Fully Mature, Fully Developed
Both in The Primal Primer and in Core Human Competence I use the terms "fully mature" and "fully developed". I don't provide a specific definition in the book as I want you to apply your definition - your ideal has a more powerful effect in motivating you.
That said, some people have indicated they struggle to define these concepts. So, today I will offer how I use them.
Definitions
Fully Mature: The biological state of an individual organism representing the genetic physiological, psychological, cognitive, and perceptual expression at which point the organism no longer requires intraspecies subsidy to exist and at which point the individual organism is capable of sustaining itself without externalizing costs onto it's species, within the biological limits of its species.
Fully Developed: The state of an individual representing its maximum expression of agency and autonomy within the biological limits of its species.
In short, my "fully mature, fully developed adult human" has achieved a state of independent, autonomous, agency.
Physiological Maturity
Physiological maturity is achieved when one is capable of independently navigating one's own physical environment. Physical navigation includes both overcoming environmental obstacles as well as kinetic threats. Subsidy of physical maturity includes everything from a caregiver carrying a young child upstairs, to adults childproofing the environment, to training wheels on a bicycle to support a lack of balance, to being limited to one's parents for genetic continuity in the form of siblings until the individual is reproductively viable. The physiologically mature individual obtains the state of General Physical Preparedness - able to successfully navigate physical danger and challenges.
Psychological Maturity
Psychological maturity is achieved when one is capable of regulating predictive emotions, emotions formed aligning pattern recognition with anticipated states. Emotional regulation allows us to respond to predictive cues in our environment instead of being limited to reacting to trigger signals. Subsidy of psychological maturity takes the form of limiting exposure to trauma, practicing emotional containering, external regulation of emotions, and the extension of forbearance for childhood's behavioral flexibility by caregivers. The psychologically mature individual obtains the state of General Psychological Preparedness - able to effectively classify changes in states in their environment and the people in it.
Cognitive Maturity
Cognitive maturity is achieved when one is capable of separating concepts from the abstractions of the concepts to facilitate making contextually relevant decisions about those concepts. This disambiguation permits one to extract the focus, or variable, of a concept, discern the potential states that variable may exist in, and identify the operations that change those states - all to facilitate navigating, making decisions about, the impact of those state changes on that individual. Subsidy of cognitive maturity largely takes the form of limiting decision-making to the appropriate level of cognitive development. The cognitively mature individual obtains the state of General Cognitive Preparedness - able to consistently and successfully apply decidability.
Perceptual Maturity
Perceptual maturity is achieved when one is capable of regulating attention to consistently identify the cues, inputs, and signals of changes in states within their environment and capable of regulating immediate emotions, those formed aligning pattern recognition with cues, inputs, and signals directly from one's environment. Perceptual maturity is the development of intuition and practice of Limbic Fitness - attention regulation, emotional regulation, and efficacy in utilizing environmental signals. Subsidy of perceptual maturity is in many ways what parents spend most of their time doing. Keeping children in a safe environment. Looking for dangers that may threaten children. Helping them cross the street. Having them go through a training period for driving with another adult driver in the vehicle to guide them. Subsidy of perceptual maturity is also where we've gone far overboard into unhealthy compensating. We make laws and set up systems separating us so completely from perceptual maturity we can walk down city streets staring at our phones paying almost no attention to our surroundings. We depend on algorithms to filter our attention for us. We wait for credentials authorities to interpret the cues, inputs, and signals in our environments. All things that would get animals in any other environment killed. One's perceptual maturity is the interface between themselves and the entire rest of the world. The perceptually mature individual is situationally aware, able to analyze the behavior of others, appropriately emotionally reactive taking action when conditions change. The more complete one's perceptual maturity the more time one gives themselves for every other aspect of maturity to operate. The perceptually mature individual obtains the state of General Perceptual Preparedness, able to read and pick up on the indicators of state changes and effectively navigate those changes.
Agency
Agency consists of a wide spectrum representing a level of ownership of our incentives. We have some level of agency for each incentive we may encounter. There are three broad categories of incentives:
Acquisition: the pursuit of positive conditions
Ambivalence: indifference towards neutral conditions
Avoidance: the evasion of negative conditions
Autonomy
Autonomy consists of a narrow spectrum representing a level of ownership of our actions. We have some level of autonomy for every action we may undertake.
Like our aspects of maturity, agency and autonomy are mutually inclusive and support each other. A complete loss of one negates the other.
For example:
I may be in complete control over my motives (full agency across all incentives), but if I am in a coma (no autonomy in any action) my free will is expressed development is effectively zero.
I may have perfect bodily control across all physical domains (full autonomy across all actions), but if psychologically conditioned to only follow orders (no agency in any incentive) my expressed development is effectively zero.
Why This Matters
The first goal of Core Human Competence is to develop a foundation of Physiological Fitness, Psychological Fitness, Cognitive Fitness, and Perceptual Fitness (Limbic Fitness) to restore healthy human adulthood as apex adaptive generalists.
The second goal of Core Human Competence is to maximize fitness along each of these domains to maximize individual capacity and competitive fitness and to provide the broadest platform from which to develop agency and autonomy.
The third goal of Core Human Competence is to take fully mature and fully developed human beings and make them dangerously competent. Dangerous to what threatens them. Competent to what challenges them. The dangerous adult human can offer peace. The competent adult human can offer cooperation. Our future demands both.
