The Death of Common Sense

Position: 29°57’19.8″N 90°04’06.5″W

It is not entirely clear when common sense died. Perhaps sometime between the invention of the nanny state and the concurrent exploitation of tortious liability for the benefit of hucksters. Harms, real and invented, are big business these days. Slipping and falling anywhere can make a lawyer more lubricious than one of Pavlov’s dogs. Perhaps some historical context is called for.

Thirty years ago, I travelled to New Orleans for the first time. It was a business trip. My team in HP’s Cardiology Products Division (CPD) was called to The Big Easy for the annual American College of Cardiology’s meeting. We had a booth in the large convention centre where we’d stand around and do our best to trip up anyone not wearing a corporate logo. The belief at the time was, if you’re not present, you’re not relevant. Naturally, this wasn’t true. The number of card-carrying cardiologists that stopped by to sample our wares were few and far between. After all, it wasn’t like we were pushing the boundaries of cardiac catheterisation, with their fancy stents and lucrative kickbacks. Bill and Dave (Hewlett and Packard) had long since decided not to engage in therapeutics and focused on human electro-mechanical signal processing instead.

Pink

Being tightwads (defibrillators don’t carry the same margins as disposable catheters), I had hired a minivan to get us around. My colleague Dick rode shotgun. Dick had been to New Orleans before and knew the ropes. He piped up and said something like, “You know, Mike, there are drive up Daiquiri bars here in Louisiana.” “What??”, I said, “like alcoholic Daiquiri bars?” “Yep”, replied Dick. “That is insane! Let’s go! Now!”, I insisted, tapping into my inner Hunter Thompson and stabbing the accelerator. Peter and Leo in the back seats chuckled and grabbed their panic straps as the A-Team’s van skidded around a corner on two wheels in search of stupidity.

Sure enough, we soon pulled up at an unassuming white clapboard kiosk and loaded up with four 16 oz. ice-cold, brilliant pink Daiquiris. Hell, if you’re going to die in a flaming car crash, you might as well go out with all the grace of a sh*tbabied bridesmaid at a hen night. In case you, dear reader, are shocked by this loutish behaviour, rest assured I sipped my drink and deposited our van at the hotel long before my blood alcohol reached a level that would tip off a Louisiana state trooper. That said, the fact our hotel was within staggering distance of Bourbon Street gives you some idea of how the rest of the week played out.

MADD Bad and Dangerous

Alright, so New Orleans lacked any common sense 30 years ago. And even then it felt like an oasis in a sea of nagativity. MADD was doing the right thing and guilt-tripping the rest of the country into driving sober. The Europeans had introduced roadblocks for sobriety checks. Turn the little light on the breathalyzer red and you lost your license. And this made sense. Anyone who’s watched North by Northwest knows the risks of driving drunk. People die. It’s stupid. Don’t do it.

But then things started getting a little weirder. And as Hunter said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Over the next 20 years, my apparent age became increasingly irrelevant. My ability to pass for a 20-year-old went from the sublime to the absolutely firkin ridiculous. Ordering a beer in any public establishment meant reaching for my license. In my 40s it was almost possible to make a joke about being flattered. In my 50s those opportunities had sailed; with the singular exception of similarly mature waitresses who also appreciated the absurdity of 100% ID checks.

Crags

Now, knocking on the door of 65, I am still carded. It is insulting. Not for me. I could really care less. It is insulting to the intelligence of the wait-staff required to ask a grey beard for their ID. For decades, English pubs had a sign that stated, “If you are, or appear to be, under 18 you cannot buy alcohol.” It is a simple statement. A warning to the snot-nosed punks that try and sneak in for booze to keep out – unless you trusted the publican and they trusted you. Such a statement demands judgement. It puts all the onus and responsibility on the publican. If they got it wrong, there might have been consequences. Although, in Britain in the 1970s a slap on the wrist by the local constable would have been remarkable for its severity.

That’s not my point. My point is the law expected, nay demanded common sense and judgement for it to be carried out. Inconsistencies in meeting this expectation were surely no more variable than those of a moody magistrate. Even today I am sure that with 100% ID checks staff are quite capable of turning a blind eye to rule benders. Especially if they are friends. In fact, the more draconian the dictates and the more they subvert and insult people’s intelligence, the more likely people are to smile and look the other way.

Autocracies ultimately fail. Telling people what to do all the time means they don’t have to think. But not thinking is boring and therefore autocrats become boring. People like to think for themselves. Let me restate that, people like to think that they think for themselves. So let them. Let people think for themselves. Give them responsibility. Let them decide if a craggy, grey-haired geezer is over 21 or not. How else will they learn?