The Famine Ended 70 Years Ago, but Dutch Genes Still Bear Scars
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Finally, the researchers merged the results — and found a few methyl groups that were linked both to the famine and to health conditions later in life. “We were able to connect the three dots,” said Dr. Lumey...
And the Dutch famine probably led to many miscarriages and early deaths. It’s possible that the survivors had some genetic variant that made them resilient and gave them a distinctive epigenetic profile not captured in this study.
I had never heard of this famine. I read the article and found myself wondering how this impacts the collective subconscious and the culture as a whole. Probably not in a good way. (That is not a criticism of the Dutch. Please read that compassionately.)
I wish I knew what to do to promote food security in the world. It seems like food security is some fundamental aspect of peace and just making sure people get fed well (both enough and healthily) is one of the best ways to avert all kinds of problems.
"If you have food in your jaws you have solved all questions for the time being." - Kafka
I don't really know how to describe it, and I don't know that I care to. But that experience influences my view of this article and my thoughts on how that must impact people, how it must negatively impact their ability to ask for what they want, to feel about the social climate and so on.
To my mind, the fact that it was not due to environmental conditions or crop failure makes it psychologically worse. I have a lot of emotional baggage about the world not caring whether or not I ate in recent years, about the callous disregard I experienced as a homeless person, something alien to my social background.
How much worse must that emotional and psychological impact be when it is active malice? When the entire goal is to kill you, slowly and cruelly? You and everyone you know and care about?
There's often an ulterior motive at play. Modern day lysenkoism.
If you have something more solid and specific than "it's a trend, man!" it would be fine to bring that up. But the essence of prejudice is to make unfounded assumptions about a specific case because of general trends. It is a thing I think is highly corrosive and should be guarded against.
I have two sons who see the world through a very different mental framework from me. We often have lively discussions that give both sides. It keeps us aware that life is multidimensional.
The debate about nature vs nurture often loses sight of the fact that, ultimately, the answer is both. Trying to follow a thread and understand it doesn't mean that one thread is the entirety of the fabric of life. But ignoring that thread doesn't work either.
I don't disagree that understanding such contexts or pointing them out has value.
There is no evidence for transgenerational epigenetics in humans. http://quillette.com/2017/04/07/epigenetics-become-dangerous...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-...
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Holland-Tunnel
Leaving these here in part because New Holland as a historical reference was not easy to find.
So, to my eyes, it is a compliment to say they are pragmatic. It means they are very grounded and very focused on results, unwilling to take a neurotic position of don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up.
I have a torturous medical condition. I am very much pro the right to die. I primarily need some means to earn an adequate income online to help me to stay healthy and minimize the torture my body subjects me to. I have mostly not gotten much support for that goal. It seems like a really small thing to ask of the world, to please help me earn a little money online as a way to prevent huge medical expenses and dramatically improve my quality of life. Those requests have often been met with really ugly replies. On Metafilter, someone accused me of panhandling the internet for trying to get feedback on how to monetize my web projects.
Given the incredibly poor track record the world has for helping people like me achieve some kind of reasonable quality of life, I very much resent the general idea that I am not allowed to want to die. For me, death would be an end to enormous suffering, suffering the world mostly can't be arsed to do a damn thing about, even when the request for help is quite small.
If the world in general wants to insist on life, it needs to vastly up its game in so many ways. I don't expect this to happen. So I very much feel that I should have the right to say "I have had enough. I want to be done with my suffering." And so should anyone else with a terrible condition that makes life not worth living.
Insisting we stay alive while the US can't even be bothered to straighten out its healthcare system just strikes me as asshole behavior.
The point is that I don't think euthanasia is a negative.
And not to encourage current reality behavior that is disapproved of, but I would say that a highly disagreeable situation is a motivation to choose "NEXT".
As a whole I don't know. But many from the generation of the war have learned to never throw something away. Have something like a day in the week to eat left-overs. And some of their children have learned to do the same. But that has been getting rarer for the last 20 years.
I'm Dutch. Purely anecdotal, of course, but I'd say: "not".
I grew up in the north (struck by the famine) and moved south (not struck by the famine) half a life ago. I've noticed no differences in attitudes to food, Germans or WWII.
A while ago some German ministry did a survey among populations of neighbouring countries and found that the Dutch liked the Germans the most. Anecdotally I can confirm this, everybody I know likes Germans and Germany. (And loves to point out their lack of a sense of humour)
My dad was born during the famine (on a farm, thankfully) and I never heard him nor my grandma mention it in an other way than as a matter of fact.
The Netherlands had been a quiet little village for centuries. It managed to remain neutral in WW1. After the war the Netherlands was one of the countries that pushed relentlessly for both the European Union and NATO.
You must be thinking of another country. A lot can be said about the Netherlands and its predecessors, but it was not a 'quiet little village'. From dominating maritime trade, to waging (a lot of) wars with England, Spain, and France, and its many achievements in science; the past half millennium was quite eventful.
The Dutch East India company would say otherwise! The Netherlands were one of the serious seagoing powers, along with England, France and Spain
But there's been a host of severe famines since World War II across the Sahel. It is possible that the reliability of birth data would have improved over this period to a degree sufficient to support research techniques.
In fact, there's been research along these lines in SSA already, especially regarding the impact of malnourishment on intellectual development among other factors.
Still, important research that goes to show that famines have generational effects that extend all the way to the genetic level.
The Dutch growth spurt can almost exclusively be attributed to change in diet. IIRC, humans used to be taller before the age of agriculture, and not-so-coincidentally have a much more diverse diet as well. In the 20th century we have basically been recovering to pre-agriculture levels of nutrition quality. Just look at the plots in that article you linked: every nation has increased its median height, not just the Netherlands.
It's the NYT fer chrissakes
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bear
> "² bear"
> "verb \ ˈber \"
...
> "b : to have as a feature or characteristic — bears a likeness to her grandmother"
...
> "d : to have as an identification — bore the name of John"
There's a note on usage on the page you provided:
> There is considerable confusion between the verbs bear and bare. It may help to remember that the verb bare has only one meaning: "to uncover," as in "bare your shoulders" and "a dog baring its teeth." All other uses of the verb are for bear: "bearing children," "the right to bear arms," "bearing up under the stress/weight," "can't bear the thought," "bear south," "it bears repeating."
I don't know. Wizo!
Later wars are much more filled with controversy: Korea, war in French Indochina, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, not to mention the many smaller conflicts where USA (and others) were involved.
Of course, in reality, WW II also had many many controversies, but particularly for American and British audiences, it is simple to associate "our boys" fighting for the good and the other side being at least almost totally evil.
Such a constellation is suitable for exploitation of the conflict and huge human suffering for entertainment.
(Same applies, from Chinese viewpoint, to Sino-Japanese war, which I in fact see as the actual start of WW II, instead of the more traditional attack against Poland.)
What else are they going to entertain people with? WW1? Too bleak and short. Any American wars post WW2? Too boring and politically incorrect. Anything before WW1, nobody cares. WW2 was awesome if you watch it from a screen.
For me, this isn't entertainment. More like therapy.
I imagine it is pretty common for people to be fascinated in part out of a need to come to terms with their own past in some way, even when it isn't really recognized as such.