by Piyush Mathur

Some random strangers on social media recently sought my advice on what they could do to become “multi-perspective thinkers.” Their query initially seemed too prosaic to me to be taken seriously; but when I tried to approach it from their perspective, as it were, I realized that they were very likely not being frivolous!

Along the way, I also thought that a query regarding an aspiration to become a multi-perspective thinker might be timely, given the recent rise of narrow-mindedness and intolerance in global politics. At any rate, I told myself that our global political climes have very likely incubated it — and proceeded to honour it by writing this piece for a general reference.

Before the reader goes through the response to the query, I must underline that the term perspective is fairly open-ended when applied to thinking or thought process. The response thus assumes that a multi-perspective thinker may be either or both of the following types of persons:

• somebody who understands that there is more than one way to look at, approach, solve, resolve, or represent something — and that all these ways (constituting perspectives) are worth exploring

• somebody who appreciates the availability of alternative frameworks of study, understanding (whereby such frameworks are understood to constitute perspectives)

The question is how does one transform oneself into a person such as the above?

The seven essentials to becoming a multi-perspective thinker

After due consideration, I came up with a minimal list of seven properties that one must cultivate in oneself in order to become a multi-perspective thinker:

1. Patience

Developing a particular perspective itself requires plenty of patience — alongside the usual investments of time and energy. But if one aspires to become a multi-perspective thinker, then one would need to develop many additional layers of patience in one’s personality. That is because one cannot explore various dimensions of reality — or train oneself to detect and appreciate the presence of multiple perspectives in any given context — in a hurry.

One would need to experience different — apparently unrelated — aspects of life; read around; experiment with oneself and one’s surroundings; and learn from fellow experimenters (including those that conduct laboratory or research experiments). All the above kinds of efforts would require patience.

2. Openness to difference

In connection with patience, one would need to nurture — and even cherish — a radical openness to viewpoints that are different from, and even opposed to, one’s own. One would also need to be open to facts that appear to differ from, even contradict, the ones that one may have previously relied upon to hold on to a given perspective.

If one is too resistant to what others have opined or discovered, then one would remain locked into one’s own perspective. And even if one rejects others’ viewpoints or discoveries — in light of any factual contradictions or errors therein — one would have widened one’s own perspective by exploring them anyway.

3. Emotional endurance

Patience and openness to difference are the two fundamental traits required to develop oneself into a multi-perspective thinker. While these two traits prepare one for the long-term slog of learning and multidirectional awareness, they don’t, in and of themselves, prepare one for the extent of hostilities that one may incur from others in the process. Ergo, one needs a third trait — of emotional endurance — to go with the foregoing two.

In that regard, one would need to develop a large, large stomach for insults — because, let’s face it, most other people surrounding one would remain locked into their own perspectives, or within a seamless groupthink. And the last person they would want to talk to is somebody who has a broader mind — and has things to say that, to them, appear professorial and outlandish for being better informed and sensitive beyond their own, narrow self-interests or chauvinistic collective interest.

Humans trapped inside a singular perspective — be it tied to their religion, profession, culture, age, class, gender, academic discipline or whatever else — are liable to dismiss, humiliate, insult a multi-perspective thinker (and in some rare cases, they are liable even to kill such an individual). So, if one is incapable of enduring a lifetime of insults, and is not ready for the improbability of a physical assault, then one is better off remaining safe inside one’s own tiny little perspective or groupthink.

4. Respect for others’ credentials

Suppose there is a biotech expert called Trinesh, with academic credentials from what he believes is the topmost university in the world. Trinesh assumes that he is above average intellectually — and goes about opining on all manner of things that are studied deeply and systematically by those that would have majored in policy, sociology, psychology, politics, creative writing, culture, or Science and Technology Studies (STS), for example.

A problem that Trinesh may not even recognize is that his opinions are considered intellectually primitive, if not flat-out inaccurate, by people trained in these kinds of fields: just the disciplines that he never thought were worth a second look, in case he knew that they even existed! But these people would challenge him — because his unwittingly casual opinions may have either directly targeted or implicated themes that they are convinced constitute their stock-in-trade.

The point is that if one doesn’t begin to respect others’ credentials and to heed their topical statements, then one won’t become a multi-perspective thinker even if one gets the most lucrative, challenging, or powerful positions in one’s own life. And, integral to this respectful attitude toward others’ credentials would have to be an imaginative allowance for prospective specializations in themes that one may be habituated to considering mundane — and on which one may have come to opine casually, even if passionately.

In sum, as part of one’s transformation into and eventual self-maintenance as a multi-perspective thinker, one must prepare oneself to be both persistently and randomly educated by others on matters that are at a distance, in the first order, from oneself.

