by Waqas Ahmed
Most, if not all, people are multifaceted. To what extent each facet is exercised and how they all manifested varies, and it is this that determines the level and nature of one’s polymathy. Traditional Hindu philosophy, for example, suggests four ways of pursuing personal fulfilment: knowledge (jnana yoga), work (karma yoga), love (bhakthi yoga) and psycho-physical training (raj yoga). In modern life, many-sidedness in an individual can manifest in several ways: their personality, conduct, ethics, professions, avocational interests, personal life, life experiences, cultural outlook or linguistic background. Being a good or accomplished spouse, son, parent, sibling or lover, for example, are all acts or roles that are usually taken for granted — but these really ought to be factored into the polymathic equation as they too are distinct areas of pursuit and accomplishment in their own right.
Knowing this, anyone can, in their own way employ and exercise their many facets: the physical — whether through sports or exercise, food or sex; the intellectual — whether through formal education, self-learning or a simple moment of serious reflection; the spiritual — whether through worship, mysticism or contemplation, inspired by nature, art or the divine; the creative — whether painting a masterpiece or playing with your children, listening to music or composing it; the emotional — by expressing your feelings in various ways to those that matter; and the practical — dealing with day to day matters of health, finance, logistics, handiwork, social relations and general survival. In doing so, the likelihood of hidden talents being unveiled or new passions being developed increases exponentially.
However one groups or categorises these facets, it is important to recognise that they exist, are multifarious and ought to be nurtured in a way that allows for a rounded character and life experience. A multifaceted life, in making the whole individual more than the sum of his parts, is significantly more likely to be a polymathic one. This is especially true if one seeks to diversify their experiences.
Diversifying Experiences
British broadcaster Patrick Moore was known as a ‘serial amateur’ — an astronomer, chess player, cricketer, golfer, soldier, actor and novelist. He was not recognised as a world-expert at any of these activities, nor did he make any serious contribution to either. But he did live an exceptionally diverse and colourful life, entering different spheres of knowing and being, be it through sports, military, art, science or literature and thereby acquiring a uniquely rounded insight into the world. Similarly, American writer George Plimpton was an avid birdwatcher, fireworks enthusiast, actor, journalist, literary critic and amateur multi-sportsman who recorded his experiences of participating in professional competitions in American football, ice hockey, baseball, tennis, boxing and even bridge and high-wire circus performing!
More than ‘jacks of all trades,’ the likes of Moore and Plimpton were instead ‘masters of variety.’ Spreading thin does not necessarily make one any less polymathic. Each experience, however brief, and especially if it is in a field completely new to the person, adds to his roundedness and overall personal, professional, intellectual, physical and spiritual development.
Should one be discouraged from skydiving just because it lasts only minutes and you’re not likely to pursue it professionally? Should one be discouraged from reading a book on cultural history just because they’re not going to go ahead and write their own book on it or study for a Ph.D. in it? The answer most people would give is no; because every learning experience one has counts in their lives, and it can often go on to prove beneficial to them or to society in some big or small way. In short, diversifying your experiences not only makes life outstandingly colourful, but also enriches it in ways only hindsight can tell.
Open-mindedness, particularly regarding oneself, is an important state of being which naturally encourages the diversification of experience. Juli Crockett, who has been an athlete, playwright, musician and scholar, recognised this: ‘I try not to ‘label” myself as any one thing, to limit my self-perception. You have to be willing to be awful at something in order to get any good at it. If you limit yourself to things you are “safe” with and know you’re good at in advance, it’s a short list. If you’re willing to try anything once, and to be mediocre at something, then you’ll do a lot of stuff. Lifestyle experimenter A.J. Jacobs, who lives his life as a series of various experiments, insists that ‘you should always say yes to adventures, or you’ll live a very dull life.’
Moreover, diversity can play an important role in individual fulfilment. The more diverse one’s knowledge and experiences, the better chance you have at arriving at insightful decisions and creative solutions. This way, a jack of all trades becomes a master of insight. It is the diversity of one’s knowledge, skills and experiences that allows for a unique insight into various fields, and particularly the core field. Ideas and moments of genius emerge from the subconscious fusion of an assortment of existing thoughts, memories and cognitive skills.
These experiences can come in the form of moments, jobs, hobbies or just incidents. Hobbies, for example, are not mere pastimes, but contribute importantly toward shaping your intellectual being. They are an integral part of the jigsaw puzzle that is you. Most often, they will contribute toward enhancing another aspect of your life, sometimes without you even realising. We have seen this from the genius of Nobel science prize-winning hobbyists, as well as from multi-careered business leaders, statesmen and philosophers, many of whom acknowledge the influence of ‘peripheral’ activities and former careers in their respective breakthrough ideas.
