Written by Dyami Millarson

Blogging is hard work. Celebrating new milestones in terms of the amount of followers of one’s blog is not just a boost to morale, but it is also an excellent opportunity for reminding oneself and others what the mission of the blog actually is. Put in a more philosophical way, celebrating new followers offers an opportunity to pause and reflect on what the blog is actually about. When one is blogging, it is useful to keep considering what one’s goalposts are and to consider how short-term goals align with long-term goals. So it is very useful from a (self-)improvement angle.

Apart from increasing one’s motivation to keep working hard as a blogger and (re)evaluating the general direction in which one is taking the blog, there is definitely also a social aspect to celebrating new followers, because it offers an opportunity to reach out to new followers and welcome them personally. Of course, when one shares facts and details about the mission of the blog as one is welcoming the new followers, one engages them in the mission of the blog. It is important to allow everyone to feel they have a stake in the blog.

After all, people are inclined to support an altruistic cause when they feel they have a stake in it. In our case, it is highly important to keep reminding people that our work is charitable and that we work hard for comprehensive linguistic and cultural restoration in the context of the worldwide decline of minority communities possessing their own language and culture. We are working especially with Frisian minority languages and cultures currently, and we are working on a linguistic and cultural renaissance for the small Frisian communities which were experiencing a death spiral towards linguistic and cultural loss before Operation X involvement.

I studied Latin and Ancient Greek as well as Greco-Roman history when I attended grammar school, although I should add that I learned a lot more outside the confines of any school environment. The historical Renaissance in Europe meant the revival of profound interest in the classical languages (i.e., Latin and Ancient Greek) and Greco-Roman culture. This period in European history may be regarded as inspiring for our work, because it had both linguistic and cultural aspects in the same way that our contemporary projects have. Operation X alters the consciousness of the people belonging to the community as well as of bystanders: people (re)gain linguistic and cultural consciousness and so they (re)affirm faith in their local identity (usually after losing said faith).

Operation X, which is a cause for humanity, is an amalgamation of my paternal grandfather’s and father’s work, my own intuitive feelings about my purpose in life, what I know about the role of classical languages and cultures in European history, my desire to work hard for human heritage, my curiosity about what the world and my imagination about what the world could be like if we as human beings collectively (re)discover the value of whar has been handed down to us by our ancestors for eons and keep these living treasures of the world as they are and seek and find inspiration in them as they continue to be a living aspect of our modern world with rapid scientific and technological progress. I study human cultures and languages as they are, and I believe philosophically in the mutual non-exclusivity of the modern and traditional worlds, so I embrace technology and science as much as I embrace ancestral languages, cultures and worldviews.