CSQ Common Sense 101

By Edward Tilley

CSQ Common Sense 101

Intelligence is measured as IQ, Emotional Intelligence is EQ, and here we introduce Common Sense Quotient - CSQ, as a measure of the positive results of our actions.

Throughout this CSQ guide, measures of Common Sense are used to predict how beneficial will be the outcomes of the decisions and actions that you take in life. “High CSQ” decisions and actions, benefit both the individual and society; “Low-CSQ” decisions, create little or no positive benefit and even create negative results.

As you read through these discussions, visit our online forums on the web at CSQ1.org and share your opinions with others about the chapters and topics discussed.

To begin to understand common sense better, let’s take the example of a family whose father works a lifetime. He never achieves wealth, but he and his family live positive and happy lives. This father and family can be said to have terrific good common sense because the work that he and his wife chose, provided a social utility, and their happiness was an individual success as well.

For society, visionary thinkers and contemporary authors have set targets for our Common Sense future too. From Da Vinci’s flying machine designs, to Jules Verne’s 1865 roadmap to travel “From the Earth to the Moon”, to Gene Roddenberry’s “Star Trek”, to Hanna-Barbera’s vision of George Jetsons’ robot maids, anti-gravity cars, video watches, and two day work weeks.
The first goal of CSQ Common Sense 101 is to teach the fundamental steps and processes needed to make good decisions, goals and objectives – as did these great parents and Visioneers.
Some of these common sense technologies have come to life but many others are still outstanding. So, the next goal of this course is to teach you how to build anything reliably – no matter how complex; and no matter how grand the scope. After all, what good are common sense decisions and goals if none of it can be built?

When John F. Kennedy asked NASA to launch a flight to the moon, engineers responded that it was impossible. When he asked them to further specify the exact reasons, they responded with a list of thirteen problems for which they had no solution at the time. In 1962, Mr. Kennedy asked NASA to run thirteen projects as needed to solve each of those problems and then to carry out the flight to the moon which succeeded in 1969.

When you make a decision to build something positive and visionary, you must understand how good leadership, good process and good engineers need to work together in order to meet objectives.

Fortunately, in the next 20 years, families, society and business will see an economic rebirth sponsored by a next generation of High-CSQ leaders armed with good goal setting processes and advances in technology that provide the tools needed to build a terrific, perhaps even Utopian, future - if we chose it.

Like reducing a gigantic vat of soup down to a tasty sauce that improves everything it touches, or like concluding a complex proof on Special Relativity with a simple and elegant equation - E=mc2, seemingly unrelated common sense approaches from every facet of life reduce into recognizable and repeatable rules and processes that can be applied easily to improve our lives and societies.

CSQ 101 is a page-turner because its examples are smart, realistic, funny, insightful, and taken from well supported and interesting lessons in history. Prepare to be engaged and challenged - and in the end, with a little luck, you will find that you will be easily able to leverage practices here to make good Common Sense conclusions in life - whenever you like.

Join us on our web forums to discuss your views on each lesson at www.csq1.org.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward Tilley
• Release date: Apr 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781987964011

Edward Tilley

World Peace - The Transition and CSQ Common Sense 101 are reading that build a better world and set out a curriculum that discusses good common sense is an ambitious goal perhaps, but we seem to need someone to make a start – and so here it is.To give you some idea where my books come from; I raised five terrific kids, built six high-tech startup companies, I learned something new every day of a 25 year high-tech engineering career. I was twice a CIO; twice a CTO; three times CEO and led 300+ projects, a dozen major programs with budgets up to $100 million, 80 staff, and 200+ team members. I founded and built of one of the largest local volunteer Minor Sport organizations in Toronto - which gave me the experience of hiring eight management teams every year as well. My hopes for the next generation connects me to the future.I can say easily that I am a country and even world builder, capable, big-pictured, process-minded, and strategic thinker. I have a well-balanced resume for someone who thinks they know enough how to Transition our communities to World Peace based on a process for improving common sense in every individual and home.I deeply enjoy intelligent, academic debate. Family and society are important to me. My forefathers were Pilgrims, Puritans, and Founding Fathers. That history connects me to the importance of leveraging lessons from the past.World Peace, CSQ Common Sense 101, and others are important topics I think that I have done their complex and diverse subject matters justice; as well as any author could anyway. I would consider it a tremendous success if you find the planning an lessons helpful and also find it in keeping with the values of your community sufficient to suggest that it become a course for young teens. Giving them the processes to help their friends and families for a lifetime – based on lessons that took most of us a lifetime to attain.

