Greetings from the Netherlands! Today 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.
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 16th 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. 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 stuck out to me 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.
