Where did common sense go?

 Common sense. A flower that does not grow in every garden.
I have a theory...
Common sense used to be 'common'. Also, men sitting around "chewing the fat" or "shooting the bull", used to be common. Men told stories, shared experiences, reminisced, etc..
Wisdom is MORE than just the accumulation of knowledge-it is the APPLICATION of that knowledge to achieve a better outcome. You can gain that wisdom through personal experience (which often includes a lot of failure, and sometimes great pain), OR, you can acquire knowledge vicariously, through someone else's experience.
Sometime in the sixties, when I was in my teens, I saw men sitting on buckets, barrels, boards...talking, smoking, sometimes laughing...but always drawing from each other's life experiences. Accumulated wisdom was being distributed freely.
At the same as this practice began to disappear, so did the construction of large front porches on new homes. Small town life gradually changed and with it, so did the presence of common sense.
Other things contributed to our demise, but this is one of those American portraits that exists now only picture books and old movies.
Sad.
JAS