Common sense is not so common.  Take a look around you right now with what’s going on in the world. Is what is championed on the news or in public as the mainstream conclusion the right conclusion or course of action?

I’m talking about all sorts of topics…what we take for the common sense, conventional wisdom thing to do because talking heads said it’s smart….

Gardasil, that Merck vaccine I warned you about several blog posts back, has already been linked to 5 deaths and over 2000  adverse reactions, bringing the "known total" of such problems to an astronomical amount.

This is happening to  little girls, mind you, with no risk of cancer at that age — and they’re still pushing it. Duh? Who’s getting compensated that they pushed this so strongly in spite of the logica against it and who’s not thinking straight? Which legislators should lose office?

Conventional wisdom - You want to risk vaccinating 11-12 year old girls (with practically zero risk of cervical cancer at that age)  with an untested vaccine with no long term studies of effects (such as causing cancer itself, or even the possibility of induced sterility) … and you want to do this when only 4000 people per year (out of 150 million women) die of cervical cancer and this is the initial response rate ? 

â–ª 31 were life threatening. This is 1.4% of the girls reported.

â–ª 1385 required the girls be sent to the emergency room. That is 62.75% of the girls reported. What???????

â–ª 451 females at the time of this report had not recovered. That is 20.43% of the girls reported .

â–ª 51 females were disabled when these figures were filed. That is 2.31% of the girls reported .

â–ª 5 girls died. Their ages were 12, 15, 19 and two the age was unknown at the time of the report. This is a death rate of .23%.

Ok  let’s swich to other topics and show you more conventional wisdom thinking.

Mercury is unsafe in seafood we’re told, but all of a sudden it’s safe in vaccines and in dental amalgam fillings. How about cell phones are perfectly safe and don’t increase your chances of brain tumors? What about that old one — "there’s no evidence that smoking  causes cancer," something everyone knew to be false but championed for years.

I could just have easily pointed out a bunch of common sense opinions in the field of politics, foreign affairs, Iran/Iraq, the economy, medicine, science (global warming yes, but caused by CO2?) and so forth like the fact that "NAFTA will create jobs for the US" ( look at Ross Perot correct observation that you’d hear a giant sucking sound of job losses). 

You know what all these main stream, common sense ideas (that are wrong) have in common? Vested interests — big money behind them. So stop swallowing what people tout as conventional wisdom.

Think before you swallow this any longer.

And old story comes to mind …

King Wen [of Zhou] asked the grand duke [Lü Shang], “What about the lord who labors to elevate the wise but does not garner the effect, so that the disorder of the world increases to an extreme that becomes dangerous?” 

     The grand duke said, “He elevates the wise but does no use them.  This is because he elevates the names of the wise and does not get the reality of the wise. 

     King Wen said, “Where is the fault?” 

     The grand duke said, “The fault is in using what the worldly praise and not getting the really wise.” 

     King Wen said, “What is using what the worldly praise?” 

     The grand duke said, “To listen to the praise of the worldly is to take the unwise as the wise, to take the unintelligent as the intelligent, to take the disloyal as the loyal, to take the unfaithful as the faithful.  If the lord takes as wise and intelligent those praised by the worldly and takes as unworthy those reviled by the worldly, then the majority party will advance and the minority party will retreat.  Thus, when the wicked group together, they obscure the wise; the loyal ministers die without crime, and the wicked ministers seek court ranks with flattery.  Thus, the disorder of the world increases to an extreme, and as a result, the country cannot avoid peril.”  [From the early Chinese work of martial strategy, the Liu Tao (Six Strategies).]

SOURCE: http://www.stanford.edu/group/scbs/sztp3/translations/shobogenzo/translations/butsudo/translation.html

You can buy lots of wisdom books at http://www.asiapacbooks.com/category.asp?cid=43. I recommend:

THREE STRATEGIES OF HUANG SHI GONG

SIXTEEN STRATEGIES OF ZHUGE LIANG

THIRTY-SIX STRATAGEMS

SIX STRATEGIES FOR WAR

I have all the Asiapac books. If you have no time to read the original translations, just read these summaries. They are faster, and you’ll get the point about how to think and act with wisdom. People always ask me how to learn strategic thinking if you have no teacher and this is one of the ways … read the classic books on wisdom thinking and strategy.