One way to be a generalist is to have—or at least asymptotically approach—what I call a “stable mind.” A stable mind is one that need not revise itself on receiving new information, defined as anything anyone else has ever known. (This is as opposed to a closed mind, which may need to revise itself—but doesn’t.)
Suppose, like Stendhal, I could join the Grand Army on the retreat from Moscow. Due perhaps to some ingenious time machine. Would this alter my opinion of the human condition? Suppose I then worked as a taxi driver in present-day Cairo, went straight from there to the Reichsbank in 1936 where I was private secretary to Hjalmar Schacht, served as a district officer in the ICS under Lord Lytton, studied Byzantine law in Constantinople sometime in the late 1200s, ran the catering for Mansa Musa’s hajj in 1324, apprenticed as a goldsmith in 18th-century Salonica, learned poetry from Yvor Winters in 1967, and fought as a captain in the Rhodesian SAS for most of the late ’70s?
Obviously, I have not had any of these experiences, however, I’d like to think that adding them to my present fund of experience would not change much of how I see the world.