I was born in Poland and grew up in Germany, but my family and I have been living in the Netherlands for the last 14 years.
When I first discovered the concept of “niksen,” or the Dutch art of doing nothing, I was fascinated. I even wrote a book about it. When I applied it to my own life, my perspective about happiness shifted in a significant way.
I believe niksen is one of the reasons why the Dutch are consistently ranked as some of the happiest people in the world. Niksen might seem selfish or boring at first glance, but it’s actually a service to you and your community.
living wage, social services, work life balance, drugs
And much much Better urban planning that’s focused on people not on cars
Nah, must be the nicksen
Seems like niksen is basically assuming all the other things are already in place. Gotta have all that other stuff before you can even think about having the time to “do nothing.”
Edit: Either that or we’re in yet another “it must be all the olive oil!” shams.
I knew you hippies would come around to me eventually… arooooo.
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TIL another country has a name for how I like to live.
this isnt even pretending to be news, this is an opinion piece. Come the fuck on
Is there a !worldopinion?
Niksen is the Dutch word for “doing nothing” (see idleness [german: Müßiggang]) and has been increasingly used since 2019 as a buzzword for a promoted relaxed lifestyle. The Niksen is comparable to the Dolcefarniente (Italy), kalsarikännit (Finland), Lagom (Sweden) and hygge (Denmark).
“Lagom” means “just enough”, and has more to do with not taking more than you need, and I believe it being strongly correlated with the cultural “jante lagen” (=“thou shall live and act as a humble human.”). Niksen and lagom doesn’t seem to have any similarities beyond that.
Kalsarikännit is getting drunk alone at home.
A sign of alcoholism, so we Finns use humour to cope with it and talk about it jokingly. Like with suicide.
Equating that to hygge and lagom is just to simplify all of them to the point of almost complete reinterpretation.
However I don’t disagree with what you’re trying to convey, and those concepts may be tangentially related to a degree, but…
Who the hell has time for niksen these days…
in the US we have The Dude
Where’s hygge from because that shits also fire.
Scandinavia
Denmark
I am jealous of your “we”. I’m half Greek and half danish and can’t say we to any of them.
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Drugs is still doing something I assume. I’ve never been there but I am trying to picture doing nothing and having a hard time so I assume it’s something I should attempt to do myself. Maybe I’ll stare at a forest or something.
Don’t mind if I do!
You’re better off going to Colorado or something for your weed. Probably cheaper and actually legal (and thus less shady people running the place). And the shrooms are also nerved (only truffels allowed, not caps) ever since tourists misused them. Those are the only real ‘legal’ (not actually legal) drugs.
I’ve read that corporations who have their HQ’s in The Netherlands … are forced to get someone from some other country/culture, when searching for C-level people:
The Netherlands culture can’t and won’t be driven-enough to do the amount of work required: it isn’t sensical, in that culture, to be driven, so.
Just as your body has different organs for different kinds of function, we need to have different cultures for different kinds of people.
Without bones, how happy would you be using your liver, kidneys, brain, etc, for scaffolding while trying to stand-up??
The same is true of drivenness.
There is a season for each kind, in Nature, there is a place for each kind, in Nature, and we’d do much better, if we deliberately accepted/respected that, in our global urban-planning.
( this doesn’t say that gutting parenting, so as to have destitution-wages, to enforce attachment-disorder in the children, to produce in the next generation over 600 mass-shootings in the US in 2023, is somehow valid or proper or respectable, however.
Drivenness doesn’t require sociopathy-psychopathy/narcissism’s rule/dominion. )
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I just wanted to downvote initially, but consider this:
a) your premise is wrong (“I read somewhere”) b) if it were true that there’s some innate tendency in Dutch people to not want to strive for anything, how do you explain their fairly advanced society? c) if it were true, they’d also not have a functioning government
your’s isn’t a good take
drivenness
You could have used “selfish” or “sociopathic” instead.
