[mercer]

Sadly I find that the Dutch, in general, are extremely indifferent and even antagonistic towards political activism.

I'm not entirely sure why this is. Perhaps it's general wealth/comfort, or perhaps a history of, at best, amoral profit-seeking.

Or maybe I'm just seeing things. But in general my experience has been that the kinds of people that I would expect to be activists are much less so over here than in, say, Germany or France or Spain.

[edejong]

Well, before talking about the reason why we are moderate in activism (which is debatable), I'd like to understand why you believe the Dutch are particularly amoral profit-seekers. Do you have references comparing the Dutch history with the Spanish? With the slavery practices among the African tribes? With the destruction and mass-murder of the American natives by the Brits? With the plundering of the South American treasures.

At least the Dutch stayed independant during the first world war, while entire generations were slaughtered on the battlefield from other nations. For what? Economic reasons.

No, we're meek activists for simpler reasons. Our population density is high, so we needed to build on a culture of tolerance and acceptance. We are constantly battling a common enemy: water from the seas and the rivers. This required understanding, cooperation and negotiation. We are a country with diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds, which also requires a certain level of cooperation instead of activism.

And yet, I think we are actually quite high on the political activism ladder, but not on the militant activism. Hurting our neighbours entails hurting ourselves, so we prefer talking over destroying.

[huffmsa]

> Or maybe I'm just seeing things

No, I've always been befuddled by how both the Dutch and Belgian have basically had their colonial reigns of terror handwaved away.

It's likely that neither nation really acknowledges it or has anyone agitating internally for the nation to own up to it. So like you said, they're rich and a bit amoral.

[mercer]

My impression is that we don't even bother to hand-wavy and justify or defend any of it. We just don't care. It happened. It's in the past. And we didn't personally do it.