Oh, this looks like fun. ... No, this is beautiful.

OK, get over the materialism. That's goo...

"Moderation"... balance is good and humility can help with it but there are more reasons for humility, such as avoiding being destroyed by arrogance, the favorite madness of many ages used by the Gods to destroy men that annoy them. While balance is very visible in Eastern cultures, Ying and Yang, etc., it's less visible in Western culture. So I asked a docent at Delphi and she said that "oh no, it is inherent in the meaning of the Temple of Apollo". Good, though you might not know it, but I guess the Maxims carved on its walls do say that..

"Civilization", "survive"... cool. I thought that this would be fun. Those are my topics.

"It’s to become shepherds of life." ... Well, yes. That translates to "be moral", perhaps to "be a moral leader". Morality is how we sustain human life strategically.

"It lacks compassion." and that is the crust of the biscuit, but it is going to take more than good intentions to solve that problem. Nature has no compassion. It is human thing and must be defined and implemented by humans.

"America’s a weirdly cruel place." Nature red of tooth and claw beats it out for cruelty any day. Like compassion, only human thought can escape that cruelty.

"to illustrate the link between industry and compassion" No, no, no... Industry is not the root cause. If you don't go for the root cause you will fail. That is so much of recent history where humanity has shown real compassion and not been able to achieve it's goal.

"It’s just…talking to people." That it were so easy... but close.

"I felt grief" and many feel grief for the human state.

"I got to know Rosie." That is on the right track, but I say there is more that must be understood.

"compassion muscle" Oh, I love it, but it's only a short term fix. It's very like saying exercise your "gratitude muscle". ... It is pretty widely accepted that being grateful is the best way to achieve happiness. More is needed than either though.

"the most important thing you can have is compassion for yourself." So people tell me, but unfortunately to achieve what I want, I have to be pretty harsh.

(I ALWAYS found it interesting that Pride is included in the 20 Virtues as well as the Seven Deadly Sins.)

"So what’s real empathy for others?"

"Mass extinction is. And if they go? We go." Yes indeedy, that's perhaps the problem to focus on.

"we are going to need to reinvent everything." Agreed, but how are you going to describe that "everything"? What context will it be? What tool can we use to organize that data?

"Wisdom" So once you have a way to organize that data, what must you learn from it?

"Seven generations" I really like the time frame, but what happens in seven generation? What does your wisdom tell you. (I'm guessing two generations myself. Humanity does need to grow up some.)

"Rawlsian Veil makes it super clear how foolish our path is." Again, I think there is a far better tool. You are talking about life and extinction. What tool is meant to explore just that?

“Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.” Well, sure, but you can learn from the wisdom others suffered for.

"Virtues are all moral duties," Sure, but what is moral and don't quote Aristotle to me. The philosophers know they can't answer that but it must be answered. I can tell you if you want, but you will not ask. Know that you will not find it with the reason and logic that are the primary tools of philosophers and scientists. It takes a different knowledge, older and harder that can only be achieved by developing "moral muscles" ... or maybe neural nets.

"All the mighty, terrible, grief of extinction." Oh yeah. Now that would be immoral. Ask anyone if they feel that we are in a moral crisis and most will answer "yes" quite emphatically. That is a clue. Somehow they do know. This "this pulse of fear and pain" comes from your moral nature of learning and instinct. What does it know and how? To answer that takes other tools, the tools I said that have been developed to understand life. This article is brilliant to the level of poetic but I do not believe it will lead to the wisdom you seek. You need another tool.