In Chapter 6, we elaborate on the difficulties that may arise in perspective taking. These depend on individual, contextual, and textual variables. Among the individual factors are motivation, cognitive skills and capacities, and empathic dispositions. Variations in the situation and context, such as available information and feedback, can affect perspective taking. Specific difficulties include: the failure to identify relevant personal knowledge and experience, inconsistent and conflicting perspectives, problems reconciling a character’s perspective with the reader’s own evaluations, and/or the relationship of the reader’s cultural background to that of the character. Subtleties in the text, such as multiple perspectives, unreliable perspectives, and multiple perspective-taking targets, pose their own challenges.

Innovations of the Anthropocene rely on expanded group agency. Popular culture, growing first through literacy, brought successful antislavery campaigns. A spate of twentieth-century media highlighted celebrities, reaching across family and ethnic lines. New knowledge arose at both general and specialized levels. Literacy and the internet have now reached most adults, while specialized knowledge, in disciplines within universities and institutes, confirms human biological equality. Yet results can be contradictory: patents enabled monopolization of knowledge, while open-source computing brought its sharing. The juncture of popular culture with the exchanges of knowledge created a global discourse: indeed, a democratic discourse, in that more and more participated. Topics ranged across the claims of indigenous peoples, the meaning of equality, gender issues, environmental worries, and religious views. Ideologies conflicted, since social priorities and perspectives varied, yet debate continued. This trajectory yields a call for global debate more than for world government – a balance among multiple perspectives rather than delegation to a global elite.