Question
What is the single most admirable and socially attractive trait that a person can have?
Answer
For me, no question about it: truth-oriented. Or slightly more accurately, doubt-oriented.
To constantly strive to strip your mind of delusions and falsehoods, to keep groping towards deeper understanding, even if it drives you mad in others' eyes, and makes you miserable.
Historically, this sort of Nietzschean truth-orientedness (not naive "truth" but truth-seeking as creative destruction driven by existential doubt that never stabilizes or goes away) is the philosophical opposite to what appears to be the most common answer: compassion.
Compassion and truth/doubt-orientedness are kinda a yin-yang thing, but most people come down on one side or the other. For the compassionate, the motto is, "it is better to be kind than to be right." For the truth-oriented, it is the opposite. What saves the truth-orientedness from being merely cruel is that they are generally unkindest to themselves, and are rarely unkind if there's even a smidgen of doubt in their actions towards others.
The dichotomy appears to be based in biology. It is what people often call the get ahead/get along (individualism/collectivism) dichotomy: our empathic social nature makes us seek "get along" which requires prioritizing kindness over truth-seeking. "Get ahead" OTOH requires the opposite orientation. But "get ahead" is not to be confused with mere selfishness.
To constantly strive to strip your mind of delusions and falsehoods, to keep groping towards deeper understanding, even if it drives you mad in others' eyes, and makes you miserable.
Historically, this sort of Nietzschean truth-orientedness (not naive "truth" but truth-seeking as creative destruction driven by existential doubt that never stabilizes or goes away) is the philosophical opposite to what appears to be the most common answer: compassion.
Compassion and truth/doubt-orientedness are kinda a yin-yang thing, but most people come down on one side or the other. For the compassionate, the motto is, "it is better to be kind than to be right." For the truth-oriented, it is the opposite. What saves the truth-orientedness from being merely cruel is that they are generally unkindest to themselves, and are rarely unkind if there's even a smidgen of doubt in their actions towards others.
The dichotomy appears to be based in biology. It is what people often call the get ahead/get along (individualism/collectivism) dichotomy: our empathic social nature makes us seek "get along" which requires prioritizing kindness over truth-seeking. "Get ahead" OTOH requires the opposite orientation. But "get ahead" is not to be confused with mere selfishness.