Sense and Sensibility

 

No, I haven’t even read the book, much to my wife’s dismay. She loves it.

 

I can’t help it if some English chick got to the title first. The fact remains that life sees a constant interplay between sense and sensibility. And, ironically, people are not often sensible to this interplay, and the concept that it might exist offends their sensibilities.

 

OK, definitions. By “sense” I mean the realm of our thoughts- our rational faculties. By “sensibility” I mean the realm of conscience. In a given situation, some courses of action seem “right” and some seem “wrong”. Even before we have thought about it, this is so. And in fact when we DO think about it, these “sensibilities” of what seems right and wrong inform our thinking. And that is what I mean by sensibility.

 

Take some random situation. Say your waitress was rude to you. What is your immediate response? Some people would tell her off. Some would smile and thank her. Some of me would sulk or pout. Others would ask her if something was wrong. In each case, the response isn’t carefully thought-out; it is more-or-less immediate. And the differing natures of the responses are due to people’s differing sensibilities. For instance, to some people it seems “right” to tell her off, because she has no right to talk that way. OK, I hope you get the idea. That’s the world of sensibility.

 

Meanwhile, in the other half of the brain, we have situations that require thought and decision. We have to go over the facts and the options and puzzle out what to do. (I hope that generally means puzzling out what is right to do, but I don’t want to be overly optimistic.)

 

The topic, here, is the interplay between sense and sensibility. Often, as we use our sense to consider options, what we are really doing is making up rationalizations to excuse or justify the thing that our sensibilities suggest we do. The fact is that we have already determined to obey our sensibilities in an unexamined, uncritical way. It’s less common to use our sense to examine our sensibilities. It’s much harder, and even less common, to overrule our sensibilities with our rational faculties. That ultimately requires doing something that feels wrong, because we know it is right.

 

Am I alone here, or does it seem to anyone else that a very large segment of humanity never ever encounters this tension? I mean, by and large I think we all obey our sensibilities, merely using our sense to excuse ourselves. But it seems like a lot of people aren’t even aware of the divide. Sensibility is all that exists to them. If it seems right it is right. No room, time, or reason for all this silly navel-gazing. It’s better to be forthright, strong, decisive.

 

It seems like such an unexamined life.