Cultural Differences and Ethnic Profiling

27 Sep 20235 Apr 2026 nivtricLeave a comment

Marlboro Red

In the 2000s, it struck me that nearly all the empty cigarette packages littering the streets were Marlboro Reds. I began to pay attention. There were one or two Camels and a few others, but almost all were Marlboro Red. Marlboro Red is the most popular brand. Its market share in the Netherlands is nearly 30%. The second-largest brand has a market share of under 10%. But if you had to make a guess based on discarded empty packages, you would think Marlboro Red had a market share of 95%. It was not scientific research, but my observation and my wife’s. We made jokes about it. We didn’t make tallies, but it was like that. Cultural differences are a big issue, as I had already learned as a student. Marlboro Red smokers often dumped their garbage on the spot, while other smokers rarely did. So, if you’re looking for a jerk, check who’s smoking Marlboro Reds.

You might think that littering isn’t that bad if you compare it to the horrors of warfare, dumping chemicals, the abuses in the meat and dairy industries, and the cutting down of rainforests. Still, disrespect for God’s Creation begins with littering. It is a matter of upbringing, hence culture. Some countries are clean, while others are a total mess because people dispose of their garbage wherever they see fit. It’s pretty easy to spot jerks. Those who litter are. Jerkdom is part of a culture of not caring. We buy the products of corporations that dump chemicals in the ocean and then complain about the poisoned fish we eat. There are worse offences. But it starts with littering. Next comes graffiti, which only those who make it consider art. I know art is personal expression, so do it inside your home so that only you can see it. Then comes destroying property. If you want to cause even more harm, you might consider buying the latest fashion.

Now, if 30% of the people dump 95% of the garbage, the remaining 70% is responsible for only 5% of the garbage. And you can calculate that Marlboro Red smokers were 44 times as likely to dump their trash on the street as other smokers ((95/30) / (5/70) = 44), a striking find. The sample was large enough to make the finding statistically significant. The sample may have issues, but these issues can’t fully explain the difference. It is more complicated to do the same investigation today. You still find cigarette packages on the street, but it is hard to identify the brand name among the scary pictures of cancers and other horrible diseases you get from smoking. Marlboro Red smokers differ from other cigarette smokers. You can call it culture. Culture can explain the deviant behaviour of groups of people who share common characteristics, such as smoking Marlboro Red. It is politically incorrect, but culture explains a lot about behavioural differences between groups.

The Marlboro Man embodies careless living in a consumerist society, which apparently includes discarding one’s garbage on the spot. Our brand choices reveal a great deal about our personalities, so marketers have done their jobs very well indeed. A politically correct person would say I am stigmatising Marlboro Red users. There could be something wrong with my sample. The sample may have flaws, as I live near a train station where young people gather, but I have also noticed this elsewhere. The difference is so stark that it can’t merely be an error in the sample. But even if the sample correctly reflects reality, perhaps only 0.1% of smokers discard their cigarette packages on the street, so only a tiny minority of 4.4% of Marlboro Red smokers might do so. Perhaps that is correct, or perhaps not, but 44 times as much is an eye-popping difference.

If you intend to tackle the problem of litter from cigarette packages and have a limited budget, you may target Marlboro Red users to achieve the greatest impact. Otherwise, you are wasting money. And who wants to waste money? Okay, stupid question. People buy cigarettes. I think of Marlboro Red smokers as jerks who don’t care, thus people who might piss through your letter box, or throw fireworks in it. It is what I imagine, and I know that it isn’t true for all of them. Many are people like you and me, who might be friendly, own a dog, have a job, and look after their neighbours. And reality never ceases to surprise me.

If I meet an individual, this person often doesn’t conform to all my prejudices about the groups to which he or she belongs. A group consists of individuals, and although they share common traits on aggregate, each individual is different. There are behaviours like littering that occur more in certain groups than others. Our prejudices about groups often have a basis in reality. Still, our prejudices aren’t reality. If you only see Marlboro Red packages on the ground, you may think that Marlboro Red smokers are all littering jerks, while it might be a small minority of them.

Can I trust my dentist?

How do cultures emerge and develop? History and circumstances go a long way in explaining that, as the following example illustrates. I trust my general practitioner, but not my dentist. That is because of my experiences and those of others. General practitioners and dentists are similar medical professions. In the Netherlands, a general practitioner doesn’t benefit from the advised treatments, while a dentist does. You have to trust medical professionals because your health depends on them, but you can’t trust them in a market. That is why healthcare for profit turns into a scam where doctors prey on desperate people and sell treatments for which there is no scientific proof. That ranges from magic potions to revolutionary cancer treatments. If you buy it, they sell it.

To prevent dental professionals from taking advantage of me too much, I see the dentist once a year rather than twice. So what made me so distrustful? As a child, I had the same dentist for over fifteen years, an old-fashioned one for peasants like me. He didn’t propose treatments unless they were necessary. He once told me that I could wear braces, but added that it wasn’t necessary for my teeth’s health. Not caring about looking perfect, I still live with the consequences that have never bothered me.

After leaving my parental home and moving to Groningen, I selected a new dentist. The first thing he did was take X-ray pictures. He said a cavity was developing underneath one of the fillings. Well, what a coincidence. The other dentist had never seen it. Then the dentist showed me the picture and pointed at a dark spot. There was another filling with a dark area beneath it, and I said, ‘You can see a similar blot here.’ He replied, ‘That is something different.’ I am unqualified to evaluate these X-rays, but both areas were similar, so the dentist lied. Had he not shown me the photograph, I would have believed him. It made me suspicious and very critical of what dentists were doing.

Before he could treat my tooth for the supposed cavity, I came up with a lame excuse and selected another dentist. A few years later, I had a colleague who had married a dentist. She previously had lived in the same neighbourhood. Her husband was in training at the time. And so, she had been seeing another dentist, who happened to be that one. She told me she had had a row with him, so I wasn’t the only one who had smelled a rat there. Her husband was a dentist-in-training, so she probably had valid reasons for quarrelling.

That was a noteworthy coincidence indeed, and there have been many in my life. What are the odds that she had the same dentist, they had an altercation about malpractice, and her husband was a dentist in training, which would provide me with evidence to support my suspicions? Thirty years later, the tooth and the filling were still in place. Later, I moved to Sneek and found an old-fashioned dentist. He was like my first dentist, so I trusted him. He often performed dental cleaning. That usually took 10 minutes and cost €21. After ten years, he joined a practice with some other dentists. Shortly after that, he retired.

My next dentist didn’t perform the dental cleaning. Instead, he sent me to a dental hygienist. That treatment lasted twenty-five minutes and was a lot more expensive. Instead of €21, I paid €62. Standards do change, but I doubted the sudden need for 150% more cleaning. But if my dentist advises the treatment, who am I to disagree? After all, he is the expert. It is best to accept the assessment of medical professionals unless you have proof they are wrong. Otherwise, you endanger your health.

Since then, I have worked harder on brushing and cleaning my teeth, but the cleaning always took 25 minutes, no matter how hard I tried. After eight years, my dentist said my teeth were in good shape and clean. There was a tiny bit of tartar, so he advised me to see the dental hygienist anyway. The dental hygienist could have stopped after ten minutes, but she went on to arrive at twenty-five, so she could bill me for that, or so it seemed. The treatment was always twenty-five minutes, regardless of the condition of the teeth. I found that dubious and looked for another dentist.

It would only get worse, even though not at the beginning. A new guideline stated that dental hygienists could do the periodic dental check-up. The following year, the dental hygienist combined the check-up with dental cleaning, making the most of the allotted time financially. I was there for thirty minutes. She billed me for thirty minutes of dental cleaning and also charged me for the check-up. A decent check-up lasts ten minutes, so you might expect a check-up and twenty minutes of dental cleaning if you are there for thirty minutes. I was surprised and wasn’t sure. Had I checked the clock correctly?

The following year, she did it again. Additionally, she charged me for taking X-rays and evaluating them. How can you do all that in thirty minutes if you already spend thirty minutes on dental cleaning? It doesn’t add up. The dentists had decided to take pictures every 3 years instead of every 5, which means even more money for them. And she was double-charging me. Dental cleaning was €160 per hour at the time, which was nearly what I brought home after a day of work and paying taxes. Many people work longer for that money. To charge that per hour wasn’t enough for her, which is particularly nefarious.

