Introduction to the Netherlands

Greetings from the Netherlands. On the first day, we had a lecture introducing us to the nation’s history, identity, and politics, a visit to a Vincent Van Gogh museum, and a boat tour through the canals of Amsterdam.

I was impressed with the symbols that brought the Dutch together to become one nation. Netherlands means “low countries”, so being low is part of the Dutch national identity because most of the country is below sea level. However, being below sea level causes a problem because the sea can easily conquer the land and submerge it underwater, so the Dutch fought the sea with the windmill to push out the water through a system of canals. The windmill is the greatest symbol of the nation and the Dutch have a strong emotional connection to it. Another symbol is the wooden shoes because the material allowed them to easily walk through mud since the Netherlands tend to have very wet soil. The last great symbol of the Netherlands is the tulip because the tulip adapted itself to grow in the sandy soil of the land and sold for lots of money when rare tulips were grown. These tree symbols - the windmill, wooden shoes, and the tulip – allow the Dutch to share the same story and work together as one community.

Figure 1: An image taken during the boat tour along the romantic Amsterdam canals. 

I was also impressed by the quote mentioned in lecture "God made the world, but the Dutch made the Netherlands." When I learned that the Netherlands is a man-made land, I was so curious as to how the engineers could accomplish such a thing! They pushed out all the water and made a land where people and buildings can stand. It's my goal to meet a Dutch engineer and ask them about the physics and chemistry behind the creation of the Netherlands.

Figure 2: A candid photo demonstrating a man-made canal in Amsterdam. Observe how the buildings and trees can stand securely on man-made land!

The influence of religion on the Dutch also impressed me because the Netherlands started as a very religious place but later became very liberal. In the 16^th century, Protestantism became strong in the country because Jean Calvin introduced the idea that a business man can still be a good Christian as long as he keeps a good conscience. This was huge because businessmen had a horrible reputation of working just to take advantage of others. The Dutch worry a lot about if they’re being a good person, but now they can be good people by avoiding corruption of their being by living modestly. If one does not show off how wealthy one is, one can keep his or her conscience clean. The Dutch fulfill this requirement by keeping their windows open with no curtains so everything in their home is visible, showing that they have nothing to hide and thus have a good conscience.

However, religion was affected in the 1960s when the progressive movement started. In the reader, it mentions how "Religion remained a factor of great influence in Dutch society up to about 1960. Then social changes, drastically reacting to existing power structures, rather suddenly eroded religion, turning the Netherlands into one of the least church-going nations of Europe today (15)." A new generation of young people went against religion and the nation was less inclined to consider itself Christian. Before 1960, 85% of people went to church, but after 1960, only 15% went to church of which 75% were older than 60. So if you were a young person going to church, you were part of a very small minority, and anyone who showed any sign of faith in public was shunned. Now that religion didn’t control the answer to questions of what was considered good or bad, a new system came in and answers to questions related to ones sexuality, forms of excitement (such as soft drugs being legal), and life and death situations came from the new mentality from the progressive movement. This caught my attention because a nation that was once very religious and conservative suddenly became so radical in its thinking simply because the younger generation decided to question their parents’ decisions and tried out new ideas instead of closely following the teachings of their parents. If the young people of in the 1960s were able to easily change the nation’s way of thinking, I wonder if the young people today can change the course of the nation and the world if they stood for the things in the Bible again.