Book preview

Wealth Distribution Models

Chapter 5 - Right and Wrong

Chapter 6 - Right & Wrong in our Families

Socially Acceptable Behavior in Children

The Life Event Chart

The Parent-Teenager Contract

Good Common Sense Behaviors

Chapter 7 - The Process to Build Anything

Chapter 8 – Brain Storming

Curing Alzheimer’s

Chapter 9 - Time Management

Chapter 10 - Love and Family

The Ten & Ten Rule

Chinese Water Torture

Affairs

Chapter 11 - Importance of Gender Roles

Can Rights Cost Too Much?

The Right to Divorce

Leadership in Business and Government

The $14 Trillion Cost of Divorce

Chapter 12 - Life’s Big Decisions

Chapter 13 - Understand your Emotions

Chapter 14 – The Process to Solve any Problem

Chapter 15 - Filtering your Emotions

The Saligia Filters

Remember your Childhood Well

The Healing Station

Chapter 16 – Your Health and Exercise

Nutrition, Portion Control, and Sleep

Alcohol and Drugs

Chapter 17 - Exercise between your eyes

Chapter 18 - Art, Travel & Languages

Chapter 19 - Coping Skills

Create your Bucket List

Chapter 20 - Grieving

Chapter 21 – Empathetic Communities

Chapter 22 - Religion

Chapter 23 - News vs Reality

World War III

Who will Lead the Change

Chapter 24 - Summary

What I Could not fit into the First Edition

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My most humble and sincere thanks to:

My Elena for her understanding of time spent and for her tremendous support and helpful suggestions. And to my children who weighed in on most points.

Most especially, I give warm thanks for the wisdom, love, and contributions of so many that came to make up my own concrete views on Common Sense. For my stories, wisdoms, and insights were always communicated and experienced with family, friends, colleagues, authors, teachers, clients, and visioneers who contributed to the processes that imparted so much worth repeating here today.

To Jules Verne, Gene Roddenberry, William Hanna, Joseph Barbera, and team – you made the future accessible, and even obvious, to hundreds of millions who would otherwise live their lives oblivious to the possibility that there is nothing more in store for us than an unsustainable status quo.

Being ahead of your time is perhaps the most frustrating genius of all, we owe you such a debt.

CHAPTER 1 - Introduction

A life is not just what it is; a life is what we make it. Our outlook on life creates the only difference between whether we see ours is a good life or a bad one.

Common Sense is that voice from within that tells you to make yours a great life; to make it the best, happiest and most fulfilling life you possibly can.

Throughout this book and course, Common Sense will be used to measure how beneficial are the outcomes of the decisions and actions you take both individually and for your society as well.

Intelligence is measured as IQ, Emotional Intelligence is EQ, and now Common Sense Quotient is CSQ - a measure of the positive results of your actions. The term 101 is used in high school courses where 151 is the first course of a five year program with just one curriculum. 161 is Baccalaureate Level advanced study; 141 is non-degree level, and 101 is the first and only course you are ever going to need.

Take a family whose father works a lifetime for an example. He never achieves wealth, but he and his family live positive and happy lives. This father and family can be said to have terrific good common sense because the work of he and his wife, provided a social utility and their happiness was an individual success as well.

Every good parent seeks to improve the world that his or her children will inherit. Perhaps through education, technology and a stable family, this man’s children will be able to make a more comfortable life than his parents did as well.

Visionary thinkers and contemporary authors have set targets for our Common Sense Next Steps in the same way for two hundred years - from Jules Vern’s 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, to Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, to Hanna-Barbera’s vision of George Jetsons’ 1995 modern family, robot maids, anti-gravity cars, video watches, and two day work weeks.