After returning home, I emailed her to request clarification. She didn’t respond, so I filed a complaint with the Dutch Association of Dentists and looked for another dentist. In the complaint letter, I protested against the double-charging and noted that questionable ethics have become customary in dental care. A few decades ago, there were no dental hygienists. My wife once said, ‘The dental hygienist is a new profession created out of thin air.’ She had left a dentist because he required her to see the dental hygienist before examining her teeth to determine whether that was necessary. She went to another, who also began maximising profits at the expense of clients, so she left again. I have heard several stories from others of dentists overcharging or doing unnecessary treatments.

My next dentist also advised dental cleaning. And this time, I was with the dental hygienist for forty minutes, and she billed me accordingly for €119. Over the past fifteen years, the time spent on dental cleaning has increased by 300%, and the cost has risen by 467%. I take much better care of my teeth than I did twenty years ago, and began using toothpicks, but it doesn’t show up in the dental cleaning cost. It can’t be that all these dentists and dental hygienists are lying. My teeth accumulate tartar no matter how well I clean them, so the cleaning is necessary, but the amount remains questionable, to say the least. I put up the ante once again, brushing my teeth three times a day, and it finally showed in a somewhat reduced dental cleaning time in the years that followed.

The parabolic rise in dentist costs is partly due to changing standards. Dental cleaning improves the health of teeth. At some point, the benefits of increased cleaning and more photographs become minimal while the costs escalate. The precise border between higher and scamming will always be elusive, and you can’t prove it from individual cases like mine. Still, we have, without any doubt, entered scamming territory, but no one puts a halt to it. In 2026, a Tubantia newspaper headline said, ‘Eight minutes in the chair, pay 200 euros: more and more patients feel like ‘cash cows’ at the dentist.’ And the article goes on to say, ‘Three minutes of polishing for €480 per hour. Half-cent cotton rolls billed for €10. A €1,600 treatment plan that disappears after a second opinion. Hundreds of readers contact us after reading articles about dental fraud. And research by Zilveren Kruis shows that in six out of ten cases investigated, there was indeed overbilling.’

Again, I have to be politically correct and say that the number of complaints about treatments is less than 1% of the total number of treatments. People only complain if they think something is wrong, so that 60% of complaints are justified doesn’t mean 60% of dentists are overbilling. Undoubtedly, much also goes unnoticed. My wife has switched twice after being scammed, and never filed a complaint. I switched three times and complained only once. And so the percentage of fraudulent dentists is likely significantly higher than 1%, but probably it is a minority, and there is a grey area between changing standards and overtreatment. Still, the consequence is that more and more people can’t afford dental care, and their teeth’s health suffers. So, while the number of treatments increases, the quality of dental healthcare in the Netherlands declines, which seems to be a systemic problem in healthcare-for-profit. General practitioners don’t benefit from the treatments they recommend, leading to better care at lower cost.

The same trend is visible in veterinary practices. Douwe, our late cat, suffered from kidney failure. We had spent hundreds of euros on tests, but the vets found nothing. And we had seen several vets, because we suspected that the other vet was scamming us, but they all did it. We spent hundreds of euros more on special diets sold by these vets, but Douwe’s condition only deteriorated. We finally visited an old-fashioned vet. He examined Douwe by feeling with his hand. He found the kidney failure and euthanised Douwe. That cost us only €30. Modern veterinarians often don’t physically inspect the animals but perform tests, charging over 1000% more. Physical examinations are bad for business.

My father has spent over €5,000 on surgery for the leg of his dog. An old-fashioned vet would have amputated the leg, as the animal could still walk on three legs. But that is, of course, much cheaper and generates far fewer profits. The surgery failed, so the poor animal had to undergo a second surgery. After that, the ailment returned, so a third surgery followed. And it is not that if the treatment fails, you get the next one for free. Not even a discount, unless you are, like my father, insistent on a discount and somewhat unpleasant. The dog didn’t recover. My father had his dog euthanised because it was in pain.

The market works so that unnecessary treatments proliferate because the rich desire them. They would rather spend €10,000 on unnecessary treatments for their dogs than on feeding children in Africa. We are all like that. I don’t give all my money to charities either, so it is a most serious issue that we can only fix with unthinkably brutal measures like taxing the rich. These treatments have become the norm, so the vets sell them to the poor as well, telling them every pet deserves these treatments, even when their owners can’t afford them.

You can’t blame only the vets and dentists for the cost explosion. We view our pets as family members and want the best for them, just as we do for our children. Modern veterinary outfits look like hospitals and make investments that need to bring in a return. And we want perfect teeth, not just healthy ones. Not everyone can afford them, and healthy teeth are more important than perfect teeth. Vets make tons of money. They now retire early, purchase luxury mansions and travel around the world. It has become so lucrative that vulture capitalists are buying up veterinary practices, so scams will proliferate like cancer until the entire sector has become a scam.

Group culture can be a problem. Most veterinary and dental care professionals think they are doing a good job. Dutch politicians are catching up and proposing a law to ban profit maximisation at the expense of pet owners, but, as usual, nothing will change. It reflects the mood in society, where we see greed as good, so that dental care professionals and vets may be unaware of the damage their culture and professional values cause to society. And that is precisely the problem with many other cultures, whether they are professional groups or ethnic groups.

The politically incorrect

It is okay to say that, but once you apply the reasoning to ethnicity, you step into a minefield. But hey, let’s begin with kicking in an open door. White Europeans have caused the most trouble. And now we can move on, and also discuss the problems others cause. These differences can be an excuse for racism and discrimination. Racism is widespread, and discrimination is even more so. Typically, stereotypes are rooted in reality, which complicates the issue. Racism and bigotry are undesirable, but if you have reason to have grudges against specific groups, these grudges might express themselves as racism. You might as well hate Marlboro Red smokers and dentists. The standard politically correct answer is that most people from minorities are good people, just like most Marlboro Red smokers and dentists are. Additionally, the ethnic group to which you belong can also cause trouble for other groups. Whites caused the most trouble in history.

Usually, a minority in that group causes trouble, but that minority can make a neighbourhood unsafe. And people from a group don’t rat out each other, so that they can be part of the problem. There has been growing negativity surrounding immigration recently. That is not only because of the numbers, but also because of the crime. However, the image you get from the evidence you see is not reality itself. If most suspects of burglary have a particular skin colour, you might think they are all criminals, while it is usually a minority. Even when differences are relatively small, the groups in question pose a problem. If the percentage of criminals in the population rises from 1% to 2%, you need twice as many police, courts and prisons. And if you can’t discuss these issues, you also can’t discuss the problems the majority causes.

It works two ways. Host societies have varying ways of dealing with immigrants. The gang violence among immigrants is worse in Sweden than elsewhere. The Swedes tend to keep to themselves, and it isn’t always easy for foreigners to integrate into Swedish society. Many countries have volunteers who care for asylum seekers and help them settle. It is probably not a coincidence that my worst hitch-hiking experience as a youth occurred in Sweden, where my cousin and I waited for over seven hours for a lift despite the heavy traffic. Nowhere else had I waited for much more than an hour, and I have hitch-hiked in seven countries. Whatever the cause may be, these gangsters commit these crimes, not the Swedes who allowed them into their country. Still, there must be a reason why the gang violence in Sweden among immigrants is worse than elsewhere.

When harmful conduct relates to culture, the politically correct response is often that only a minority is involved in it. Why do mass shootings occur far more often in the United States than elsewhere? The politically correct gun lobby would argue that only a tiny fraction of Americans go on a shooting spree. The image you get is not reality itself. If there are mass shootings in the United States nearly every day, you might think Americans are gun-obsessed nutters, while it is a small minority. Still, there are mass shootings all the time, so it sets the United States apart from other countries. The problem is not gun ownership. Liberals might think that stricter gun laws will solve the problem. More stringent gun laws will never happen because the problem is not gun ownership but gun culture.

When there is no gun culture, gun ownership wouldn’t pose such a problem. European countries, such as Finland and Switzerland, also have widespread gun ownership. Still, random mass shootings are a typical American phenomenon. America has a gun culture and a belief that guns are a preferred way to solve problems. American police are over 60 times as lethal as their British counterparts (33 versus 0.5 fatalities per 10 million inhabitants in 2022), which is an appalling statistic. Still, several countries have far more violent police forces. These numbers relate not only to the amount of violent crime. Compared to films from other countries, American films overflow with excessive violence, including gory details like bullets penetrating bodies and tearing flesh apart, which Americans somehow seem to be particularly interested in. The hidden suggestion is that killing other people is business as usual.

