This expression tells us how little we listen to how we feel. In our quest for speed and efficiency, we have forfeited our feelings. Negative feelings can trigger a cascade of stress hormones that accelerate the heart rate, shut down the immune system, and encourage blood clotting. Popular prescriptions are the platitudes and proverbs by which people live their lives. It is these dicta that determine who they are and how they act.
Popular prescriptions define their intellectual and moral makeup.
Dull-witted speakers and writers depend on prescriptions like these to guide them through life. For this poor populace, life is, we may surmise, laid out. From the popular or proper course, there is scant deviation. A stray thought is, for them, a gray thought. Popular prescriptions endure not for their sincerity but for their simplicity.