I was on the university shuttle to get to my lab. On the bus was this guy who was in deep conversation with the bus driver. They were deep in conversation. Apparently even that guy was a bus driver for a couple of years before he became a student. They were talking about they experiences and telling each other anecdotes. During their conversation, the guy said “Students for all the knowledge n wisdom they have, do not have minimum common sense that they aught to have!”. This set me thinking.
What the guy was said was true to some extent. Common sense is getting to be really uncommon. Whether a person is well educated or not, common sense seems to be scarce among people. I wonder why? A well-educated person is assumed to really have presence of mind and loads of common sense, but when it comes to practical things in life, they somehow fall short. Is this because they have many things on their mind or that their mind is tuned to the lofty concepts of their education?? Is this a plausible explanation?? And if it is, how far is this true? Or is there some other reason for this. Does anybody have an explanation to this???
This also brings to question another popular myth. People have for generations assumed that education and refinement of character (samskaaram) of a person go together. But I beg to differ, just because a person is educated does not give us any guarantee that, that person has an honorable character. History has given us many examples where this has been proven to be wrong. Take for example, Saddam Hussein or Hitler - both really well-educated men, but with completely blotchy and sadistic characters. So, in my opinion, just education cannot imbue common sense or good character into a person. His upbringing, surrounding environment, society where he was brought up and many more things play an important role. Does anybody have anything else to add to this?