Ethnic groups have cultures. We picture Americans, Chinese, Germans and Arabs like we picture lawyers and construction workers. Our prejudices may accurately identify group characteristics, but will often fail us in individual cases. Suppose all the cookies are gone on Sesame Street, and you must find suspects. Would you not select the big-mouthed, blue-haired ones with a taste for cookies? That is also profiling. But perhaps it was one of Ernie’s pranks. If you did not think of that, you are prejudiced. We base our prejudices on experience and facts, as well as fiction and rumours. Only the facts do not base themselves on our prejudices. We often forget about that. Not all dentists are greedy money-grabbers, likely not even most. Although some minority groups cause more trouble than others, most individuals within these groups probably do well. Still, cultures and societies are Big Things, even though you can’t precisely define or measure them.

Intentions and arguments

In multicultural societies, people from certain ethnic groups often face greater difficulties and cause more problems than others. That undermines the fabric of society as much as racism and discrimination. It is one of the reasons why right-wing populism is on the rise. Culture often coincides with ethnicity, so the resentment can express itself as racism, which allows racists and bigots to have their say. That was the reason for having political correctness. Policymakers have long hoped that maintaining a friendly atmosphere and helping disadvantaged groups would help to reduce these problems over time.

The validity of an argument doesn’t depend on the intentions of the person making it. That said, there is a wide array of possibilities for misrepresenting the facts, so intent usually matters for the quality of the argument. Activists are cherry-picking incidents to present a picture of a group causing trouble. I could have photographed discarded, empty Marlboro Red cigarette packages on the street to illustrate that Marlboro Red smokers are littering jerks. Although there is some truth to it, it is not the truth itself.

Our cultures and values play a crucial role in how we view society. Groups that pose problems often share a belief that the society in which they live is not their own. ‘It is a white man’s world,’ a black man might say. You may become angry or frustrated when you fail in society due to circumstances you believe are outside your control. You may not understand the unwritten rules or know the right people to get ahead. Even when we are equal before the law, we are not in reality. It is not always easy to determine to what degree you can blame society, the individual, or the groups to which individuals belong.

Ethnic profiling

Cultural differences are why authorities engage in ethnic profiling. Culture coincides with ethnicity. In the Netherlands, crime rates vary by ethnic group. Criminals are a minority in every group, but the differences are significant. People of Antillian, Moroccan, Surinamese and Turkish descent are, on average, three times more likely (2.4%) to be crime suspects than native Dutch (0.8%). It has a magnifying effect, as it influences how the native Dutch think of these people. When you see pictures of crime suspects, they often have, as the Dutch call it, a tinted skin, meaning they aren’t white. It can give you the impression non-whites are all criminals, just like you can get the impression that all Americans are gun-wielding nutters or that Marlboro Red smokers are jerks. It can make you distrust people who aren’t white, most notably when you hardly know them.

The relationship between ethnicity and crime can be misleading. There is a coincidence between income and crime. And these minorities have relatively low incomes. A good question is why people from certain ethnic groups have low incomes. That relates to culture, but it is not the only explanation. Many immigrants came to Western Europe for low-paid jobs that required little education. Their parents had little education. Education was not a high priority for them, so their children often ended up with little education. Even when income explains crime rates better than culture, culture still plays a significant role in income, most notably through attitudes towards education and work. It is something we can’t ignore as specific types of conduct relate to particular groups.

Diversity policies, such as hiring persons from disadvantaged groups, can help improve society. However, the result can be that better-qualified people don’t get the job because of their skin colour or gender, which is discrimination. And, if you don’t hire the best people for the job, the quality of your product or service can come under pressure. On the other hand, without diversity policies, talent may go to waste. You can train talented people when they lack education. The Dutch government invested in the education of minorities rather than promoting diversity in hiring. Equalising opportunities with education seems a better approach than lowering standards.

Ethnic profiling is controversial. It has undesirable consequences, as the following example demonstrates. Suppose a country consists of two ethnic groups, which are Group A, 2/3 of the population, and Group B, 1/3. Assume further that people in Groups A and B are each responsible for 50% of Fraud X. Hence, people in Group B are twice as likely to commit Fraud X as people in Group A. To combat fraud effectively, you can only verify individuals from Group B to achieve the maximum result. You could apprehend twice as many fraudsters with the same effort. But now comes the catch. You don’t check on people from Group A, so only people from Group B end up in prison. While responsible for 50% of the fraud, Group B receives 100% of the punishment. That is discrimination.

Some call it racist, but the reason for ethnic profiling can be a risk assessment related to cultural characteristics, not ethnicity. In this hypothetical case, it is the likelihood of committing Fraud X. Also, in that case, ethnic profiling can be racist. People from Group A might dislike those from Group B and elect a leader who allows the authorities to investigate the crimes of Group B while disregarding the crimes of Group A. You can end up with a situation where the authorities prosecute Fraud X and only check on people in Group B, supposedly because they are doing it more frequently while doing nothing about Fraud Y, which members of Group A commit twice as often as those from Group B.

If your job is combating Fraud X, and you dedicate only 50% of your resources to Group B, that seems reasonable because people from Group B are responsible for 50% of Fraud X. In that case, people from Group B are still twice as likely to get punished because Group B is half the size of Group A, but receives the same amount of checking. And because people in Group B are twice as likely to commit Fraud X, people from Group B end up in prison four times as likely as those from Group A. While responsible for 50% of the fraud, Group B accounts for 67% of the prison population. If people from Group B claim that the authorities discriminate against them and punish them more, they are right.

People from ethnic minorities often get harsher punishment for the same crimes. A Dutch study showed that people from other ethnic groups are up to 30% more likely to receive a prison sentence for the same crime than native Dutch. The reason might be discrimination, but more likely, it is cultural. If you share the same culture with the judge, you know what to say to sway the judge’s opinion. Consequently, the judge might think the migrant is a jerk and the Dutchman is reasonable.

If the problem is severe enough, the end may justify the means. Ethnic profiling can undermine the trust of minorities in the authorities, because these groups may feel they are the target of police harassment. Still, if authorities don’t act on culturally related crime, we might end up with lawless ghettos. In several Western European multicultural societies, males of North African descent are overrepresented in the prison populations. In the United States, it is black males. On average, they commit more crimes than the general population. And if the police engage in ethnic profiling, people from these groups receive more punishment for the same crimes than others.

Ethnic profiling to check on people is one thing, but it becomes much worse when you use it to punish people without proof. The Netherlands has benefits with advance payments for medical expenses, rent and childcare. The tax service administers these benefits. These advance payments can bring people into trouble when it later turns out they aren’t qualified and must refund the money received. The rules were complex and prone to errors, as well as to fraud. Most irregularities occurred in areas where poor people lived, often ethnic minorities, so the tax service checked these individuals more closely. It remains unclear whether the tax service did ethnic profiling. Whether these were errors or fraud is often impossible to say, but he tax service didn’t need proof to label you as a fraudster and demand repayment.

Criteria can help identify potential fraud, but they don’t prove that someone committed fraud, nor can they distinguish between honest mistakes and intentional embezzlement. Suppose 5% of the people who used the childcare arrangement committed fraud. Assume also that there were criteria to select the 20% doing 80% of the embezzlement. In that case, 20% of that selection commits fraud, and 80% do not. There was a political climate that promoted harsh treatment of ethnic minorities. A decade later, thousands of people were in financial and emotional ruin. Complex regulations lead to errors and encourage fraud.

Officially, there is no ethnic profiling in the Netherlands, but it does happen. The Dutch government conducts an offensive against ‘undermining crime’ in selected poor neighbourhoods. In Zaandam East, it led to the surveillance of suspicious individuals and manhunts, sometimes based on hunches rather than evidence. The area is known for the window-cleaning gangs that divide up territories and use violence against the competition. It has been hard to crack down on these gangs, and Dutch authorities fear that criminals are undermining Dutch society. Zaandam East is one of the twenty areas targeted by the National Programme for Liveability and Safety, a drastic approach to ‘clean up’ city districts. The people living there are mostly foreigners, often from Bulgaria and Turkey. The methods the authorities use may not always be lawful, and critics ask whether the fraud and crimes committed by native Dutch receive similar scrutiny.¹ Still, fighting organised crime requires intrusive methods. Zaandam-East is a crime-infested neighbourhood, but the majority of people living there aren’t criminals. I have known two Turks who lived in Zaandam. They were ordinary people with jobs.

Discrimination everywhere

Municipal officials from ethnic minorities experience discrimination and racism by colleagues, a 2023 survey in the Netherlands revealed. Civil servants participating in the survey reported facing discrimination, such as receiving criticism when another member of their ethnic group misbehaved. Those who spoke out against those remarks faced bullying and exclusion, so others kept their mouths shut out of fear of losing their job or being labelled a problematic case. Many municipal officials from ethnic minorities left their jobs due to racism and also because they had fewer chances of promotion, the report said.

