have been brushing my teeth wrong my whole life. Diet trends got upended and a lot of “common sense” norms we learned were actually false. Capitalism got evil and older people are effectively robbing the youth of wealth acquisition. Here’s a good example of common sense changing, it used to be wise to stay at a company for 20 years. Now you make more money job hopping.
Companies used to spend more on retaining employees, now they spend more on hiring budgets. Younger folk caught wind of this trend and common sense evolved.
“Common sense” is often an attack on immigrants & the poor
Each demographic group behaves differently and people don’t behave in a monolith. Social classes still come with rules of etiquette and everything that goes into being polite. The middle class created a set of understood protocols on how to behave. Now that we have established life is different, we need to discuss birth rates.
The Canadian birth rate is less than 1. This means for our population to grow we need immigration. Immigration means people who grew up with different rules are coming here. Now there is an expectation that immigrants should make an effort to assimilate into the culture. That process is not going to happen overnight and for many that transition can take years. Only for the person to get 25% of the way there.
Poor people move differently than middle class people do. I don’t need to describe the behaviour to you. As you read this you either are in the middle class and have witnessed the efforts to behave as “not poor” as possible or you grew up like I did and experienced embarrassing middle class people with “poor” behaviour. I don’t want to exclude the wealthy but if you read this with money, holla, I need an art sugar daddy.
When you grow up in an environment that’s outside the accepted norms, it’s pretty fucking hard to adapt. Everywhere I go I get told how weird I am. The thing that’s weird about me is that I experienced legitimate upward mobility in my life. A lot of people don’t aspire for more and achieve it. Their starting point is where I fought to get to. I’m aware of all my privilege but I can’t actually shake the stank of my economic background off me.
The upper class folk respect it because they see upward mobility. They notice hustlers hustling. The middle class tends to be big mad when you break away from accepted protocols.
All that to say, most of the time when I hear the “it’s common sense” rhetoric, it’s judgement. And it's a judgement against people who don’t already know the accepted rules.
Sometimes you get a bad hand for learning common sense
Most of the time I hear the term common sense comes from someone who knows a thing, and expects others to already know this thing. That’s what the common part is about. The problem I face is how unwilling people are to share these cultural norms.
I spent a lot of my adult life excluded socially. I was a shithead who did not know how to behave. I was like an internet troll, but in real life. It got me attention and honestly, it’s how my dad behaves to this day. My main male role model is someone who throws temper tantrums in his 50’s.
It’s been brought to my attention that I should have been punched in the face more in high school. They are probably right. Still, in high school I was grounded all the time and the bulk of my social activity was with the air cadets. I didn’t get a lot of unsupervised time in my life until I was 17. Then I was thrown into cegep with a large number of people who were relatively socialized.
I was told for years I was annoying. I was disruptive. I was not pleasant to be around. So I avoided social situations even further. Then I became a rapper and, well, being a hermit stopped being an option. I was always able to handle one on one encounters well, sometimes even a threefer. As soon as 4 or more people are involved I still struggle with how to behave.
Sometimes I get these behaviour assessments from people about all the weird shit I do. The presumption of those people knowing what’s best for me aside, I do get the point. I don’t follow the same behavioural norms people are accustomed to and because of this, a lot of the time, people don’t know what to do with me.
Where are the common sense rulebooks?
Now I’m a practical person. I know that I will make more money and have more success if I do what the kids call “masking” and fake it. I will adapt my personality to the environment I’m in and basically be what I need to be in that room. As has been brought to my attention, this comes off duplicitous to people. That is fair, but after years of being a “loser” I wanted to be treated better by others.
So I lost a lot of weight and got healthier. From what I could tell being fat wasn’t helping my case. Now O’m fat but with Lose Weight energy so I can get away with it, I’m “improving”.
I learned how to take more of an interest in people. This one isn’t sarcastic, I didn’t care about other people. Once I was taught how important it was, I started practising caring. I’m sure my parents tried to teach me to care more, but my dad was one of those “do what I say, not what I do” type of open hypocrites. My mom tried really hard though, she’s wonderful.
The churches I was involved in taught me all the rules that made sense for their church. I learned you can cherry pick a church that has the rules you like best. There is no consensus over in religion land. Each company also has its own unique culture.
Basically what I’m saying is this common sense nonsense isn’t standardised at all. If you weren’t privileged to have parents that taught you the “right habits” you have to go figure it out yourself. Thankfully with the internet there are people who can create resources to help, there are plenty of great books like “How to Win Friends & Influence People”.
There is still no “Common Sense Bible” for the world. This is all food for thought so maybe people treat future versions of me with more compassion. A lot of people did, and only because of those people am I the man I am today. Thanks.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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