regards,
Matthew

Compassion-of-the-other (someone or something different from our own family unit) is the thing which is NOT being taught to children at any stage of development, and is a key to our survival.

Don’t all parents teach their kids to be good citizens and behave compassionate to others whether they know them or not?

I agree with your earlier statement that infants are egoistical and dependant and must be taught affection for others, co-operation and so on (all though there are of course individual differences – not all kids are the same). I think the same applies to altruistic traits – the compassion for strangers. Infants don’t have it and they don’t grow it by themselves… they learn it.

But I do hope that this will also end “common sense” concept that war was a male invention: We as homo sapiens, probably killed off the other homo erectus rivals like Neanderthals, which ended-up as “dead-ends”. It could have been females who encouraged, striking the “next-tribe-over”, for security reasons. The females had the co-operation of the brute force needed, just like today.

But in public this idea is seen as ridiculous by both women & men. Why? “Male pride”

Perhaps most interesting is the axolotl. There is a theory called the Aquatic Ape hypothesis. Born of the idea that modern man evolved distinct form our ape cousins because we lived in a water dominated environment (leading to our hairless bodies, “hooded” noses, larger brains?, etc) – this theory fits well with neoteny as it suggests we may have needed adolescent traits (perhaps going as far back as taking some of the traits of our amphibian-like foetus) to survive in a significantly different environment.