Discrimination is not a trivial issue, but there are two sides. Those who make the remarks may think they are funny and that their jokes are harmless. They don’t think of the consequences. Bullying and exclusion can cause long-lasting trauma. Some complainers might have displayed unacceptable behaviour or taken offence at issues a Dutch person wouldn’t. We have no footage to establish what happened. In many cases, attributing the problem to discrimination based on ethnicity only scratches the surface. Bullying and exclusion happen for many reasons. It has to do with how humans behave in groups.

In workplaces, a pecking order often exists, with leaders, followers, and outcasts. Humans desire to establish social hierarchies. Some want to be the boss. To be a leader, you must demonstrate strength and confidence. A low-risk approach is attacking the weak or those who are different. There is also a group culture that defines how you should behave. Causing problems for the group and not fitting in are reasons for bullying. These issues may relate to skin colour, sexual preference or political views. Angry responses demonstrate your weakness. Reporting incidents makes you a rat.

Workplaces should be safe, but that is not always the case. In a properly functioning group, members respect each other, do not exploit each other’s weaknesses, and resolve their differences. For some reason, people can’t always get along. In a job environment, it can be performance on the job. I have worked in a Java team for over a decade. Due to our responsibilities, we couldn’t afford to have underperforming individuals on our team. There was no bullying, but three people had to leave the team because they weren’t performing adequately. These situations were unpleasant.

It is often difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons why people encounter difficulties at work. They may experience discrimination, but the underlying cause may be something else. What makes the outsiders different is usually the point of attack for the bully, making it appear to be a form of discrimination. Employers seek to select individuals who fit in with the team. They are in business to make money, not to settle disputes. Cultural differences can be a source of trouble, and discrimination is often subtle, as employers may have reasons to discriminate.

Once, I had a colleague from Suriname. He was a temporary hire who worked for a software agency. His uncle was his boss. He also came from Suriname. Out of the blue, he told me that he was the only Surinamese working for the agency. His uncle preferred Dutchmen because he could depend on them. They did as asked and kept their agreements. People from Suriname are more relaxed and often come up with excuses as to why they fail to meet their schedules, he seemed to imply by saying that. Customer satisfaction is key to business success, so it matters who you hire. His uncle was a businessman, not a philanthropist. It might have been better if he had hired a few more Surinamese and taught them to take their jobs more seriously and meet appointments. That would have been a diversity policy that could have helped to reduce the issue.

Minorities also discriminate. We are all human, after all. If people from an ethnic minority discriminate, it may seem less damaging than when the majority does it, as minorities usually have fewer favours to dispense. That is probably why liberals looked the other way. Jews are an exception. They have amassed so much wealth and power that their favouring of Jews has become extremely harmful. But few dare to speak out about Jews. Discrimination by minorities undermines society as much as discrimination by the majority. When I was on holiday in the United States, I once wanted to book a hotel room in a black neighbourhood in Miami. The lady behind the reception was kind enough to advise me not to. But if a white man can’t safely sleep in a hotel room in a black neighbourhood, how can blacks expect whites to stop discriminating against them?

One of the most disgraced minorities in the Netherlands is Moroccans because of the troubles caused by young males from this group. Many of them look down on compatriots who have done well in Dutch society. Had the mayor of Rotterdam, a Muslim of Moroccan descent, wished to run for Prime Minister, he would have stood a good chance. But on the message board for Moroccans I regularly visited, there were no words of praise. Several posters saw him as a defector. Also, the Moroccan lady who made it to the speaker of the house received few regards. They see themselves as ‘us’ and the Dutch as ‘them’. Discrimination works both ways. You will never become part of society if you think like that.

What is the matter with me?

I once asked myself the following question. Suppose I had room to let, and two men applied, one a white man from Bulgaria and the other a black man from Suriname. Both had similar jobs, and both gave a favourable impression. Who would get the room? Probably, I would choose the man for Suriname. Suriname has been a Dutch colony, and most people from Suriname living in the Netherlands are nearly as Dutch as the Dutch themselves. I have a prejudice that Surinamese are relaxed people who seldom cause trouble. About Bulgarians, I know far less, and I have never spoken to one. For the same reason, I would have selected a Dutchman if he had made a similar impression.

So, where did I get the idea from that Surinamese are okay? The people I have met? Television? It is unclear. Knowing I am biased, I would still choose the man from Suriname. Surinamese are culturally closer to the Dutch than Bulgarians, and I know more about them. And here we arrive at the heart of the matter, something overlooked in debates about racism and discrimination. About Bulgarians, I know very little. And Bulgarians differ more from native Dutch than Surinamese. When I rent out a room, I don’t want trouble. Judging native Dutch is hard enough already, let alone people from other cultures.

I discriminate and have prejudices like most people. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have opinions about liberals, conservatives, Muslims, Chinese, Germans, dentists and Marlboro Red smokers. I may not always be aware of my biases, but I am not s racist. Otherwise, I would have selected the white guy. It is better to diagnose my condition as xenophobia. I know more about Suriname and Surinamese. That is not to say there is no racism or that it is not widespread, but the underlying issues are often unfamiliarity and cultural differences. And so, identifying the issue as racism only scratches the surface. If you intend to solve the problem, that kind of simplicity doesn’t get you very far.

Those who are different face exclusion and violence. And I am different, so I know what it means that others pick you out for special treatment for no other reason than who I am. It makes you doubt yourself and ask, ‘What’s the matter with me?’ By the time I had become a student, I had become an emotional wreck, mired in self-doubt. But it is how groups of humans deal with deviant behaviour and press for conformity. Even people who think they are open-minded and cherish diversity do it because they don’t tolerate those who disagree. That is what Woke people do. Cooperating in groups requires conformism, so cultural differences and unfamiliarity cause trouble and uncertainty.

It begins with basic things, such as appointments. That made the Surinamese employer not hire his fellow Surinamese. I had a friend who was always late when we went out. He didn’t do that at work, of course. He married a lady from Africa. When she came with him, they were even later. Their marriage worked well because they shared a view on keeping schedules. It wouldn’t have worked with me. It might seem a minor issue, but a foundation of modern civilisation is maintaining schedules. In a business, it is a matter of survival due to competition. The solution, however, might not be for Africans and Surinamese to join the rat race but rather to end the system that drives us to destruction. That is why we must first identify what the future requires of us before we demand that people fit in.

The requirement of fitting in still allows for diversity in traditions as long as they don’t cause harm to nature or other people. Everything is interconnected, so not only do crimes like shoplifting and selling drugs do damage, but also, when there is no direct causal relationship between actions and consequences, such as dumping garbage or spreading hatred, and dying animals and terrorism. The same is true for discrimination. There may be good reasons to discriminate, but there can also be better reasons not to, or to help individuals from disadvantaged groups. Think of the benefits in the long run and the long-forgotten words of Martin Luther King,

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

Today, King’s dream seems like a distant memory of the past. We are not there yet. It might testify to the stubbornness of the issue. The recent rise of fascism in the West, however, masks the progress beneath the surface. There may be a lack of willpower, but above all, there is a lack of self-criticism among all those involved, as existing traditions and cultures hinder progress. Perhaps it was too much in the 1960s. The colour of your skin can say something about your character, as there is a relationship between ethnicity and culture. Different cultures pose different problems. Throughout history, multiculturalism has been a tool employed by emperors to manage culturally diverse empires. And so it will be for the coming messiah if he is to unite the world. Multiculturalism is the proverbial One Ring and the road to closer integration. If God’s Paradise endures, cultures will lose significance, and the world will be one.

Latest revision: 18 July 2025

Featured image: Black and white sheep. Jesus Solana (2008). Wikimedia Commons.

Another Whiff of Coincidence

20 Aug 202318 Dec 2024 nivtricLeave a comment

The aftermath of the superstorm prediction

A whiff of coincidence was in the air. Perhaps it was more than that. And I took notice. In the Autumn of 2008, the time-prompt phenomenon haunted me for weeks. On the Internet, people wrote about similar experiences. As a result, I became preoccupied with numbers for a while, most notably double-digit numbers and multiples of eleven. For instance, in December 2008, we passed a gas station in Sneek. There was a billboard indicating prices. One number was flashing, indicating a price of 1.199. 11 and 99 were both multiples of 11. And I noticed it because of my preoccupation. And so, eleven and some other numbers, for instance, the emergency services telephone numbers 112 and 911, play a significant role in the following report. Some of these stories might be lame, while others could make you wonder.

