My daughter was born in Moscow and grew up in Berlin. She knew the Netherlands from visits to family and holidays. German was her first language. What did the Netherlands mean for her? “The Dutch are happier than Germans, not so serious and gloomy,” she said. “Cozy.”
Only when she went to study here did she notice all kinds of subtleties. “The Netherlands is putting together much more hierarchically than it seems,” she noticed critically. She saw how conformist young people can be here in appearance and ideas and even in their way of speaking. How we like to read the lesson for the rest of the world and how little ‘open’ we are facing newcomers.
We asked Chatgpt: “What is typical Dutch glory?” That was not small: ‘An indestructible spirit of sobriety, trading and obstinacy. While superpowers turned into each other, we built ships, painted masterpieces and conquered markets with spices and tulips. The VOC, Rembrandt, Spinoza – that is no coincidence, that is mentality. We are a people of dike builders, always fighting the water and the rest of the world. Always a list, always a plan. “
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Good that Chatgpt the VOC mentions, I thought, because that trading company – according to tradition richer than the 20 largest modern listed companies, such as Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, together – Neverland’s pride, it has been colored in recent years.
Exactly that is the problem, I explained my children: where people in other countries are proud of the national achievements, it is always scornfully being done about it in the Netherlands.
“Take it from me,” I said, “at its peak, the Netherlands was one of the best societies that ever existed.” “But you just gave me right in my criticism!” My daughter answered. I nodded, “Well, no country is perfect.”
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