The Dutch provincial elections in 2019 have released quite a bit. Terms such as ‘owl of Minerva’ and ‘boreal’ offer many cultural scientists the opportunity to explain what Thierry Baudet meant.
I have never experienced that a politician in the Netherlands got Dutch people so quickly involved into a collective cultural-scientific / cultural-historical learning process with an inspired discussion about possible interpretations !!! What if we can continue that collective learning process in which everyone, in addition to gaining more factual knowledge, will also examine their own projections (and what lies beneath them). This instead of thinking that these elections have a similar effect in Dutch households and circle of own friends compared to the Dreyfus affair in France around 1900!
I’m wondering, of course in all my Limburg modesty (the Dutch province I was born and raised), how this Baudet ‘learning formula’ can be applied even more. Now suppose that I have to give a presentation and I’ll start like this:
‘The nightingale in bronze-green oak wood in Limburg makes its purifying, velvet singing voice heard. That voice carries far, very far ….. That voice awakens members of the political elite, as well as government managers, from their fairy-tale and ghostly hypnosis, realizing that in the shelter of the Hague, pedlars from Limburg are selling their spiritual-innovative, mature insights and methods, in order to allow the romantic Arcadian morning shine of the Morning Sonata by Edvard Grieg to reach full maturity in a new Dutch Morning Glory. ”
After that, would everyone also be able to find out and learn that this is about the spiritually uplifting Limburg National Anthem (so not the Groningen national anthem, the ‘Grönnens Laid’ from 1919 by Geert Teis Pzn :-))? And that it really is a matter of patience …. before the whole of the Netherlands is filled with Limburg wisdom and Limburg positivity !! It would of course be great if this would lead to more students of cultural sciences at the Dutch Open University …. which of course has its headquarters in that famous province.
By the way, non-native Limburgers can also use this formula. I had a small exchange of e-mails with former European table tennis champion Bettine Vriesekoop, whereby I advised her my new insights to encourage the membership of the Dutch Table Tennis Association (NTTB).
‘Bettine, if you write a speech like that for the NTTB, and that the association spreads it all over the Netherlands !!!! 🙂 In that speech, of course, some secret tips are encrypted à la Dan Brown’s ‘Da Vincy code’. The latter preferably in Greek epic, combined with passages from classical Dutch literature. These secret tips enable someone to discover how table tennis can really teach you how to innovate and be successful !!! Of course you have to present that in a Roman robe and with a Greek-Apollonian laurel wreath on your head as a winner’s ornament! I’m sure that all schools in the Netherlands will talk about your performance and that many table tennis coaches in the Netherlands will be requested to give their esoteric commentas on it on radio, TV and social media. “What Bettine really means is …” or “The real secret of Bettine is …”. :-)’
If someone is also going to apply this learning formula, I wish you every success! And for those who do not yet know the Limburg National Anthem, click on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WfD4S6vauA 🙂
Max Herold
Maart, 2019
