Skills come at different levels. One well-known heuristic is to define mastery as the result of 10.000 hours of practice. This is generally not true. Of course "practice makes perfect", but hours may be far less important than innate ability, genuine enjoyment and interest in the activity, and plenty of fooling/playing around. And skills differ in complexity. Learning chess involves becoming very good in the application of a few rules applied on a finite 64-square board. Becoming a grand-master in chess is definitely impressive, since it entails being able to beat many more opponents than are able to beat you. But grandmaster-level chess skills is of limited real-world relevance (although chess-playing skills will, like any other skill, transfer to other domains).
But is it possible to become a grandmaster in farming? How does one define mastery in farming? Farmers typically make their 10.000 hours in five or more years. So is every experience farmer a grandmaster? Probably not. A more useful way is to define skill levels as the level of (in)dependence/autonomy the farmer — and in fact anyone — has in conducting daily affairs.
To adult
Interestingly the English language language defines the verb "to adult" as:
behave in a way characteristic of a responsible adult, especially by accomplishing mundane but necessary tasks
So "to adult" corresponds to taking responsibility of mundane and necessary tasks that allow one to responsibly take care of one’s own life and contribute to the life of others. These tasks are clearly not the tasks that "manage and transform work or study contexts that are complex, unpredictable and require new strategic approaches" that university, and in general schooling, prepares for.
The School of Thought focuses on mundane skills like gardening, healthy and sustainable living, releasing your mind from low quality opinions, and repairing or building your house. These are the mundane and basic skills that are the defining features for (mental) adulthood.
Satisfying these helps to "behave in a way characteristic of a responsible adult, especially by accomplishing mundane but necessary tasks". It makes sense to separate (at least) three levels of "to adult": a subadult level characteristic of children, a basic adult level characterized by partially satisfying the condition above, and a full adult level that fully satisfies the condition.
Three skill levels
These levels correspond mainly to different levels of (In)dependence, broad competences, and responsibility:
- Subadult level: high dependence on others, minimal proven competence, mainly transferred responsibility
- Basic adult level: partial independence, mid level proven competence, some responsibility taken
- Full adult level: high level of independence, high level of proven competence, high level of responsibility form own actions.
The following table gives concrete examples of what this in practice entails. Note: this is in part a summary table of material in the vision section of this site and the associated scientific articles.
| Aspect of life | Subadult level | Basic adult level | Full adult level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meals | Ordering a meal by phone | Cooking a meal from (super)market ingredients | Cooking a mail from self-produced food |
| Housing | Ordering someone to repair a broken system at home | Repairing the broken system | Replacing the broken system by a self-constructed alternative |
| Health | Eating and behaving in compliance with social and commercial norms | Having personal health habits | Having an tested and optimized personal health strategy |
| Clothing | Replacing clothing in need of repair | Self-repairing clothing | Making or changing clothing |
| Opinions | Being offended by conflicting opinions of outgroups and demanding ingroup authority to protect you from them | Being able to develop and defend your own unique opinion through the combination of multiple sources | Being able to continually criticize and improve the realism of one’s own opinion in dialogue with the expertise of others |
| Emotion management | Being easily and often offended or hurt when expectations do not match real world outcomes | Being able to respond to most daily situations gracefully, but being hurt or offended regularly | Being able to deal with life’s up’s and down gracefully and equably |
| Child rearing | Teaching children societally expected behaviors | Teaching children to take partial responsibility and some level of independence | Teaching children to become fully responsible and skilled individuals |
| Relation to environment | Environment exists to satisfy needs | Environment is partially maintained | Environment is shaped and |
| Informing | Accepting the ingroup norm uncritically | Informing oneself actively within a mainstream media bubble | Actively challenging norms and information to discover where they makes no sense |
| (In)dependence | High dependence on others, minimal proven competence, mainly transferred responsibility | Partial independence, mid level proven competence, some responsibility | High level of independence, high level of proven competence, high level of responsibility |