Also in December 2008, I predicted that a superstorm would strike the Netherlands on 9 February 2009, the birthday of the Lady from the dormitory. The storm came, but it was less severe and hit Northern France rather than the Netherlands. Charles de Gaulle International Airport of Paris had to be closed that day. You can read more about that here:

Psychics, mediums, and premonition
Like psychics and mediums, we can sometimes have accurate premonitions. My personal experience may tell a lot about why that is so.
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The superstorm prediction story came with a peculiar sequel. On 1 June 2009, Air France flight 447 disappeared above the Atlantic Ocean. The incident involved an Airbus 330 with manufacturer serial number 660.¹ Both are multiples of 11, referring to 11:11. Flight AF447 and the 9 February 2009 superstorm relate to the Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris. It happened 112 days after 9 February 2009, while 112 is the European emergency services telephone number.

At first, I did not consider a relationship between the Air France AF447 flight disappearance and the superstorm. The next day, a helicopter crashed on Ameland.² We were about to spend our holidays there, and there already had been a few coincidences related to Ameland. That attracted my attention, but I did not think much of it. The next day, my son Rob was watching the news. Suddenly he came to me yelling: ‘Guess what, the plane that crashed was due to arrive at 11:11 AM in Paris.’ That was incorrect. The plane was due to arrive at 11:10 AM. But Rob’s remark made me investigate the incident.

On 30 June 2009, Flight IY626 crashed in the Indian Ocean near Comoros,³ 29 days after Flight AF447 disappeared above the Atlantic Ocean. AF447 was destined for the Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris. IY626 had departed from this airport. There are 29 days between 1 June 2009, the day flight AF447 disappeared and 30 June 2009, the day flight IY626 crashed, while 2/9 refers to 9 February (American notation).

The church tower in the pond at the university campus of Enschede played a central role in the circumstances that made me make the superstorm prediction. And university campus of Enschede was where I met the Lady. The artwork refers to flooded land. Enschede has area code 53. The last major flooding disaster in the Netherlands happened in 1953. This event is known as the February Storm of 53. The Dutch film De Storm about the 1953 flooding disaster came out in 2009.⁴

The premiere of the film, which lasts 110 minutes, was on 11 September 2009 (9/11, while 9+1+1=11 and 2+0+0+9 =11, making a reference to 11:11) at the 11^th Festival Film by the Sea in Vlissingen.⁴ Vlissingen was the destination of our summer holidays in the four previous years. Enschede turns up in several spooky coincidences, so it is noteworthy that Enschede has a sorority named Spooky.⁵

Exactly three years after a blogger from Sargasso.nl posted the story about the fictional superstorm with a flooding disaster hitting the Netherlands on 9 February 2009, the presentation of the World Risk Index of the United Nations University was held on 2 September 2011. The Netherlands had the highest risk of flooding disasters in the European Union. The Netherlands is ranked number 69 worldwide,⁶ a peculiar ‘position’.

FC Twente becoming Dutch soccer champion

In 2010, FC Twente from Enschede became champion of the Dutch soccer Premier League for the first time ever. In 2009, AZ from Alkmaar had been champion. A is the first letter of the alphabet, while Z is the last. In Greek, that is Alpha Omega. On 21 December 2012, the day the Mayan calendar supposedly ended, there was one match in the Dutch soccer Premier League: AZ – FC Twente. In the years before 2009, PSV Eindhoven was the champion. Eindhoven means Final Gardens, a reference to Paradise. It is where the Lady from the dormitory currently lives.

On 2 May 2010, we went with my parents, my sister and brother-in-law and their children to an indoor playground in Almelo to celebrate my mother’s 65th birthday. It was the day FC Twente became champion. A screen played Disney XD channel for children. I was watching it. Three American football players appeared. One of them had shirt number 19, and another had 53. Then, the football players with numbers 19 and 53 stood side by side and began jumping, making the number 1953 noticed. It was the year of the flooding disaster, and it linked to Enschede because of the area code 53 and the church tower in the pond, and it happened on the day FC Twente from Enschede became champion.

In the years that followed, Ajax Amsterdam became champion. The Ajax team is nicknamed Sons of God, and Amsterdam is often abbreviated to Adam. Adam is the Son of God (Luke 3:38). Johan Cruijff, the most famous Ajax football player in history, has the initials JC like Jesus Christ. His nicknames were Number 14, The Skinny One and The Oracle. Number 14 was his shirt number. And that number refers to the initials of the Lady. I was a skinny person employed as an Oracle developer and database administrator. Cruijff also became the trainer for FC Barcelona in Spain. According to persistent rumours in the Dutch press, people in Barcelona called him The Saviour.

2 September 2011 is a curious date (2/9/11 or 2/9/2011 while 20=9+11), making multiple combinations of elevens. That day, the Dutch national soccer team, nicknamed the Dutch Eleven, won their Euro 2012 qualifying match against San Marino in Eindhoven. The score was 11-0, surpassing their previous 9-0 record score.⁷ This is a 9:11 reference. Soccer is played by two teams of 11 players, and 11:11-reference.

And on 2 September 2011 was the farewell party of star soccer player Ruiz of FC Twente, who played a crucial role in the championship of FC Twente in 2010.⁸ In his new team Fulham, Ruiz had number 11. His first match for his new team was on 11 September 2011. Remarkably, FC Twente played its next contest in group K of the Europa League on 15 September 2011 against Fulham, Ruiz’s new team. K is the eleventh letter of the alphabet, while the match result was 1-1. The return match was on 1 December 2011. 1 December is 1/12 (European notation), while 112 is the European emergency telephone number.

A peculiar set of plane crashes

On 15 September 2012, a small plane crashed in a field near Den Helder in the Netherlands. At the same time, there was an air show in Den Helder, but the accident was not related to the air show.⁹ That evening, another small plane crashed in the Netherlands in a field in Valkenswaard near Eindhoven. This plane had taken part in the Den Helder airshow earlier that day.¹⁰

On the same date, a small plane flying for the Dutch KLM Flight Academy was found crashed in a canyon in the mountains east of Phoenix, Arizona. Three people died on the crash site.¹¹ Three weeks later, on 6 October 2012, another small aircraft flying for the KLM Flight Academy crashed into another small plane. Both managed to make an emergency landing, and nobody was injured.¹² There had never been any accidents involving the KLM Flight Academy before.

The following related incident pairs can be identified: two planes crashing on the same day in the Netherlands and two aircraft of the KLM Flight Academy crashing, linked by the Netherlands and the date 15 September 2012. The number three occurred three times. Three planes were in the news on 15 September 2012, and three people were killed. And there were three weeks between the accidents.

And so, I pondered on 10 October 2012 whether or not the number three was part of this scheme. A few hours later, the news reported that three people had killed themselves in a rare triple suicide in Utrecht. Among the dead were two twin brothers aged 33.¹³ That made it even more bizarre. According to the report, police entered the apartment after the family had received farewell letters.

On 17 July 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) was shot down in Ukrainian airspace. The plane was a Boeing 777-200. The incident happened four months after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370) went missing on 8 March 2014. The aircraft is still missing, which makes its disappearance particularly mysterious. That plane also was a Boeing 777-200, and the 404th plane of that type produced while 404 is the number associated with missing (not found) web pages.

The Flight 17 plane first flew on 17 July 1997, exactly 17 years before the accident.¹⁴ That was exactly one year after the crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 on 17 July 1996.¹⁵ It crashed 777 days before Swissair Flight 111.¹⁶ That is peculiar because of the numbers 777 and 111. Exactly 7 years, 7 months, and 7 days after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) was shot down in Ukrainian airspace, Putin started the Ukraine war. Did he count the days? Probably not.

Looking at the numbers

Again in December 2008, we took a trip to Amsterdam by train. Rob and I had been noticing 11 related coincidences all day. In the evening, we were on the train destined for Sneek and sat down. Rob then said: ‘The number of this train unit has nothing to do with eleven.’ He was mistaken. The number was 242 or 2 * 11 * 11. And I took notice.

In January 2009 after work, I sat down in train unit 306. I realised that 306 is not a multiple of 11. My calculation was 330 – 306 = 14. It demonstrated that 306 was not divisible by 11. So this was not spooky. Then I looked to the left. On the track next to me was train unit 234. This number was not a multiple of 11 either as 234 – 220 = 14 also. Then I found myself contemplating whether or not the number 14 turning up was a coincidence. I looked to the right just when bus 14 was entering the bus station. 14 translated into letters is AD, the initials of the Lady. If you turn that number upside down, you get ‘hi’.

My lucky number was 26 because I was born on 26 November. As I remember it, the Lady was born on 9 February (9/2 European notation). That links the number 92 to Her. Now it happens to be that 92 is 26 upside down. And probably we were both born in 1968. We crossed each other’s path in 1989, while 89 is 68 upside down. That makes it a pair of related coincidences like 11:11. Also, 1968 and 1989 were revolutionary years. If this is not a mere coincidence, then some thinking has gone into this.

