I don't know if you have to be an abstract thinker per se to hold on to your (ambigu) identity. For the first generation, born in the country of origin, I can still imagine it. But for subsequent generations?
Have they not definitively lost the connection with the identity of the mother country of the previous generations? After all, it is not kept in granite... My great-uncle himself had already lost connection, let alone his children. Isn't it more than a romantic little glorified memory? A kind of lost arcadia?
In my case, it only leads to discussions with my father-in-law, an inveterate Frenchman. He is from the 1968 generation and on the other hand, he would prefer his granddaughter to acquire French nationality.... I don't understand that, on the one hand wanting to be a citizen of the world, but on the other hand striving for a grandchild - born in the most Northern corner of the Netherlands - that she will get a French passport? Incidentally, a basic knowledge of the French language and culture is never lost! No doubt!
Incidentally, until about twenty years ago, many Dutch people thought that they are international and do not have such a strong identity of their own. That was changed afterwards.
I myself don't think I'm that nationalistic, maybe more of a kind of European North Sea regionalist
Nevertheless in the end I'm a typical cheesehead too...I guess. The Netherlands does have one of the oldest national identities in Europe. The
national anthem was already written in 1572 at the beginning of the liberation war against Spanish Habsburg.... And ask the neighbors, Belgians or Germans if the Dutch distinguish themselves from them and you usually get a whole story.....