Reply To: General thought on old coal mines.

[emmetb]

Rezwan wrote:
According to the book “The Optimistic Child”, the most important social skills are Assertiveness and Problem solving. (Assertiveness is a “useful midpoint between passivity and aggression”).

I’m all for people standing up for themselves. If you do this often enough, early enough and skillfully enough you can head violence off and have a really nice, functional world.

The most important social skill is altruism. The ability to identify with others that are far removed from yourself. How wide a circle are you willing to draw?

The absolute extrema of this is directed panspermia:
http://www.physorg.com/news184915200.html
To dedicate our enginuity and our resources to ensure the survival of the simplest and hardiest of life. A beatiful way to recognize our general insignificance and our greatest significance at the same time. Only very few people would raly behind that idea. Certainly not the most aggressive ones. While the rest of humanity is busy fighting over the last remaining resources. It might just be this kind of altruistic act that leaves the biggest imprint on history, on a cosmological scale.