Europe is experiencing the opposite of an identity crisis - Body, soul and spirit of Europe

It could be said that Europe has been without spirit for the last years, maybe even decades, maybe even more. We have been working on the economy, on trade, on tariffs, on harmonising laws, bureaucracy, on abolishing borders, on making roaming cheaper and so on. In short, we have worked on internal management, on better organisation of ourselves, on what I call the soul.

And so for decades we have been working on the soul of Europe, that is, the organisation of the European Union, but we have not given much thought (perhaps consciously) to the spirit of Europe, that is, to some abstract higher purpose, mission or message of Europe. Occasionally something was said in a political speech, but otherwise, among the people, it was somehow not needed.

And even historically it didn't make much sense - until recently. Now Europe is rediscovering its spirit and experiencing the exact opposite of an identity crisis. And the front of this (once invisible) spiritual struggle has materialized in a physical form in Ukraine.

For deeper reflection, I like to help myself by dividing the entity into three components: the body, the material part (those parts of the entity that are made up of atoms), then the soul, which is immaterial, invisible, yet materially manifest and organizes matter (the very laws of physics or humanity, organizational structure, timetable, etc.), and the last (optional) component, which is the spirit (i.e., meaning, direction, mission, visions, dreams, etc.).

There is not much to talk about a spirit of Europe in the deeper history of Europe. Europe was at war with itself, (European) Rome against (European) barbarians, European Catholics against European Protestants, European nations against European nations during the First and Second World Wars. Then the Iron Curtain divided Europe for another generation. In short, it is only during the last, our generation, that we can meaningfully speak of a kind of united European spirit.

Only now, with the Russian attack on Ukraine in February, is that spirit of Europe clearly visible. And it is also clear that it is not only worth fighting for, but that it is necessary. Thankfully, we ourselves - and none of the other ten countries that joined the EU in 2004 - have had to go through this blood test. God only knows how we would have behaved if Putin had done to us in 2004 what he did to Ukraine ten years later in 2014. I wish I could believe that we would have defended our freedom with a gun as well. That's the value of that freedom, after all - we just didn't have to pay for it (thank goodness). Someone else is paying it for us today: the Ukrainians.

That is the spirit of Europe. And that is what it is worth.

The first war for the spirit of Europe

When we decided in 2003 whether to join the EU, we weighed up the pros and cons, weighed up all the potential costs and risks against the benefits and opportunities of membership and said, by a then strong 77% majority, yeah, why not. We did not have to risk beatings in the streets, imprisonment, or even war, mobilisation or death for the EU. We did revolt against our own totalitarian dictators in 1989 - and since then we have been moving, now faster, now slower, towards the free spirit of Europe. Towards tolerance, towards pluralism, towards democracy, towards the protection of minorities and the promotion of interests peacefully through markets and parliamentary democracy.

How things have developed further is common knowledge: Putin's Russia has not only decided to go in the opposite direction to the spirit of Europe, but has even decided to fight the spirit of Europe. First on an ideological level, not only through (legitimate) discussion and argumentation, but then through illegal interference in the internal affairs of free countries. And when the version of "Soviet Russian life under Putin's dictatorship" did not appeal to anyone, Putin eventually began to export the Russian spirit of totalitarianism by force.

The two-country experiment

You can have two countries with the same rules of democracy and capitalism, and in one country there will be bad people with no culture and no spirit, democracy and capitalism, and in the other country there will be good, tolerant people with the culture of democracy and capitalism in their hearts. So these two different countries may well start out with the same 'soul', the same currency, the same laws, the same timetables, but one place will soon develop into the equivalent of hell on earth, while the other is heading for paradise.

And it is this spirit of Europe that is now fighting the brutal spirit of totalitarianism in Ukraine. And it is our struggle in particular. At last we see the missing spirit of Europe.

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