Common Sense

Survival, to me, has always been about common sense. So what do I mean about common sense? If I find myself in a situation, I look for the easiest or simplest way to get out of that situation by using common sense.

Let's say we become lost in some thick woods. What do we do? Simple. Stop right where you're at. Don't panic. Sit down and think through your general location and listen for a little while for different noises. If you haven't strayed too far, you might be able to hear the sound of cars and trucks moving along a road or maybe the sound of people working near you. If you do hear such sounds you can make your way to those sounds and get help from there. See how common sense works in that case?

When moving from one place to another, whether you go from city to city along the interstate system or using a topographic map and go from one land feature to another, you break up your trip by stopping at points in between the starting point and the ending point. A lot of people using a topographic map or land navigation don't understand that the basic idea for both long range driving and land navigation are basically the same: use key points in between for confirming references. So if I am moving overland, on foot, on a land navigation situation, along the way I will pass by certain landmarks that show up on my topographic map as references. That way those points confirm I am headed along the right track along with my general compass angle in degrees or mils.

So there I am headed generally east, which would be 90 degrees on my compass, and I will be going past a list of certain items according to my map. One of the first things should be an old church, then a small village, next will be an intersection where 2 roads intersect and then I will reach my objective which is a small hilltop slightly south of the road and about 1 km beyond the intersection where the roads met. All those items should stand out and be easy enough to identify. So I use these items because they are common sense items which will probably remain in place in some fashion even if the map's information is very old and antiquated. Even if the church has been abandoned the bell tower or the cross on top of the church may remain intact no matter who now lives inside of it.

The same thing applies to doing any other survival operation: use common sense. If you have a rescue operation think about the safest way to recover the person in danger without risking more lives. If you find an explosive device, can you detonate it where it is? If not, can you safely move it without endangering anybody? Where is the nearest safe place (open field) to detonate the explosive device? Every little thing that you do in a survival situation can be important to you and to somebody else. Keep in mind, if your/his idea works then it wasn't stupid. The idea is to survive but do things in a simple, cautious manner at the right time. Forethought is a survivalist best ally. Planning ahead is a survivalist best asset.

 

Sadly common sense is a bit of a misnomer or at least greatly misunderstood. Most people think that common sense is based on things that everyone knows and that isn't a fact. Common sense is actually easily learned common information that anyone with sense would take the time to learn and know. There are just some things that everyone should have an understanding of. Most of the most important are actually rather simple and easily learned.

Unfortunately a fool won't take the time to learn those things and will suffer from that lack. In the world we live in now foolishness is a LOT more common than common sense. Simply put, in the past the penalty for foolish refusal to learn the common things people needed to know was death. Now we coddle the fools and they never learn and in turn have lots of kids that they never teach anything to.

Hell's sad bells, I have a neighbor that didn't teach their kids how to talk and both had to have special education when they started school before they could communicate with the other kids or teachers. These were not kids that were impaired mentally! Their parents just didn't bother to teach them how to talk. If the kid wanted to call a thing (Whatever it was) quark they just accepted that and let the kids develop their own language.

 

It is almost considered wrong to think in this country anymore. The schools don't allow it anymore much less teach it. I spent several years trying to find someone to teach my profession to and never could get anyone to show up, listen and learn. After you tell someone the exact same thing a half dozen times and then they still don't have a clue you tend to lose interest in paying them in a silly hope that at some point they will be of some help to you. You can't even get them to come to work on time and when you have appointments you roll whether little Johnny got there on time or not. It is scary as hell thinking about the future. Nobody is stepping in to fill the shoes of those of us that actually do the work. EVERYONE can't be middle management. Someone at some point HAS to do the work.

 

You have a lot of reason, survival is based on pure common sense, the mere fact of evaluating what is around us and seeking a solution is based on common sense, but because the people fail in something so simple ?, currently the humans are In strictly controlled areas where there is no place for surprise, fear and resolution of serious problems, that is why the human fails in something as simple or does not see things as they should be, we live in a world without dangers most of the time and if the environment does not force us to improve, we will not do it.

 

Your most important survival tool is your brain, keep it with you, keep it sharp.

I think that says it all....

 

I agree with common sense but I also agree that there are people who lack common sense. That's why I subscribe to mental preparedness. Like the earthquake drill being conducted regularly in the Metro, it is a way of educating the public on what to do. I don't think everyone has the common sense to duck for cover in case of an earthquake. Again, I go for mental preparedness over common sense.

 

Indeed. But the only way to "train" this common sense we talk about in my experience is to live. Nothing beats life experience and many people lack that nowadays. So it's skill that's rather hard to practice and it's difficult to find someone with a well developed one.

 

Experience is a great teacher. We've experienced floods and supertyphoons, and so have prepared our house and safe house for these. We've experienced break-ins in our old residence, and so have reinforced our residence and properly armed ourselves. We've had financial crises and so have invested to protect against another downturn.

Common sense seems to only be useful for common problems. But we need to prepare for eventual calamities that are devastating but not that common.

 

Sometimes when we are feeling scared and in a panic mode, we can't used our common sense. The best thing that I could say is be calm first then use your brain to analyze the situation and choose the best but easiest solution.

 

Yes! There is no better teacher than pain and grief. Over here there was an old tale about an old man who warned a boy not to go down the road or else he'd find a hole. The boy ignored the old man advice and fell in the hole. When he returned the old man praised him much to his disbelief. he said "If I had warned you about the hole like I did you could or could not fall in it. Now I am sure you'll never fall again!" The bottom line is when we face the hardships ourselves we learn a great deal from them.

 

Sometimes too we can't even be calm anymore depending on the intensity of the situation. But yeah, one must have to be calm in order to have a good functioning presence of mind.