Social Skills

A new cultural emphasis designed to replace the ability to do one's job well. Since industrial talent distrubutes unevenly across certain gender and racial bounderies, the disparity creates an opportunity for unscrupulous politicians to manipuate the situation emotionally (demagoguery) and take power. The approach relies on research such as Dunbar's "Social Brain Hypothesis," in which the scientist shows that the human brain evolved to be larger in order to have greater "Machiavellian Intelligence," or to be able to better manipulate social situations. It's all about conniving and fucking people to get to the top. The foil of someone with bad "social skills" is the clumsy engineer. However, people tend to forget that the engineer works exceptionally hard, is brilliant at constructing civilizations, and does not become a military dictator easily. Politicians with great "social skills" are the usual suspects. People who promote social skills, things like "EQ," nearly always come at it from a humanitarian angle. They will try to claim that people without social skills are insensitive, mean, or have no "common sense." While this might have some merit, it neglects a critical piece of information. Empathy is not a one-way highway. It allows a mother to take care of a child. It also allows a slick used car salesman to take advantage of an elderly person. It also allows Joseph Stalin to murder 100 million Russian peasants.