This CSQ 101's goal is to teach you the fundamental processes and steps needed to build socially important technology, social change and common sense decisions and changes in your life. With drills on day-to-day problem solving and big-picture goal-setting challenges, this guide will also give you a shared language and definition of common sense to help when it is important to work effectively with colleagues, friends and family to achieve any goal in every facet of your life.

Do you have a process that you use to validate your common sense decisions? Most professional decision makers do. If I were to ask you - How many smart people do you know personally or professionally that make very poor common sense decisions? You could think of a few and I can think of dozens as well.

I can think of dozens of examples not because I am unfair or judgmental, it’s because in business - it’s easy. With several notable exceptions, the norm in capitalist businesses this past 10 years has been to consider the absolute bare minimum needs of our society and externalize as many of those social costs as possible.

In an effort to increase shareholder value and corporate profits, social costs are often ignored until legislation, labor contracts, or public outcry insist that they change – basically. Spotting companies that make good common sense decisions with a strong social contribution, is the harder task.

Consider three real-world situations at work, community, and at home in this past year or two:

The sending of people into nuclear disaster sites instead of robots.

The selling of cigarettes in every corner store despite their associated 20% plus mortality rate.

Raising no objection when parents restrict grand-parents access to their grandkids.

Over the course of reading this book, as we teach you a process that ensures good common sense, you will come to spot bad common sense situations as well. Like in the terrible bad common sense situations above.

Abysmal goal-setting, sales economies, short-sited financial controls and easily-fixed democratic process gaps, have sailed western societies helmless for 50 years resulting in massive debt, record foreign ownership, and the forsaking of our children’s ability to launch a future in most major cities.

In the next 20 years, families, society and big business will be faced with an economic rebirth sponsored by a next generation of High-CSQ leaders armed with good goal setting processes and advances in technology that provide the tools of a smarter future.

Does it make good common sense to deploy our best and brightest minds in careers designed to minimize cost and maximize profit? The answer would be Yes if wealth and money were distributed evenly throughout our communities, but when historically 99% of wealth is controlled by 1% of our community unsustainably, absolutely not.

As a society in the later situation, where wealth is controlled by a tiny minority, we are better served by redistributing our resources more evenly until money can be made irrelevant through technology altogether.

3D Printing and Replicator technology advancements could enable a new era where we can all live very happily in a utopian society of personal accomplishment and social utility, free from our dependence and distraction with money and taxes as well as a monetary system becomes irrelevant.

A world without monetary constraint benefits mankind in the same way that modern machinery permitted most of our society to spend our time advancing manufacturing and engineering. Before these advances, we lived as small communities of subsistent farmers, and before that, hunter-gatherers.

The cure for cancer, anti-gravity, near-perfect medical imaging diagnostics, interstellar light-speed drive research, the end of questionable pharma, and true universal healthcare can all be realized in a world where society’s productivity is driven by contribution and social esteem; rather than by basic needs of food and shelter.

We haven’t seen CSQ earlier because Common Sense is a daunting subject to consolidate and teach. It draws from a lot of topic areas and any large volume of data needs a good processes to manage it all.

Common Sense actions may seem obvious in some selected examples, but CSQ can often appear too shapeless and complex to plot an easy and consistently positive course in business, economics, and community – so this course curriculum fixes that shortfall.

Like reducing a gigantic vat of soup down into a tasty meatball or concluding a proof on Special Relativity with E=mc², seemingly unrelated common sense approaches from every facet of life reduce into recognizable and repeatable rules and processes that can be applied easily again and again.

In the end, my epiphany was Why hasn’t someone sat back and put these lessons down into the curriculum of every school on the planet already? If I present things well enough, so should be your epiphany as well as you continue to read. Along the way, you are going to learn a consistent language for discussing and consensus building, on a wide range of topics, with others too.

As this shared language and approach become widely adopted, the CSQ Common Sense 101 course could well become one of the most helpful courses that you will ever read. Books like CSQ have been directed by men and organizations of power and history with wide ranging agendas. The wisest of these books have established social rules and improved their communities for thousands of years.

Common Sense, in short, is an important subject and as an author and messenger, I have been careful to respect that here. Lessons in Common Sense process would have saved me a lot of stress and grief in early life and career, and I can think of dozens of young adults, parents and teens that will benefit immediately.