5. A scepticism toward credentialism

It is great to respect others’ credentials, but not so great to blindly follow the rhetoric and posture of credentialism. People with the greatest credentials can make the lousiest of mistakes within their precise fields, project their own biases into their observations and conclusion, or may use their credentials to intervene in matters in which they may in fact have a conflict of interests.

Engineers may tout their engineering skills as the solution to a region’s problems but wreck it entirely by applying that solution; an economist may enforce a policy that may unfairly favour a particular class; psychologists, even as a professional class (and not merely as errant individuals), have quite a history of mistreating their patients; historians do not tire of revising the history books written by their predecessors and even colleagues; geographers may represent spaces and populations selectively (projecting their own biases, etc.); and literary editors, critics may spend decades suppressing a manuscript that may eventually come out and become a classic, etc.

So, for somebody aspiring to become a multi-perspective thinker, it is good to respect others’ credentials but not so good to blindly trust others because of their credentials alone. Nor would it be advisable for such a person to completely disregard an opinion on — or approach to resolving an — issue simply because it has been offered by a person lacking the most exalted credentials or any credentials.

A multi-perspective thinker is less likely than a mono-perspective thinker to make either of the above mistakes. Contrariwise, one increases one’s chances at becoming a multi-perspective thinker by developing a scepticism toward credentialism: which is not the same as disrespecting others’ credentials or the notion of credentials quite generally.

6. Alertness and vigilance, not loyalty, toward all perspectives

A multi-perspective thinker walks on burning wood, not on a bed of cold ash. A person aiming to become a multi-perspective thinker must develop an all-season alertness toward not only what she likes and dislikes — be they other thinkers or their thoughts — but also, and especially, toward what she loves.

That is because we all have our limitations; and newer evidence, perspectives keep coming to light — which might contradict some or all of the evidence on which our own perspective may have been based, or dilute its relevance. Times change, and newer perspectives thus come into play. Under such circumstances, a multi-perspective thinker needs to know what is to keep, what is to let go, and why: It is possible that one’s liking — or love — for somebody, some style of thinking, or approach to some theme may have been holding one back from embracing the truth regarding the same.

At the same time, a multi-perspective thinker does not forget a given perspective simply because its factual base has been shredded, or because it has become unfashionable. On the contrary, a multi-perspective thinker — unlike the sheer pursuer of truth — retains contradicted or antiquated perspectives at least as a memory. To such a person all intellectual history is a useful resource — an everlasting companion — to the contemporary landscape of facts, ideas, ideologies, views, viewpoints, notions, and, indeed, perspectives.

That does not mean that a multi-perspective thinker does not pursue truth, or does not know phenomena truthfully; all it means is that she remains interested in, and wishes to remain aware of, the ideational ghosts of the past that may have any relevance to the perspective that commands the greatest fact-based value or status in the present.

Nevertheless, being a multi-perspective thinker, in all honesty, ought not to be confused with being the resolute pursuer of truth: A multi-perspective thinker may or may not compromise with the truth — as a searcher or researcher, that is — even as a resolute pursuer of truth may or may not be a multi-perspective thinker. Moreover, a multi-perspective thinker may also turn up as a confused person — unable to decide which perspective out of the many is correct or the most relevant, or whether making such a decision is even necessary.

A mono-perspective thinker, too, is not to be confused with some resolute pursuer of truth — though she could well be one. The point is that having many, any, or no perspective has no direct, universally unavoidable correlation with one’s access to truth. Perspectival availability, poverty, or riches are of course relevant to truth; however, they have no necessary, direct correlation with it (or with one’s access to it) — and they have even less of a correlation with fact or one’s access to facts.

A mono-perspective thinker may have as much access to a particular truth or fact as a multi-perspective thinker — who may in fact have no access to any truth (though she cannot, under any circumstances, be denied the knowledge of at least some facts: but nor could a mono-perspective thinker be denied the same). That having been said, a mono-perspective thinker would have a far narrower range of facts and opinions to worry about as compared to her multi-perspective counterpart — who is required to be always on the lookout for facts and opinions comprising the entire range of perspectives (on a particular phenomenon) known to her at a given point in time.

7. An irrepressible zeal to cross-learn

To become a multi-perspective thinker, one would need to read across the disciplines; seek the help of those whose disciplines one could not master; live in different (sub)cultures and under different economic circumstances; pay close attention to gaps, contradictions, inconsistencies in any thought or knowledge claims; learn more than one language; learn newer things; and cross-check theory with praxis and vice versa.

Does that mean that the illiterate, the uneducated, and/or the untravelled cannot be multi-perspective thinkers? Well, they can be — so long as their subcultures of birth, growth, and continued existence have afforded them a profound compassion of the heart, an active work routine, and a healthy psychological make-up. However, illiteracy, lack of education, and lack of travel won’t help anybody become a multi-perspective thinker.

Piyush Mathur is the author of Technological Forms and Ecological Communication: A Theoretical Heuristic (Lexington Books, 2017).