Remember Logic?

How is it that only you and I remember logic, and common sense?

Admittedly,I sometimes have a hard time differentiating between the two. Apparently there is one, since so many people deride logic, though few argue against common sense. Bewailing their loss seems to be one of the topics to which I return often, but I think that is due to my sincere concern that in our world, logic/common sense are following the path to extinction like the wooly mammoth and the dodo, and only by constantly sounding the alarm may we keep it at bay. But I'm not optimistic.

I just hit the “delete” button on the 359 or so spam messages received since last I checked (fifteen minutes ago?), and while I have trained myself never to even look at the subject lines, I couldn’t help note the top one: “Can you work today? Earn $225…” Please, Lord, who on the face of the earth with the intelligence to be able to read those words can possibly, possibly believe that someone will pay someone else (whom they don’t know from Adam) $225 a day, unless they’re looking for someone to rob a bank? Is anyone…anyone… naive (and I am being charitable in my choice of words, here) enough not to realize that this same message is appearing on millions of computers across the world, and to wonder what kind of work might be involved, and why they would need to go on the internet to find someone willing to work for $225 a day? Just open the door and yell…you’ll have more people than you know what to do with.

And yet every one of the billions and billions of spam messages is based completely on the lack of logic or common sense.

Advertising in general tends to be based on this same assumption: that no one will ask questions. Oxy-Clean can remove every stain known to man? Okay. The guy who touts the crap by screaming at the top of his lungs wouldn’t lie, would he? I mean, he’s obviously excited by the product’s wonders. I’ll just go along with him. (And if I act NOW I can double my order for the same price!)

Politics and religion are two egregious examples where lack of logic and common sense is king. Currently making the cyber rounds are a number of photos of Barack Obama with beleaguered Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich—irrefutable proof evidence of some sort of sinister if unspecified conspiracy or other. It never seems to occur to the people who promote this garbage that as a senator from the state of Illinois, Obama might…just might, I say…have had occasion to be in the same room or at the same event as the governor of the state he represents, and by some remote possibility, to actually be photographed with him? Nonsense. It’s undeniable proof that something pretty fishy is going on, and that Obama is tarred with the same brush as Blagojevich.

Fundamentalists routinely (I almost said “religiously”) engage in “selective interpretation” of the Bible, using only those passages which suit their purposes and totally ignoring others. “Homosexuality is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord” has been trampled into the ground by spittle-lipped zealots, who totally ignore bans on eating shellfish, casting the first stone, loving thy neighbor as thyself, etc.

The Jews control the world! Gee, then why did six million of them die in WWII? The “homosexual agenda”....I’ve never, ever figured that one out. Homosexuals lust after young boys! Ah, I see. And do you, as a heterosexual, lust after young girls? Could you explain the difference to me, please? Guns don’t kill people: people kill people. Love that one.

I understand a few colleges offer courses in logic, but none in common sense. Perhaps they should. Before it’s too late.

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