If Europe has one defining cultural characteristic, it is that it has none. This may sound like too neat a paradox, but it’s not that far from the truth. There is not a single state, language, religion or ethnicity that even comes close to dominating the continent as a whole - although at least one in each category at some point in history had the pretension to try (1). Europe's war-torn history demonstrates that such diversity is, well, divisive. The European Union was designed to supersede the continent's internecine past, and its continuing appeal (at least to those European countries still outside the EU) is the degree to which it has succeeded, inaugurating an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity (2).

But that does not imply that cultural diversity has been neutralised. The EU, lacking a unifying cultural paradigm similar to the US's 'melting pot', has ended up celebrating a rather bland version of multiculturalism. One example: the buildings on the euro notes are imaginary, in part to avoid fueling national chauvinisms, either of the slighted or boasting variety.

This lowest-common-denominator kind of multiculturalism might actually be the least bad solution. In the kaleidoscope of cultures that is Europe, no matter from where you look at it, you're always surrounded by 'the Other'. It takes but a few small steps thence to paranoia, xenophobia, and worse. I remember speaking to a European about the neighbouring ethnicity, literally living up the road. "Oh yes, but they're all racists," she said, apparently undefeated by her own logic.

Another solution to dealing with the potential divisiveness of diversity, and if done in good humour at least a lot funnier, is the great European Shouting Match. Let it all hang out! Air that mistrust! Calling each other names establishes three things:

(1) that nobody is exempt, neither from feeling superior to others nor from being looked down upon by others. At least in this, everybody is equal. In the Republic of Mockery, we are all both givers and takers.

(2) that familiarity breeds contempt. Most often, the deepest disdain is reserved for the closest neighbours, from whom distant strangers would have a hard time distinguishing us. Inversely, those distant and/or obscure members of the European family are damned with faint put-downs of the who-the-heck-are-they-variant.

(3) that the sum of these insults says equally much about the nationality doing the shouting, or at least the perception we have of them: Germans are materialistic and utilitarian, the French still dream of la gloire, the British cherish their splendid isolation, etc.