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The last time I did a Word Of The Day post was waaaaaay back in early 2008. 2008? I've been writing on this blog a lot longer then I remember. Anyway, back to the show...er, hastily written post. Today's words of the day* are COMMON SENSE. Let us begin with the formal definition provided by Dictionary.com.

COMMON SENSE

-noun

sound practical judgement that is independent of specialized knowledge, training, or the like; normal native intelligence.

Common sense is a term that is used frequently in everyday conversation. For example: Common sense tells you that if you step in front of a moving bus you will get hurt. Or, if you are outside in the snow without gloves your hands will get cold. Common sense, right? Basic knowledge that the average person should just know. No additional schooling or thought is required to understand what is generally observed to be common sense. The problem with common sense is that not everyone actually has it. We examples of this every day, the funniest of which culminate in the annual Darwin Awards. I love to read about how the less observant and intelligent of those among us voluntarily remove themselves from our gene pool.

Another example of how people demonstrate a lack of common sense is through the media and legislative demonizing of video games. It seems that everyday brings us another story about how some government or media organization is pointing out how video games have brought upon us the downfall of society. Certain video games are outlawed in many countries on the grounds of "protecting the people". The media loves to point out that video games are the core fault of why our kids (and our society as a whole) is getting fat and/or stupid. Even President Obama thinks kids should put the controller down and study more. And who could forget that whole "sexbox" debacle surrounding the release of Mass Effect a couple of years ago? I know I remember that enlightening episode.

Now, here's where common sense comes into play: Video games are...Games. And as we all know games are for entertainment, for fun. I was watching my daughter play The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion yesterday and I criticized her for playing the brigand by robbing and killing the NPCs that she ran across. She responded by making a logical statement. She said, "I play games because I can't do this stuff in real life". See, common sense.

*Disclaimer: In using the phrase "Word Of The Day" I am not stating that I will, in fact, write about a word every day. It just sounded better than "Word Of The Week" or "Word Of The Whenever The Heck I Feel Like Writing About A Word."
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