I’m working on a simple framework for aguiding the instauration of individual and collective common sense.

Foot: Where have you (and others) stood within the situation, and where are you standing now?

Eye: What are you (and others) trying to observe?

Hand: How are you (and others) acting on the situation?

Heart: Why do you (and others) feel the situation ought to be changed (or not changed)?

Head: How are you (and others) conceptualizing the situation?

The interaction and interrelation of all these elements is indispensable to understanding. Every element of common sense must participate — foot, eye, hand, heart and head — or we end up with an ungodly soup: dissociated chunks of non-common private sense floating in a broth of common nonsense.

Here is a more verbose and unattractive description of the the elements of common sense.

Foot: Where have you (and others) stood within the situation, and where are you standing now? (Not metaphorically — physically: where have you taken your body and your observational instruments to experience the reality of that location with your foot, eye, hand, heart and head?)

Eye: What are you (and others) trying to observe? (And what is the format of the observations? Are you experiencing actual realities or second- third- or fourth-hand representations of realities? And these representations are they descriptions, facts, numbers, stories? Can you trace these representations back to the situation itself, to real things you can experience with your own foot, eye, hand, heart and head?)

Hand: How are you (and others) acting on the situation? (Have you pushed, pulled, manipulated or experimented on this situation to see how it responds? What does the response suggest to your foot, eye, hand, heart and head? How will you respond to the response?)

Heart: Why do you (and others) feel the situation ought to be changed (or not changed)? (Emotions barely penetrate the surface, even those celebrated ineffable emotions. What matters is your response to those things that happen or may happen. What do you dread, hope for, feel nothing about, feel ambivalent about and where will this take you foot, eye, hand, heart and head next?)

Head: How are you (and others) conceptualizing the situation? (Facts, opinions, predictions and formulas are a nice starting point, but what connects them and makes them cohesive, and what gives new knowledge a place to go… this is what we need to get at, because this is what gives your foot, eye, hand, heart and head its next move.)