In my 1972 Ph.D. dissertation, which I originally titled “This Is Not A Book About Wittgenstein,” and which was retitled into something bland as a condition of my passing the oral examination and getting the degree, I lamented the loss of real “common sense,” that is, sensing-in-common. Instead, I pointed out how positivistic philosophy and the rise of science had split our minds from our bodies, and then isolated each of us inside our minds, with merely the five outer senses (eyes, ears, touch, taste, smell) to connect us to the “outside.” This concatenation of absurdities led to epistemological questions like, “How do we know that another person has a mind?”, since all we observe (with our eyes) is their “behavior.”
This Mr. Fish cartoon, called Common Cents, reminds me of that time when I was questioning all that I had been taught, all that had carefully inculcated in me a solipsism that, had I allowed it to continue, would have ended in suicide. I thank “my lucky stars” for my early and fateful determination to break free. While it may have led to years of isolation from all that I had known, it also nourished the regeneration of my soul and spirit and reconnected me with the fabric of life.
BTW: Speaking of Common Cents, Everybody’s favorite economist, Ellen Brown, has a new book out. From Austerity to Prosperity: The Public Bank Solution.
