Lots of this lock-down business comes down to telling other people what to do. Rather than operating on a principle of personal responsibility whereby we care for ourselves (and maybe family), we are now being pushed into a system wherein every other person is considered a potential threat. The default state is to be fearful and the way in which we get our top-down orders is primarily through the Internet—whether through videos, news sites, etc. Big tech has taken up the role of "fact checker" and many people actively welcome this development.

There is still much each of us is in control over. While many aspects of our lives have been affected—e.g. the places and mode in which we can interact with other people—we still exercise autonomy over our will. For instance, we can make choices in how we direct our attention. Do we spend hours getting worked up emotionally? Do we choose to apply ourselves to learn new skills or do skillful work? Do we exercise patience with those around us?

Worldview and Language Reflection

While studying primarily Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, I remember being somewhat bothered by the fact that for most of the practical things I might be trying to accomplish (e.g. using some software to do some work), the best resources were always in English. Indeed, much of the Internet has been built in the USA, and developers will by default turn to English to write documentation, answer questions on forums, and so forth. Serious programers all around the world use English primarily in their work.

And so I came to the false premise that English was the most useful language ever. In certain domains this is true, but there is a suble assumption underlying this. Namely, there is the assumption of progress of some kind. In the current age, English occupies a very big role, and lots of info about things of now are in English.

Visiting East Asia, I noticed that in any of the three East Asian languages mentioned here, there were many more resources for learning other Asian languages—this includes languages like Vietnamese, Thai, etc. So I found one domain besides Chinese History or something very specific where East Asian languages appeared to be much more useful than English.

A year or so later, learning a bit more about how the Ango-American establishment works, it became evident to me that English is only the best language for certain types of stuff, i.e. knowing the worldview of the Anglo-American establishment. ¹ Indeed, you can read lots of scholarship on say... China... in English. Likewise, on YouTube, you can watch many videos of people speaking Chinese. What you have here is a very biased sample of Chinese. Of course you can learn a lot about China in this way, but it will be from a particular perspective. You are learning what feds want you to think about China and seeing some "neutral" cultural stuff (e.g. cooking) mixed in there.

Now, you could use Chinese to discuss about all sorts of things that are considered politically incorrect in English. Of course, you don't want to go around in China and discuss certain political topics—we all know what some of these are. But it is simply naïve thinking to presume America/Western Europe isn't full of taboos.

Domains where English is not dominant

To find domains where English is not dominant, you need to ask what sorts of things do Americans/Anglos NOT know about. The histories of countries around the world and the day-to-day lives of non-Coca Cola sipping people is one place to start. Ask a question like, "what was life like in Byzantium?" and you may find that there is better scholarship in Russian, or German, or French, or some other language. To learn about the Roman Catholic church, you're probably going to read some Latin and Italian.

Conclusions and future directions

Previously, I had studied Japanese/Chinese/Korean just because I'm of Asian (Chinese) ancestry and there were lots of people around me of similar origin (Asian Americans). At university I had the opportunity to meet a lot of Asian people. So studying these languages was useful for better understanding East Asia and its diaspora in the West.

Studying history, I learned that the East Asian languages as we know them are relatively new— standardized languages created around the early 20th century. The United Nations can translate their materials into a whole bunch of languages because these languages were made such taht they could convey UN messages. Modern concepts won't readily translate into ancient languages, just as translating from an ancient language isn't a simple plug-and-play exercise as translating modern texts can be.

Compared with the East Asian languages, the European languages have longer histories of standardized usage. Particularly in the case of Latin and Greek, you can go really far back. Languages like Russian and Slavonic are not as easy to penetrate for the Anglophone, but these are languages I will keep on studying for their relevancy to Eastern Orthodoxy.