CONCEPT
Common Sense (Gramscian)
The disorganized, sedimented, contradictory aggregate of ideas that constitutes the worldview of people who do not think of themselves as having a worldview — the water the fish breathes.
Common sense, for Gramsci, is not systematic philosophy. It is the inherited wisdom of the age, absorbed through a thousand interactions with institutions, platforms, narratives, and social pressures, never examined as a whole because it is never experienced as a whole. It is the sedimented residue of centuries of ideological work, presenting itself as simply the way things are. The AI transition has produced a new digital common sense with extraordinary speed — assumptions about inevitability, individual adaptation, market distribution, and technological neutrality that function as obvious truths rather than contestable claims. Understanding how this common sense is manufactured, through what institutions and by what organic intellectuals, is the precondition of contesting it.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Gramsci distinguished common sense (senso comune) from what he called good sense (buon senso) — the kernel of critical reflection that can be developed from within common sense through disciplined philosophical work. Common sense is not simply wrong; it contains