Numbers do not have any meaning except their value, and coincidences can happen by chance. Thinking of myself as rational, I once tried to debunk these suggestions as irrational. When commuting home from work on the train, I tried to convince myself that number coincidences are selective remembrance. If you focus on something, for instance, a specific number, you notice it more often. Upon nearing train station Sneek North, I told myself, ‘Let’s focus on 86, a number that has no meaning to me, and I will start to see it.’ And indeed, the following number I saw was 86 on the licence plate of a car parked at the station. Did that prove my point, or was Someone poking fun at me?

At the time, most Dutch licence plates had the following formats: AA-AA-99, 99-AA-AA, and 99-AAA-9 (A is a letter, and 9 is a number). The chance of a two-digit number like 86 on the first licence plate was close to one per cent. One year later, this incident came to my mind again. When parking my bike at work, I thought of it for no apparent reason. Then I walked down the parking lot and noticed the licence plates. Among the eight licence plates I saw, three had an 86, one had a 68, two had an 11, which might refer to 11:11, and two were unrelated to the incident, a pretty impressive score.

On 17 March 2012, the number 26 popped up conspicuously often. It never happened like that. As it is my lucky number, I would have noticed that. That afternoon Ingrid, Rob, and I were biking. The number 26 kept coming up, for instance, on licence plates. I began wondering what kind of luck was waiting for us. Rob wanted to go to the restaurant named Het Paviljoen near the lake. It was closed in March, so I warned him it would be closed. Rob wanted to go there anyway. The restaurant turned out to be open unofficially. The owner was waiting for a supply truck. It was late, and it arrived when we were there. After we left, the restaurant closed.

I also noticed the number 92. For a while, it appeared that when I left a building, the first car to pass often had the number 92 on its licence plate, perhaps, about one in three to five times, while once in a hundred was to be expected. Once, I tried to cross a road. The first car passing had a licence plate number with a 92. The second car also had 92 in its licence plate number. And so did the third. Only these three cars passed before I could cross. It was a temporary phase, and selective remembrance played a role, but it did not seem entirely coincidental.

A small white car with licence plate number 9-GXD-2 was parked in Leeuwarden on a parking lot near the train station nearly every morning for years. The letter O is not on Dutch car licence plates, so I imagined the X could represent an O linking God to 9 February (9-GOD-2). I also found this car parked 100 metres from my home in Sneek a few times. That may seem insignificant, but a related incident makes it noteworthy.

I own a green Opel Astra with licence plate TZ-GT-18. Once when we were on holiday in Zeeland, I noticed another green Opel Astra with licence plate TZ-GT-54. That attracted my attention. Later, I found it parked in Sneek near my home several times. It was in the same parking place where the car with licence plate 09-GXD-2 had also been. The distance between Zeeland and Sneek is 300 kilometres. That combination of peculiar events is like seeing 11:11.

Featured image: Poster for the film The Storm. Universal Studios (2009). [copyright info]

1. Air France Flight 447. Wikipedia. [link]
2. Helikopter stort neer boven Ameland. Volkskrant (2 June 2009). [link]
3. Yemenia Flight 626. Wikipedia. [link]
4. Stormachtige start voor 11e Film by the Sea. Trouw (9 September 2009). [link]
5. Lesleden dispuut Spooky doen graag uit de doeken wie ze zijn. Huis Aan Huis Enschede (4 May 2018). [link]
6. Nederland heeft grootste kans op natuurramp in Europa. Nu.nl (2 September 2011). [link]
7. San Marino on the end of record Netherlands win. UEFA (2 September 2011).
8. Verdrietige Ruiz verlaat Twente met pijn in het hart. Trouw (2 September 2011). [link]
9. Een gewonde bij vliegtuigcrash Den Helder. RTL Nieuws (15 September 2012). [link]
10. Straalvliegtuig gecrasht in Valkenswaard. Nu.nl (15 September 2012). [link]
11. 3 found dead after small plane crashes in Ariz. Fox News (15 September 2012). [link]
12. Weer ongeluk lesvliegtuig KLM. Trouw (6 October 2012). [link]
13. Drievoudige zelfmoord in Utrechtse studentenflat. Nu.nl (10 October 2012). [link]
14. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Wikipedia. [link]
15. TWA Flight 800. Wikipedia. [link]
16. Swissair Flight 111. Wikipedia. [link]

Eibergen

8 Feb 202320 Apr 2026 nivtricLeave a comment

Near Enschede, in the east of the Netherlands, is a village called Eibergen. I was born there in Iepenstraat (Elm Street). Elm Street. Do I have your attention? Here we go. The assassination of US President Kennedy happened on Elm Street, and that event is part of a web of remarkable coincidences. A Nightmare on Elm Street is a horror film first released in the United States on 9 November 1984 (11/9) and in the Netherlands on 11 September 1986 (9/11), with 9/11 referring to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, yet another event marked by a remarkable array of coincidences. Here begins a tale riddled with coincidences and a story inside a story.

Eibergen means egg mountains, a possible cryptic reference to fallopian tubes. The initials of my last name, KI, make the Dutch abbreviation for artificial insemination, a way to make a virgin give birth. It is also the Dutch abbreviation for artificial intelligence, and this world is likely AI-generated. The name of the nearby city, Enschede, is found to be referencing the female reproductive organ. And Vagina, you could make of it. The initials of my first and middle names, BH, make the Dutch abbreviation for a bra. The song ‘A Boy Named Sue’ by Johnny Cash is about names of this kind and the strong character they build. But Sue had it easy. His funny name was the only thing he had to deal with.

Until age four, I lived in Eibergen and recall a little of that time. Nothing unusual happened. You might expect more if you know the remainder of this story, but to my knowledge, there were no spectacular omens of any kind. Often, I went out on a tricycle to feed the sheep in the pasture at the end of the street. The clock on television instilled anxiety. If it appeared, I took cover behind the sofa until it was gone. Unlike the clock in the living room of the renowned traditional pendulum type with the well-known ‘Nu Elck Syn Sin’ (Now, let everyone have it their own way) lettering, that one had a second hand, which made it particularly intimidating. Time was ticking. Tic toc tic toc. That was most frightening indeed. I remember my mother being pregnant. She was ironing. My sister Anne Marie was born in 1971. I sang songs for the baby in the baby room while my mother changed nappies.

Our home was on a block of similar houses. Next door lived an elderly lady, probably in her sixties. She came from the former Dutch Indies and had a fish tank in the living room. On the other side was a young family with children like us. They had a daughter of my age and a younger son. I remember playing together with them. They told me that rabbits eat grass. I tried it as well, but not being a rabbit, I didn’t appreciate the taste. And I once electrocuted myself by putting the chain of the stopper of the kitchen sink into a wall outlet. Others later said I had used scissors, but I am sure it was the stopper’s chain, which my mother confirmed. It suggests most of my memories are of good quality.

My father usually went to work around 6 AM and returned around 9 PM. He loved his job. On Saturdays, he went out hunting with his friends. And so, I hardly saw him. At home, he caught up on his sleep on the couch to wake up when sports started on television. So, at age three, I once said to my mother, probably jokingly, ‘Who is that man sleeping on the couch?’ That is what my mother later told me. My father probably took the hint, as he all of a sudden took me out of bed every morning before he went to work and played with me for a few minutes for a few weeks, which I do remember.

At the age of three, I once fell on my teeth on the wooden table in the living room in a most brutal smash. A piece of the wood broke off. My front teeth turned black shortly after, until my permanent teeth came in, making me an ugly duckling for years to come. We also had a bicycle accident. My mother was bicycling, Anne Marie was in the front, I was in the back, and my mother had trouble handling the bags full of groceries on the handlebars. And then the bicycle fell over. In early 1973, we moved to Nijverdal, which means ‘industrious valley’. It suggests we left the mountains for a life in a valley, but the Dutch mountains are imaginary, and the name of a song by my favourite band, The Nits. The music you love may reveal your character. And that might be correct in my case.

