For 32 years (1993-2025) I’ve lived in the Netherlands. Yet everything in me breathes a different ethos — the code of rural American life as it was in the 1940’s. I feel that incompatibility every time I interact with the culture here. Or when that culture interacts with me even when I’m trying to sleep.
That tension has defined my existence in this place. I’ve never adapted to it, because it felt wrong and invasive. The baseline assumptions of Dutch culture repel me at a fundamental level. It feels less like I spend my childhood here, and more like I was dropped into a foreign country and have been living inside a never-ending culture shock.
What most people around me consider normal, I experience as abnormal or even insane. And what I consider basic, they often don’t even recognize. A simple, recent example: I was sitting with a close friend on a secluded public bench, having a private conversation. The bench was small — plenty of room for two, not much more. A short, narrow trail led only to that bench. The bench is visible the entire time while walking on that trail. Two elderly women came down that same trail and attempted to sit with us, hip-to-hip, without asking. For them it was normal. For me, it was an invasion. Every cell in my body registered the violation of my internal boundaries. Not correcting it immediately would have been a betrayal of myself and of what I know to be right. I naturally stood up, told them we were having a private conversation, and we moved on.
This wasn’t malice on their part — it was culture. In the Netherlands, people often treat shared spaces this way. To them, a bench is just a bench. To me, it was a perimeter, a private bubble temporarily claimed for conversation. That disconnect is constant, not occasional. It is systemic. And it runs against everything in me.
That’s why this example matters: it’s not isolated, it’s one tile in a mosaic of 32 years. A pattern that shows my “internal culture” is not Dutch at all. It aligns perfectly, with the older American rural code — autonomy, boundaries, respect for privacy, space, and silence. The match is too exact to dismiss as coincidence.
Pair this with what I remember from my previous incarnation — a life in that exact culture, in that exact era - and the picture becomes clearer. Culture or the way of life, it seems, can persist across lifetimes. It could resolve after death, or stay with the soul because it aligns with it’s natural state.
Another clear example of this cultural friction occurs at home, in my own apartment. The building is dense; apartments are tightly packed, walls thin, and every movement, including urination and so on, from neighbors echos through my space. Doors slam constantly — heavy, self-closing doors — and I can hear every flush, kitchen cabinet door, wall sockets being plugged into, crying infants, vacuum cleaners hitting objects, traffic noise from the busy street below my windows, people talking loud on that same street, kids screaming and yelling while they pass by, insanely loud two-stroke mopeds, ambulances from the nearby hospital I can literally see out of my living room window, the bell tower playing a long riddle every 15 minutes from 8AM to 10PM, the loud-mouths at 3AM at the cafe a stone-throw’s away from my bedroom window, I could go on.
In my internal culture, such exposure is extremely invasive. Private life is respected. noise is contained. personal space is honored. Here, that standard does not exist. Even for the extremely wealthy, of which I’m not one. It is considered normal, acceptable, and trivial, for neighbors to share their every movement and sound with everyone around them.
The disconnect is daily and unavoidable. Even with headphones, noise-cancelling tools, or deliberate avoidance, I am reminded constantly that the baseline assumptions of Dutch living — density, proximity, tolerance for intrusion — clash violently with what I instinctively know to be right. Each instance reinforces the same truth: my internal culture is not Dutch. It aligns with a way of life that values privacy, autonomy, and space — the very ethos of the rural American cultural I feel in my bones.
Hypothetically, if I were asked to suggest a plan for decentralization and self-reliance on the land of the United States, my intuition is immediate: every family should have at least 20 acres of private land. Right now, I don’t even have a garden — just walls surrounded by public infrastructure. More is better, up to a point. I also value well-built communities of independent men and women who support each other symbiotically if they wish — through trade or other means.
This reduces reliance on public infrastructure, limits corporate or governmental interference, and ensures true autonomy. I would much rather have my own water well than depend on a privatized, profit-driven system that adds unproven chemicals “for safety.” Governance of the mind — government — is my responsibility, not someone else’s. People who cannot govern themselves will demand to be governed; I refuse that.
This philosophy ties directly back to the spirit of the American Republic: a people fed up with oppression, yearning for freedom and self-governance. My internal being aligns with that completely. Dutch culture, by contrast, is socialist, collectivist, and conformist. It clashes with everything I hold to be true, right, and necessary for a life of autonomy.