When I finally sat down to write a 16 week curriculum for Common Sense, I did not expect that a lifetime’s collection of wisdoms would roll onto the pages in torrents as they did. Within a week the first 100 pages was fairly readable and within a month, 200 pages followed it.

I though quite a bit about how best to teach Common Sense and build CSQ with students and society at large? I had a difficult time convincing my own adolescents to read non-fiction – even in their teen years when interesting non-fiction reading would have benefited them a lot in school. I realized right away that a book, course, or film’s sales-appeal becomes a big obstacle to overcome regardless of how worthwhile the topic.

Clearly, when a subject is important enough to ask every member of our society to put it on their must-read list, the lessons need to be very accessible, readable, and understandable.

Adults fall into the same trap when they read fiction. With tongue firmly planted in cheek, I thought Seven Shades of Grey made such worthwhile books and movie(s) that they consume a whole sentence here in keeping. Harry Potter novels, in contrast, contain such brilliant imagery and impact so as to set the high bar that I would hope to take these lessons to over time. Both book series got too much and an appropriate amount, of attention respectively - to their credit.

What has CSQ got to offer? CSQ 101 is a page-turner because its examples are smart, realistic, funny, insightful, and taken from well supported and interesting lessons in history which parallel the contemporary experiences of every age group today. Prepare to be engaged and challenged - and in the end, with a little luck, you will find that you will be easily able to leverage practices here to make good Common Sense conclusions in life - as you like.

The CSQ curriculum is meant to be read from start to end - and not jumped to by topic as a reference guide might be. The reason for this is that lessons build on preceding lessons and do not repeat points made previously for readability sake. Just like in any math book, lessons are like building blocks that topple without a foundation. I make an effort to re-explain important points infrequently, but it is best to read from Introduction to Summary in sequence.

Don’t be surprised if some points don’t ring true immediately; a great example of wisdom is What God has joined, let no man put asunder. As a young man I thought it a terribly shortsighted command that discounted cases of abuse and other legitimate reasons to end a family connection.

Did the author of Mark 10:9, a passage recited at most Christian wedding ceremonies, understand all of the implications of the expression – you can bet he did. In fact, the verse was reviewed by a panel of scholars in the fourth century under commission of Roman Emperor Constantine.

In the 20th century, Russians and Americans used a system of public shaming, both at work and at home, to ensure that family and marriage was respected. This worked for those times because children were taught to respect authority, their elders, and there were consequences for disobedience at every age. If you weren’t married, you could not keep higher governing positions. If your parents didn’t keep you straight, the neighbors would sort you out, and even smack you - and then you were in real trouble with your parents for offending an adult.

I had no idea what weight and consideration had been poured into that simple passage.

The message was buried among so many other less important passages; it was phrased as a command due to its uneducated 4th century audience; and the message was utterly unable to satisfy the intellectual challenge of a generation of highly educated children who were taught that there are no consequences and to think for themselves.

Today, divorce costs the United States $14 trillion annually and leaves between 50% and 70% of our families and children damaged in its wake. High stress levels, more problems in school, less personal happiness and self-esteem, and an enormous pension impact that still isn’t yet fully understood.

This is the burden of wisdom – and the cost of ignoring it. If we do not pass experience along to the next generation, humanity stands to repeat its mistakes endlessly.

How also can a 4th century doctrine take a wisdom that took a lifetime to understand and then communicate all of that learning so that a contemporary, very different audience can understand the full context and weight of that lesson? It takes an open mind, and patience, to be able to understand lessons of past experiences.

Common Sense can take a bit of time, experience, and trial and error to fully understand, and it is absolutely important to take your time to learn common sense approach and big picture thinking. If something really doesn’t ring true initially, get online and discuss it on our blog at CSQ1.org. There are exceptions to every rule but most common sense lessons here will tend to ring true over time.

About Common Sense

It’s a rare thing to find someone who admits even to themselves that they do not have good common sense – so what was needed when writing the course, was a teachable quick validity checklist, one that could be held up to quickly to confirm that your guess at what makes good sense or bad – is working well.

This curriculum contains just such a process. For each topic, I will run you through several examples that help you quantify all of those qualitative feelings, worries and choices that we face on a regular basis. Many of us are raising families and hoping to find that we taught our children how to make good choices and honor their family well too.