Notwithstanding the predominant culture of hyper-specialisation, budding polymaths today find themselves on an exciting playing field. The modern world provides ample opportunity to diversify your experiences. One can travel much more easily, buy affordable books, engage in conversations with a range of people about a range of matters, and learn new skills. Most importantly though, it allows people to understand how the world is interconnected: how economies interact, how particular cultures and philosophies play into the local politics, how art has developed in one continent in relation to another, how morals are sourced in different societies, how nature has to take its current form, how sports and businesses are feeding our tribal instincts, how technology has both propelled and trapped us. It can provide a better understanding of how different forms of government operate, how the disparity between rich and poor came to grow exponentially, how different races and languages emerged from a common ancestor and why English emerged from being a small north-west European tribal dialect to one spoken by over a billion people and more. In short, it encourages us to live more conscious lives.
Generally though, diversifying experiences simply makes life more colourful, more fun. Moreover, diversity of experience is just as important for learning about yourself as it is for learning about the world. It is a significant part of the introspective journey.
Even for those eager to specialise, spending ample time diversifying experiences will provide a better idea of what to eventually focus on. ‘Do not consider anything you have done in the past as a waste,’ says Robert Greene, author of Mastery, the bestselling investigation into the common traits of the great masters in history. ‘Even the most menial jobs will teach you lessons and skills you can later exploit and combine.’ Indeed, some societies in history recognised the value of diversity to a specialist role: a muezzin (caller to prayer) in eleventh-century Andalucía had to be well versed in astronomy, linguistics, philosophy, musicology and a number of other disciplines before he could be considered for a job as a muezzin (considered an ultra-specialist position) at a major mosque.
Orit Gadeish, chairperson of the global strategy consulting firm Bain and Company, is a generalist who has worked with clients in almost every industry. ‘You have to be willing to “waste time” on things that are not directly related to your work because you are curious,’ she insists. ‘But then you are able to, sometimes unconsciously, integrate them back into what you do.’ Robert Twigger, journa
list, adventurer and author of Micromastery who found himself having to improvise in a variety of challenging situations around the world, agrees: ‘The more fields of knowledge you cover, the greater your resources for improvisation.’ This is because various experiences, feelings and data are left to ‘incubate’ or ‘ferment’ in the unconscious, a kind of inadvertent synthesis, until a flash of insight explodes into existence in the form of a major idea.
The surrealism experienced by everyone through dreams or other subconscious experiences is demonstrative of the fact that imagination and creativity is naturally a part of the human capability. It also demonstrates the natural hybridity of thoughts, experiences and ideas — the random fusion of different elements of human thought that lead to the construction of a new reality. This, indeed, is what art is. Some would even consider this the source (or product) of spirituality.
A Thought-Action Mentality
Knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity.
— Al-Ghazali
Experience enhances the intellect, and vice versa. As the youngest MLA in the country at the age of 25, Shrikant Jichkar was elected to the Indian parliament before serving as Minister for various government departments and on various committees dealing with issues as varied as finance, irrigation, tax, transport, power, patents and planning. As a man of action, he also founded the HAM Radio Association, worked on effective disaster management for flood victims around India, and became one of the country’s most prominent priests.
It was during his professional career that Jichkar simultaneously pursued the path of vast scholarship, spending every summer and winter between 1972 and 1990 writing (a total of 42) exams for various advanced degree qualifications. He eventually attained 20 postgraduate degrees including an MBBS (medicine), LLM (law), MBA (business) as well as Masters Degrees in public administration, sociology, history, philosophy, English literature, political science, archaeology, psychology and a Litt. D. in Sanskrit — ultimately becoming the most academically qualified person in modern history. Unsurprisingly, he had one of the biggest personal libraries in India, with over 52,000 books.
Jichkar was a doer, who consistently incorporated the process of thinking throughout his studies. Ludwig Wittgenstein, on the other hand took the opposite approach: he was a thinker who made it a point to incorporate real action into his life. He began his career as an aeronautical engineer, but soon diverted his attention toward mathematics and particularly the philosophy of mathematics. He studied under Bertrand Russell at Cambridge, who was particularly impressed by the young philosopher’s genius. His main scholarly contributions were in the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, as well as in logic and psychology. Although his published output was not as voluminous as his fellow academics, he is still considered one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.
But philosophy, he insisted ‘is not a theory but an activity,’ and he often felt compelled to retreat from academia into the ‘real world’ for this reason. During World War I he served as an officer in the Austrian army and was decorated several times for his courage, and during World War II he worked as a hospital orderly in London to satisfy his urge for social and manual work. He also spent time working as a teacher and gardener. Furthermore, he gained renown for his photography (his work has recently been exhibited at the London School of Economics and at Cambridge University) and his architecture (he designed and built his own house), stressing the importance of visualisation and aestheticism to philosophy as a scholarly discipline.
