From the weekly reading, we can easily find out the definition of common sense---the commonly understood, taken-for-granted assumptions about the way the world works and expected communicative behaviors one will meet in navigating that world in daily life. The taken-for-granted in this historical moment is that common sense is no longer common. Theory provides a form of public common sense that drives ideas and communication ethics engagement (P 62). But with the various of communication approaches, especially there are increasingly more communities on line, common sense becomes on longer common.
As it is described in the textbook, common sense "moves from the pervasive to the petite, to a smaller, more local version" (P 64). In other words, common sense becomes more specific and more contextual based on which community you are in; common sense becomes more fragmented.
From my personal experience, taking Facebook groups as the example, people out of a specific group cannot understand what the other members talking about, they cannot figure out what makes people laugh, and sometimes it is difficult for a group to accept a totally strange person who wants to join them. Similar groups become more concrete, narrowed and limited, common sense only exists among group members rather than the public, which leaves a great difficulty to keep communication effective and successful. Nowadays, it is much common that fans from different stars quarrel with each other about even a piece of dialogue, that can be concluded as one of the result of small groups of communication with petite common sense.
From my perspective, we cannot prevent the trend of segmentation of common sense, especially with the development of the Internet and social media, the only thing we can do is to be more open-minded and understandable to different ideas, as the member of one specific community, we should take responsibility to explain some of contextual common sense to people outside the community or someone who are new in the community.
I agree with you and common sense is very much contextual. I grew up in an immigrant household and the cultural differences are greater than one would think. There are different ways to show respect in my culture and American culture. So like you said, most people who enter the "group" in this case my house, don't get show respect in the ways my mom and dad would like and they also don't get some of our humor. Because I'm part of my group, it weird for me to see my friend not get certain things. To me, these things are common sense. I think what people need to learn is that common sense is contextual. You're right, people do need to be more open-mined and realize, their way isn't the only right way. What you grew up learning might be completely different from what the guy from India or even the guy across the street grew up learning.
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