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My first response to this really is why on earth would you want a common European culture? Especially one predicated on watching American shows like Brooklyn Ni

My first response to this really is why on earth would you want a common European culture? Especially one predicated on watching American shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Monnet saw an imminent threat of a Third World War and was trying to bind Europe together to prevent one. It bears little relation to the situation we're in today. The great thing about Europe is that you have so many great individual national cultures and traditions. This need to create "Europeans" seems utterly bizarre to me. Amusing the idea that Eurovision creates 'Europeans' though - the voting every year is a hilarious tangle of countries swapping votes en masse with the cultures they have the greatest similarities with.

vinay427 6y ago
I think this would be fine if one could disentangle political and cultural unity. However, I'm not sure that's sustainable, particularly in the hard times when "pan-governmental" identification seems essential. Given the growing political unification of at least western and central Europe into institutions such as the EU, I think it's reasonable to expect at least some shared values and interests to arise. This has already happened in places like China (or, more organically, India) which until recently were effectively separate civilizations with strong cross-pollination, much as the regions within the EU have been.
- kristianc 6y ago
  > This has already happened in places like China (or, more organically, India) which until recently were effectively separate civilizations with strong cross-pollination, much as the regions within the EU have been. China and India would be an unfortunate direction for the EU to evolve into imo - both increasingly monocultural with increasing levels of repression against minority groups.
  - vinay427 6y ago
    That's definitely fair. I think I tend to see at least a small move in this direction as something of an inevitability, although the India-style approach still tends to respect regional cultures and languages with repression of minority groups usually not based on regional affinity (which obviously doesn't make it better in any way). France also went along a path more similar to China's with its minority languages and communities, but that's not necessarily a sign of what will happen to pan-Europeanism.
    - kristianc 6y ago
      Maybe - the early signs don't augur well. There's been a pretty long-standing cultural divide between Northern European economies and a supposedly profligate South (particularly Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal). Culturally, you could trace this back to Weber. You could almost say that there are separate cultures in Europe - a culture of Western European economies, a culture of former communist states, and then the Southern European countries. I'm not sure you could ever develop a coherent single European culture without one culture dominating.
iknowstuff 6y ago
There is nothing preventing unique cultures to feel united as part of a whole. This is something that has been historically lacking and was very much "us vs them", although attitudes have been changing with events like Brexit or Trump getting elected. They made people feel like Europe as a whole was threatened.

vinay427 6y ago

I think this would be fine if one could disentangle political and cultural unity. However, I'm not sure that's sustainable, particularly in the hard times when "pan-governmental" identification seems essential. Given the growing political unification of at least western and central Europe into institutions such as the EU, I think it's reasonable to expect at least some shared values and interests to arise. This has already happened in places like China (or, more organically, India) which until recently were effectively separate civilizations with strong cross-pollination, much as the regions within the EU have been.

kristianc 6y ago
> This has already happened in places like China (or, more organically, India) which until recently were effectively separate civilizations with strong cross-pollination, much as the regions within the EU have been. China and India would be an unfortunate direction for the EU to evolve into imo - both increasingly monocultural with increasing levels of repression against minority groups.
- vinay427 6y ago
  That's definitely fair. I think I tend to see at least a small move in this direction as something of an inevitability, although the India-style approach still tends to respect regional cultures and languages with repression of minority groups usually not based on regional affinity (which obviously doesn't make it better in any way). France also went along a path more similar to China's with its minority languages and communities, but that's not necessarily a sign of what will happen to pan-Europeanism.
  - kristianc 6y ago
    Maybe - the early signs don't augur well. There's been a pretty long-standing cultural divide between Northern European economies and a supposedly profligate South (particularly Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal). Culturally, you could trace this back to Weber. You could almost say that there are separate cultures in Europe - a culture of Western European economies, a culture of former communist states, and then the Southern European countries. I'm not sure you could ever develop a coherent single European culture without one culture dominating.

iknowstuff 6y ago

There is nothing preventing unique cultures to feel united as part of a whole. This is something that has been historically lacking and was very much "us vs them", although attitudes have been changing with events like Brexit or Trump getting elected. They made people feel like Europe as a whole was threatened.