I was standing in the valley of rock
Up to my belly in an early fog
I was looking for the road to a green painted house
In the Dutch mountains
In the Dutch mountains
Mountains

I met a woman in the valley of stone
She was painting roses on the walls of her home
And the moon is a coin with the head of the queen
Of the Dutch mountains
Mountains

The Nits, In the Dutch Mountains

Latest revision: 20 April 2026

Featured image: my mother, my younger sister, and I (in the foreground)

Joking Jokers

18 Jan 202311 Apr 2026 nivtricLeave a comment

In 2002, I began working as an Oracle database administrator at a government agency. Most people in the Netherlands know about the agency because it processes traffic fines. Therefore, it isn’t popular with the general public, just as the Internal Revenue Service isn’t. If someone asked who my employer was, I kept it vague and said the government or the Department of Justice. It didn’t take long before something went seriously wrong. On my second day on the job, one of the production systems crashed after running the batch jobs, leaving the database corrupt. In hindsight, that was a bit peculiar. After three days of searching, which included a weekend, I still hadn’t found the exact cause. When the operator restored the backup of the previous evening, which was still valid, and ran the batch jobs, the database became corrupt again. It was probably a software bug, so I advised restoring the backup from the previous evening and upgrading the database software to see if that would solve the issue. Instead, the IT director declared a crisis and set up a multidisciplinary task force to address it.

The head of the task force was a corpulent project leader who decided we should find the cause, which I hadn’t uncovered. I just wanted to fix the problem. Every day at 10 AM, there was a meeting to discuss the state of affairs. Every day, I proposed to upgrade the database software to see if it would help. And every day, my proposal was brushed aside. I would have done it myself, but I was a brand-new hire and didn’t have sufficient access rights. And the agency used VAX VMS, an unfamiliar operating system, so I couldn’t install software or restore backups myself. Two weeks later, after the experts had weighed in and after hiring a database corruption expert from Oracle, the cause remained elusive, and managers were getting desperate. Finally, they were willing to consider my suggestion. And it solved the problem. It was a harbinger of things yet to come. During the review, they grilled me for not being interested in researching the cause. I was not a team player and said solving a crisis was more important because it was a production system, so the users needed it to work. And the upgrade demonstrated that it was a software bug.

If you had prejudices about the government, my employer didn’t dispel them. You expect red tape, risk-avoidance, rule-following, and the like. It was all there. One department excelled. If you made the request incorrectly, they would do nothing, even when it was clear what they had to do. You couldn’t disturb them between 10 and 11 AM when they were discussing the work. They didn’t seem to do much, so what did they discuss for 1 hour a day? Some colleagues may remember my so-called crusade against bureaucracy. I often made jokes about bureaucracy and solved problems while ignoring red tape. Still, we perform our job effectively and efficiently, as traffic offenders would agree. And results matter most. Governments are bureaucratic because they implement rules.

Everywhere you go, some people work hard, while others take it easy. I have seen people doing little in corporations for profit as well. At my first project at Cap Volmac, we did nothing for months. Still, I have the impression that the pace of work in the government bureaucracy is, on average, slower than in the private sector. It is hard to put a number on it, but there is a difference. There is less pressure. Decisions take time and require more meetings. This is not a representative picture of the entire public sector. Police officers and teachers may experience stress. But most bureaucrats live calm lives. The hours you work for your employer are working hours. Cap Volmac required me to invest private time in education and corporate meetings. Finally, government employment is more secure.

When I came to work there, another database administrator, Dirk-Jan, a senior who had done several other jobs and hadn’t been a database administrator for long, was already there. After two months, Kees arrived, and from then on, we were three. Kees had a technical background. A few years later, Rene also joined the team. The agency also hired a security officer, a guy in a suit who soon began to make our work harder with unnecessary procedures. For instance, we had to lock up our Oracle manuals in a secure location after work and bring the keys to the porter’s lodge. But our manuals were public information like Windows manuals. Today, you can find this information on the Internet.

At the same time, the system that processed traffic fines had a superuser named after the system itself, with a password equal to the system’s name. Several other systems had the same issue, so the superuser and its password were the system’s name. I notified the security officer, but, being a true bureaucrat, he had more important things to do, such as attending meetings, inventing procedures, and preparing management reports. He added the issue to his list. But an issue like that called for immediate action. And so, I contacted a few senior programmers, and together we fixed that problem.

There were other issues with access rights as well. As they would say in the Professional Skills course, ‘There was room for improvement.’ If a new employee came in, the service desk made a ticket stating, ‘Create user account X as a copy of account Y,’ and sent it from one department to another. Usually, it took two weeks for the ticket to pass through all our departments, and system administrators made errors along the way. Hence, account X was rarely identical to account Y. If people switched departments or left, the defunct access rights were usually not deleted. Perhaps the audit department had figured this out, as our management soon launched a role-based access rights (RBAC) project.

RBAC works like so. You have a role in a department. In ordinary language, it is your job. For your job, you need access to an array of systems. Your job description determines which rights you need, for instance, to read specific data or change it. As a rule, employees should not receive more access rights than necessary to perform their tasks. RBAC is about the rights an employee in a specific job role needs. Business consultants came in and defined job roles and access requirements. A programmer then built an administrative database. However, the database didn’t connect to our systems, so there was no guarantee that the access rights in our systems matched the administration. And if you know how things fare in practice, you know that the administration would soon become stale and pointless. People are lazy, prone to errors, and forgetful. That would change once the administration and our systems are connected. If the administration was wrong, people couldn’t do their jobs properly, so it had to be accurate.

In 2004, I began building DBB, an account administration system, using Designer/2000, while keeping the bureaucrats out of the loop because they would likely stand in the way and make it harder for me. Only my manager and a few colleagues knew about it. DBB automated granting and revoking access rights in our systems, the RBAC way. It took me nine months, as I also had to do my regular work as a database administrator. But when I was ready to implement DBB on the production databases, bureaucrats became aware of what was happening and tried to block it. In their eyes, this was wildcat development. There had been no meetings, nor were there piles of reports to justify it. In early 2005, I introduced it sneakily with the help of the people from the service desk who wanted to use it. They installed the DBB client programmes on their personal computers. And I was a database administrator, so I could install anything I wanted on any database.

The results exceeded anyone’s expectations, including mine. The service desk created the accounts, so the tickets didn’t have to pass through all those departments. We could issue accounts in one day instead of two weeks. The service desk could reset passwords on the spot instead of relaying the request to a department, reducing the time to reset passwords from hours to seconds. And the access rights accurately reflected job roles. So, once DBB was operational, the opposition crumbled, and DBB became a regular application, even though not an official one, which was an essential distinction for bureaucrats. And so, we had RBAC fully implemented.

The DBB logo was a drawing by my wife. She had made it for another purpose. It features several jokers grinning at a set of file folders. To me, these folders symbolised bureaucracy. DBB joked with the bureaucrats, who considered it a rogue system. Supposedly, I was one of those jokers, so I made one of them my avatar on the Internet. DBB was my love child, just like Fokker once was Jürgen Schrempp’s, and for a while, I was overly attached to it. I ensured DBB could survive if I left my employer by producing design documents and manuals. I also built DBB in accordance with accepted Designer/2000 practices. We employed Designer/2000 programmers to maintain DBB. However, I hadn’t followed the proper procedures when building and implementing it, so it never became official. If something went wrong, it was not a mere incident, as would be the case with an official system, but a reason to replace DBB. That is bureaucratic reasoning at its finest. Something went wrong once, which allowed a high-ranking bureaucrat to block further development of DBB.

There have been two projects to replace DBB. In 2006, the first effort stalled because the planners had underestimated the complexity of the matter. They might have thought, ‘If one guy can do it, how difficult can it be?’ In 2016, a new project team realised it was pointless to replace DBB, as it was doing fine, while doing so would have been costly. The newer Java systems ran on Postgres databases and used web access. They did not use DBB. Our management planned to decommission the old Designer/2000 systems so DBB could retire by then. By 2024, DBB finally retired after nearly twenty years of service.

Bureaucrats have a unique way of doing things. In the case of serious incidents, they began filling out a ticket in the incident administration and discussing who should do what, while I pursued the issue. And sometimes, I had fixed it before others had finished filling in their forms. And I didn’t bother filling in forms. The system for which uptime was the most critical went down the most often. The solution was to reboot the system, but the operators hesitated and waited for a management decision. I said, ‘Just do it!’ And then they did. If it went wrong, they could blame me. I didn’t have the rank to make the decision for them and would have received a grilling if it went badly. But time was of the essence. The database was on an Oracle RAC cluster, a cutting-edge technology that had yet to mature. And that was so for a reason. It had to be operational at all times.

American software corporations like Oracle usually launch their products fast and aggressively market them. If customers buy them, they use the sales proceeds to improve these products and make them work properly. That gave American software corporations the lead over their European counterparts because Europeans believed you needed a good product before you could sell it. That was quite naive. Long before their product was good enough, the Americans owned the market and had the budget to make it better than the European product. In this way, Americans discarded failed products without investing much in them, saving costs. So, Oracle RAC on VAX VMS was not a great idea because RAC was in its infancy. At the same time, VMS was an exotic operating system with few customers, making fixing RAC bugs on VAX VMS a low priority for Oracle.

