What does everyone in the world know?

There are some things that are common sense, sure. Things everyone knows. Like “fire is hot”. Or “don’t use a hairdryer in the bathtub”. But then there are also people who have no common sense, no sense at all. People who are, for all intents and purposes, a vegetable.

I am friends with a couple who have such a child — he’s a boy, aged eight. And he can’t really do anything beyond what a newborn could do. It’s heartbreakingly tragic. But it is for this reason that I am not keen on phrases like “things that everyone in the world knows”. Because some people, by some cruel fault in their genetic design, know nothing, and never will. They don’t know whether or not water is hot or cold. They don’t know hot hurts and cold refreshes. They don’t know what they should or should not put into their mouths. They do not know your name, and they do not know theirs.

There are basic facts, common knowledge. But no knowledge is truly universal. Every child is born a blank slate… but some blank slates never get filled in. They remain blank, forever.