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Thursday, August 2, 2007

The Dutch sixties

Running around. Picking up a new printer, the same one I had in Vancouver. Great laser printer. And visited my brother, because he still had the power plug for my old computer, the one that got all the viruses in Vancouver. But after 5 months, my virus protection found them, all 13 of them, I must say.. Hope they're gone now. And got my internet connection working on this old machine. Also good news. Let's hope for the best.
In between I did some reading on the years Amsterdam founded its fame as youth magnet: 1968-1970. The more I read, the more I think Holland is such a good example of my theory, because we are such a small, feminine oriented country (read sociologist Hofstede or consult Marieke de Mooij about his great theory of cultural differences). The feminine character makes us stress commonality and tolerance, so we are able to really enjoy the changes in timeframes sooner than more restricted, masculine countries, where governments or religious groups can exert more pressure and keep a lid on change. The Amsterdam government learned to listen to youth groups at the endof the sixties, and opened two youth centers in 1968 that gained international fame: Paradiso (popmusic and happenings and The Kosmos (meditation and yoga, etc..). Interesting thought. But still, I see a lot of parallel timeframes at least throughout the western cultures.

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