Not surprisingly, the system regularly malfunctioned, preventing users from accessing it. RAC is a cluster of machines accessing the same database. The idea behind RAC was that if one of those machines crashed, the others would remain operational and the database would remain accessible. In reality, the machines often went down in unison because of communication errors caused by the RAC software. And because the whole point of Oracle RAC was to have less downtime, you could do better without it. The crash corrupted the machine’s memory, and looking for the cause was pointless because it was a bug in Oracle software for which there was no fix. The only thing we could do was reboot these machines, which meant shutting them down and restarting them. That would wipe the memory clean, and the system would work again. I figured that out after one time, so the next time, when the symptoms were the same, I didn’t hesitate. The system was critical. It had to be up always. That was why it was our only RAC system. Otherwise, the police might not identify criminals. It was a database with the records of criminals dubbed Reference Index Persons, and the Dutch acronym was VIP, so the Very Important Persons for the Department of Justice.

Bureaucrats often seem to value rules over outcomes, which made me wonder what they were thinking. It could be something like, ‘If I mess things up, no one can blame me if I stick to the rulebook. But if I do the right thing but do not follow procedure and something goes wrong, my job is on the line.’ If something goes wrong, the government hires consultants to investigate the issue and propose changes to the procedures to prevent it from happening again. Consultants thus write piles of reports and make a lot of money on government contracts. Sadly, the next time, the situation may be different, and then it goes wrong again. Over time, the proliferating rules grow unwieldy.

It might make you think it is better to do away with procedures, but that is not a good idea. The proliferation of rules reflects the increasing complexity of society. It is not a problem that you should see in isolation. When a large apartment building burns out, you see once again why there are strict building regulations concerning these skyscrapers. If you aim for fewer regulations, you build these things in the first place. The government’s task is to provide and enforce these rules. There may be room for improvement. It begins with not creating the problem that gave rise to the regulation. Our office processes traffic fines. If we stopped driving cars, most of our work would be redundant. And perhaps, we should give people more responsibilities, but that means accepting that things sometimes go wrong. The result may be that fewer things go wrong.

DBB not only joked with the bureaucrats, but also with me. In June 2010, I received a highly unusual request from a system administrator to manually drop a user account. That hadn’t happened for several years. DBB usually handled that, but it failed to drop this particular account for an unknown reason. The username was ELVELVEN. If you read that aloud, you say eleven elevens in Dutch, referencing the 11:11 time-prompt phenomenon that had once haunted me for a while. Usernames consisted of the first one or two characters of the employee’s first name, followed by the employee’s last name. In this case, the user’s last name was Velven. I don’t remember the first name, but it wasn’t Elvis. To me, 11:11 signals a combination of two related unlikely events. And indeed, the joke had a part two, and it was even more peculiar.

In 2014, during testing of an improvement to DBB, the test indicated that an unauthorised account had infiltrated our systems. The username was the first character of the first name, followed by the last name of the Lady from the Dormitory. Had She been employed by us, this would have been Her username. Her name isn’t common, so this was unnerving, especially since it was the only username that popped up in this list of sneakily inserted accounts. It couldn’t be Her, or could it? It turned out that a guy with the same last name as Hers had worked for us. His first name began with an A as well. And the account wasn’t illegal. I had mixed data from two different dates in the test, which made it appear that this account had sneaked in illegally. But imagine the odds of only this account popping up on that list.

In 2005, after completing DBB, my manager wanted to give me a promotion, and he only wanted to give it to me. My colleague Kees was a tech genius, and he set up the RAC system while I made DBB, so I said he was better than me. My manager responded with the prophetic words, ‘You have the right vision and make it happen despite the opposition. That is far more important than technical skills.’ DBB solved pressing problems using proven technology, while the RAC system only created problems. We used to reduce system downtime, but it produced system crashes, resulting in more downtime. Somehow, I had become his favourite, and that wasn’t because he was exceptionally good as a manager. Many of my colleagues weren’t particularly thrilled. He seemed the type of career guy who never stays long in one job. You know the type. He says he will clean up the mess and then hares off after a year or two towards his next challenge, claiming he has put things on track, only for the next manager to come in and claim he will clean up the mess.

He never put his promise in writing, despite my repeatedly requesting that he do so. Just before he left, I pressed him again. As the promotion had not yet come through, he wrote that there would only be a minor wage increase, then filed it with the human resources department for processing. A few weeks later, they summoned me to the human resources department. A personnel officer had raised a technicality. It wasn’t against the rules, but against their policies. And so, I couldn’t even keep the minor wage increase. That was a breach of contract, plain and simple, but to a bureaucrat like a personnel officer, only rules and procedures count. It would have been possible to fix this within the rules, but there was also a thing called policy, so they didn’t. My previous manager had already left, and they blamed him for not following proper procedure. His temporary replacement didn’t care, as he was also on his way to another job. After putting a lot of effort into getting it in writing and with my manager already fobbing me off with a minor wage increase, they gave me nothing. I was angry and walked out of the meeting.

After arriving home, Ingrid told me that a freelance agency had called to offer me a job. It was the first offer of this kind in several years and the first time since working for the CJIB. As I was already considering leaving, I made a rash decision and resigned. In hindsight, it was a noteworthy coincidence that the freelance agency had called me precisely on this particular day. It didn’t take long before I did get second thoughts. Out of the blue, a strong feeling emerged that the decision was wrong. I can rationalise it by saying there weren’t many jobs near home for me. The issues with my son prevented me from working far away from home. That may all be true, but these considerations were not decisive. And I had done freelance work before, so it was not fear of being self-employed. And a government job didn’t seem right for me. But the feeling grew so strong that there was no choice but to reverse course and try to undo my resignation.

Life had taught me that pride is poor counsel. A new manager, Geert, had come in, and he accepted my change of mind. He pledged to do his best to restore my confidence in my employer. He seemed trustworthy and acted like he was my friend. It turned out that the process of creating a new job position was underway, and that the personnel department had misled me, likely because the employee didn’t know the situation. Geert promoted Kees only because there was one position that my previous manager had promised me. That didn’t inspire my confidence, as even a written promise proved not to be good enough. Yet Geert was planning to promote me as well. He gave me financial compensation, so that the delay didn’t result in a financial loss. And after several years of bureaucratic wrangling, the promotion finally came through.

Latest revision: 2 December 2025

Book: The Virtual Universe

10 Nov 20227 Sep 2025 nivtric1 Comment

Several religions claim that a god or gods have created this universe. The simulation hypothesis explains how this might have happened. We could all live inside a computer simulation run by an advanced post-human civilisation. But can we establish that this is indeed the case?

The evidence suggests that we live inside a simulation. It even allows us to infer the purpose of our existence. This book does not promote a specific religion. It follows science, but science has its limits. It can’t tell whether the world we live in is real.

Still, the sciences can support the argument that this world is a simulation, as they have established the natural laws that guide reality. If breaches of these laws occur, such as paranormal incidents with credible witnesses, we have evidence indicating that this world is not real.

We have just invented virtual reality. We can utilise virtual reality for both research and entertainment purposes. If the technology to create virtual worlds becomes affordable, most worlds will exist for entertainment, such as games or inventing stories where we can make our dreams come true.

The latter requires control over everything that happens, which is the situation we appear to be in. With our current knowledge, the world makes the most sense as a simulation created by an advanced post-human civilisation to entertain someone we can call God.

In this book, you can find answers to the following questions:

Is there something more than science can explain?
Is there a plan behind all that happens?
What are virtual worlds?
How can we know things and determine whether we live in a virtual world?
How can we explain things science can’t explain?
What are the simulation hypothesis and simulation argument about?
Can we improve the simulation argument to establish whether we are living in a simulation?
Why does our existence not need to be a miracle?
What reasons might post-humans have to create virtual worlds?
Can we infer from the properties of our universe that we live in a simulation?
What can we say about the evidence of spooks?
What is real about UFOs?
Do curses exist?
Do meaningful coincidences indicate that there is a script?
Is there some point to numeric coincidences like 11:11?
What happens after we die?
How can mediums sometimes be uncannily accurate?
Are there strange coincidences in history?
Are there an excessive number of strange coincidences surrounding the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks?
What are the consequences of predetermination, and how does it affect our lives?
Is it possible to establish that we live in a story by using meaningful coincidences as evidence?
So, can we establish beyond a reasonable doubt that we live inside a simulation?
And can we establish the purpose of our existence?