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Thanks for the pointer to the thread... it's a lovely one.
Some random thoughts...

Just to close the loop: I was reminded m_s's recent post about mental illness when reading a bit recently about defining sanity in terms of flexibility, satiability, and the capacity for extrapolation... which, in turn, your thread on plastic paradigms reminded me of.

I try not to underestimate the power of setting a good example. Your parents may not be activists, but it doesn't follow that they aren't "doing" anything towards affecting the larger world. Of course, I don't know your parents.

Absolutely agreed about both the value and the scarcity of cognitive flexibility -- the ability to construct multiple interpretations of an observation, multiple evaluations of a proposition, etc. I think it's also closely related to the ability to say "I might be wrong" -- that is, to have useful passion without requiring closed-minded certainty. Of course, it's not an all-or-nothing trait... a lot of people are flexibly minded in some contexts; few (if any) are equally flexibly minded in all contexts.

I'm not sure what would happen if a significant fraction of the population -- say, upward of a third -- were significantly flexibly minded about their lives. I suspect it would radically restructure a lot of our infrastructure, and not necessarily in good ways. Predictability is sometimes a virtue in large communities/organizations; when you make a lot of exceptions, a lot of energy gets sunk into managing the interfaces.
I want to believe that the net increase in technical innovation, in creative aesthetics (both supply and demand), in the ability of groups to notice and address what's actually going on around them, etc. would make up for the increased chaos and demands on the system's attention. I really, really do. But I'm not at all convinced... and even if it would, I'm not sure the transition would be anything but catastrophic.
If I had the magic wand that would make everybody significantly flexibly-minded, I'm not sure I'd use it.