Comradeship // Freechat

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felipeforte@lemmygrad.ml

I'm really embarrassed being a communist and not knowing a second language. (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by TeezyZeezy@lemmygrad.ml to c/comradeship@lemmygrad.ml

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I dropped Spanish which was the only language offered during my high school years. I regret it, and now I'm embarrassed to start learning as a uni-aged guy. I want to learn Mandarin because then I would know English and Mandarin which would cover like 50% of the populations speaking abilities.

Basically I just feel like a dumb American and being a Marxist I need to know another language.

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[–] qwename@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think Marxism is not mainly about how much you know, but more about putting what you know into practice to help the oppressed class.

Remember when it was only rich people who could afford the time and money for decent education, or any education at all (still applies in some areas of the world)? What did most of those people do with all their knowledge? Sure some of them furthered the wealth of human knowledge, by just being the only people who could afford to be in that position.

I suggest reading this short essay by Karl Marx: Reflections of a Young Man on The Choice of a Profession. It is about choosing a profession but really you can apply it to choosing what to learn or do.

Some quotes:

Those professions which are not so much involved in life itself as concerned with abstract truths are the most dangerous for the young man whose principles are not yet firm and whose convictions are not yet strong and unshakeable. At the same time these professions may seem to be the most exalted if they have taken deep root in our hearts and if we are capable of sacrificing our lives and all endeavours for the ideas which prevail in them.

But the chief guide which must direct us in the choice of a profession is the welfare of mankind and our own perfection. It should not be thought that these two interests could be in conflict, that one would have to destroy the other; on the contrary, man's nature is so constituted that he can attain his own perfection only by working for the perfection, for the good, of his fellow men.

If he works only for himself, he may perhaps become a famous man of learning, a great sage, an excellent poet, but he can never be a perfect, truly great man.

History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good; experience acclaims as happiest the man who has made the greatest number of people happy; religion itself teaches us that the ideal being whom all strive to copy sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, and who would dare to set at nought such judgments?

If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people.