The Awful, Terrible, Horrible World-View of Anglo-Saxon Common Sense
Now that my click-bait title has gotten your attention let me say that I’m an admirer of most things English even though in this essay I am going to have to puncture a deep, indeed stupefying complacency about the world that seems to afflict that otherwise admirable nation AND its colonial epigones in the U.S. (especially!), Canada and elsewhere. This is a complacency that, like all such complacencies, presents itself to itself as sublime and simple sense. There are, I am sure, French and German versions of complacent ‘common sense’ but I will let the French and Germans comment on those. Before saying WHAT this world-view is, however, I should probably say WHERE it is: ASCS (Anglo-Saxon common sense) is so pervasive that it is a bit challenging to say exactly where it is emanating from. I will make a few preliminary observations here. As proponents of it will tirelessly complain it is NOT by and large the arts/social science section of the academy, which most people affli