How about you actually try to learn butchering a hog and stop complaining how hard it is? It took me about two hogs and a good teacher to get it sufficiently right, and I was a ten-year old kid back then. Claiming that simple things like that take years to learn is writing rich literature. Earning a living doing skill X takes a lot longer, but learning those skills is not a big trouble. If you've had an active rural childhood with good parents most of those skills are "completed" very early.
Writing a good poem and planning an invasion takes some maturity, but those should be interpreted similarly. Learn about basic logistics and doing projects and then you can plan an invasion. Making things more complicated than they are is just another way to do nothing at all. Learning takes some time and effort, if it's too much for you I understand, but don't discourage others with your weak excuses while thinking that you must become a specialist in every field to become a generalist.
> He was a bit pro-military for my tastes, but I hope you get the idea.
I was trying to emphasize the point being made to you: the particular skills listed aren't relevant to the point of the need for general skills (the idea I hoped you would get) but instead relevant to all the people around the protagonist in the novel (which has a military slant due to the author). I'm quoting literature to show evidence that the debate is old, that was the entire point of my post; what am I supposed to quote except something that someone wrote? People like quoting literature for reasons like that: evidence that an idea is general, old and timeless, that our ancestors were grappling with the same ideas, that it isn't settled and probably never will be.