Just to warn readers, there are a lot of topics and ideas introduced and discussed in this book – far more than any fictional story that you have read; and probably more than in many textbooks.

Hopefully, I will be able to cover most of the topics that a big-picture view of the world, community and individual needs to consider, and in as much detail as needed to begin a discussion that has half of a chance of permitting readers to make common sense decisions and outcomes about the topic at the end of each section.

Due to the large number of topics, I site just a few examples in support of each topic and apologize in advance if any conclusions seem slanted to a point of view that could be supported better. From time to time, arriving at conclusions might require another couple of examples to fully understand and support or reject. As you enter into the curriculum, I think that you will agree that need their own book to fully discuss and support the leadings, discussions, and all possible conclusions.

So how do we communicate the lessons of common sense in a way that’s accessible to everyone in our society – beginning with our students and then the rest of us? Well, textbooks have worked pretty well to teach our students new topics – but they are also a little intimidating to those of us who have been away from formal training for a quite a while. So to keep these discussions accessible to all, we are going to maintain the best formatting rules of a good book with the formal sequencing and exercises of a textbook.

One thing is certain, just as subjects like Mathematics, Geography, and History can be taught to students of any age, the subject of Common Sense can also be understood just the same. So let’s begin.

Common Sense is Big Picture

You might agree, or disagree, with methods or conclusions as you read along, but you will not mistake that Common Sense has a lot in common with Big-Picture thinking. If you find yourself thinking that that can’t happen or that will never happen, try resetting your perspective and keep up.

There is not a single topic discussed in this book that is not absolutely achievable and I will make every effort to help you think this way too. We explain how you will be able to build anything in Chapter 7 A Process to Solve Anything.

If I present this information just right, your CSQ will improve individually and make pretty terrific improvements in the common sense CSQ of our society at the same time.

Keeping up with Change

I am from a generation who has experienced changes at a rate that previous generations seldom did. Some of the changes in society were good but many were not.

On the world stage, China’s Capitalist-Communist leadership model out-performed its G7 superpower neighbors to the point where it now owns significant percentages of the US, Canada, and others.

Our communities watched house prices soar based on plummeting interest rates until students cannot start their lives in our hometown as we did easily. My parent’s generation married by the age of 19, got a job, had kids right away, bought a house and divorce rates were 10%; my generation married between the ages of 25 and 35, kids headed to university as parents are recovering financially from a 70% divorce rate, and are left with little hope of saving for retirement

In personal life, I changed diapers for all of my kids - where my father never did; nor did his father; nor his father; back to infinity. Gender roles reversed and I worry about retirement as companies stop hiring 50 year olds altogether.

I don’t want to dawdle here too much but rather move straight to the lessons so that you can decide for yourself whether the systems that are contained here make a good start for teaching the important people in your life about making good common sense decisions that will help them sort out or avoid pitfalls of common sense at any age and in every facet of our lives.

Rules for good discussion

When one debates the solution to a complex problem, it is important that participants start with a clear understanding that a good process with a high track record for success will be followed.

It takes a common language and approach to discuss Common Sense constructively, just as it takes a Roberts Rules of Order like-guideline to facilitate a large meeting of independent voices. Whenever, we don’t like our world, jobs, community, or life – we should be able to fall back on the one process designed to help us sorts it all out. Once we have a common language and process, we can discuss what constitutes a good and bad common sense outcome consistently.

How often have you been distracted from listening closely to the points of a presenter, because something that was said reminded you of the importance of securing budget approvals or because the speaker’s words prompted you to interrupt with a comment on the challenges and importance of training the public on the final solution? It is important to capture all needs within your process - that is true.

Once you understand that you are following a good process, you can rest easy knowing that needs for training and budget approvals will always be included every time. You are now free to listen to points and join the discussion with minimal interruption.

Throughout the course, I make a best effort attempt to steer discussion only when appropriate and then to leave discussions to readers when that is appropriate too. I hope to get the balancing act right in most examples.

Our Common Sense process will state and agree clearly what is the problem, timeline, priority, risks, mitigations and who are all of the stakeholders and subject matter experts needed to contribute and approve a final solution.

Next, a