These days the ‘thinker’ and the ‘doer’ are separated — it is assumed that leaders don’t have the time to muse and intellectuals don’t have the pragmatism of the leader. But like Churchill, Smuts and Roosevelt, some of the most influential leaders in history have been scholar-statesmen who engaged in leadership roles as well as being polymathic intellectuals.
At the pinnacle of the Roman Empire, polymaths played active roles in society as well as making invaluable contributions to scholarship. According to historian of ideas Peter Watson, they were interested in ‘utilitas,’ the usefulness of ideas, the power they could bring to affairs. They were thus practical philosophers — scholars in the sciences, humanities and the arts, but who also held public offices and contributed to society as soldiers, jurists, governors, librarians and politicians. Their philosophical investigations supported their professional careers and vice versa. Marcus Tullius Cicero enjoyed equal acclaim as a politician, lawyer and orator as well as a scholar of language, philosophy and political science. Pliny the Elder was not only an important statesman and military leader during the reign of Vespasian, but also the author of the Naturalis Historia, one of the most comprehensive encyclopaedias to have survived from the Roman era, and also made contributions to history and grammar.
Similarly in the Islamic world, the polymath existed both as a thinker and a doer — an approach evidently inspired by the Quran and its articulator. Ziauddin Sardar, who conducted a thorough study of the Quran in his book Reading the Quran concludes: ‘I have come to see the Qur’an as a text that simultaneously promotes thinking and doing.’ With practical realities such as warfare, governance and trade at the heart of the empire (or empires, as they became), Muslim polymaths tended also to have excelled in society in practical as well as intellectual roles — as merchants, soldiers, jurists, diplomats, physicians and imams. Many of the greatest polymaths in history — Leonardo, Franklin, Kuo, Robeson, Tagore, Schweitzer, Goethe, Morris, Rizal, Imhotep and Chen — demonstrated the same tendency.
This type of polymathy is perhaps the most impressive and valuable to society as it demonstrates both intellectual and experimental versatility, as well as the use of various sources of knowledge. Yet some societies have been bent on separating the thinker and the doer, often valuing one at the expense of the other. A vivid example of this was during the Industrial Revolution in Britain, when there was a stark distinction between the bourgeois intellectual and the working class labourer. British polymath John Ruskin famously voiced his frustration at this:
We want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers and miserable workers. Now it is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.
The world has not changed much in this regard. Society still likes to separate the thinkers and the doers — so much so that it seems natural for be people to fall into either category. How common is it to have a fireman who is also a historian of art or a theologian who also works as a car mechanic? How many intellectuals rely on corporations and governments to enact their ideas and how many businessmen and statesman rely on intellectuals to advise them and ghost-write their books?
The status of both thinker and doer must be equalised, as it was during the times when merchants, musicians and artisans were regarded as highly as poets, philosophers and historians and consequently when societies were at their most vibrant, creative and polymathic. One should recognise that both thought and action have equal value to individual and societal development; and that each are required, to varying degrees, to excel in any profession.
Chinese philosopher and polymath Zhu Xi said that knowledge and action were indivisible components of truly intelligent activity. ‘Knowledge and action always require each other,’ he said. ‘It is like a person who cannot walk without legs although he has eyes, and who cannot see without eyes although he has legs.’ Some people undergo a more reflective period in their lives at one stage, and at another prefer a more hands-on occupation. An inbuilt capacity to both think and do exists in all of us, even if incli
nations and tendencies may vary according to circumstances and societal influence.
Managing Time
A life well spent is long.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Life is not short. Indian intellectual Khushwant Singh, who died recently in his 100th year, was active to the very end and had successful sequential careers as a lawyer, diplomat, historian, politician, novelist and journalist. Singh had a long life, and according to forecasts by physician and transhumanist Terry Grossman, imminent advances in biotechnology will slow the aging process considerably in decades to come.
But even today, a healthy individual living in good conditions has, on average, around seventy-five years on this planet. That is approximately 45 ‘operational’ years (assuming that active, professional life lasts from age 20 to 65), which is just under 400,000 hours total. A third of this we spend sleeping, which leaves us with some 270,000 hours of awake time. Modern biologists insist we need six to eight hours of sleep a day, but some of the most accomplished people in the world swear they need much less, and that we can train our bodies to operate effectively on little sleep.
But even if we do sleep a lot, according to the ‘10,000 hours to achieve world-class success’ theory (popularised by Malcolm Gladwell), we still theoretically have enough time to excel in up to 27 different fields! In reality though, most people like to allocate a substantial amount of time to their social and family lives. Perhaps a more realistic way of looking at it is that 10,000 hours constitutes the number of full-time working hours in a five-year period (40 hours multiplied by 50 weeks, then multiplied by 5). Before the standard age of retirement, the average person has up to eight five-year periods in their working lives. This means that theoretically one can have eight successful careers in completely different fields, sequentially, without any overlaps.
