Europe's emotional wringer

Things took a turn for the tumultuous in Europe last week. Excitement peaked with simultaneous public outbursts when London pipped Paris at the post to host the 2012 Olympics. In the run-up to that decision, people had enjoyed the feel-good, make-poverty-history partying linked to the Live 8 concerts and the Group of Eight's new plans for Africa.

A day later came the emotionally numbing bomb attacks in London. Within hours, tens of millions of people on one side of the channel were wrenched from elation to horror and, on the other, millions more were thrown from loathing to empathy.

Why were Parisians so demonstrably disappointed and Londoners quite so ecstatic? Their heightened emotions were linked to the traditional rivalry between Paris and London, recently fuelled by contrasting economic climates and by opposing positions on Iraq.

The scenes were a tamer version of the outrage expressed by Chinese mainland football fans when their team lost in the Asian Cup final last summer to Japan. In that case, a traditional rivalry was ostensibly aggravated by unrepented wartime abuses, prejudiced textbooks and a reported orgy involving Japanese men and Chinese prostitutes. But that account, seized on and perpetuated by the media's lower orders, is not particularly convincing. Rivalries are more complex than that. If humiliation and war abuses were all that it took to stir up adversarial emotions, then why do the French get along with their wartime adversaries, the Germans, while their British liberators get right up their nose?

As for the tears, kisses and general absence of aloofness in London when the Olympic announcement was made, that relates to a national trend, and debate, that began in the late Princess Diana's days. Mass delight is no longer condemned.

But cheering over winning something is a different matter. It evokes a worrying sort of happiness: the kind that is at someone else's expense and can end in a riot. It is true that emotions in crowds can be amplified through responsibility-reducing anonymity and a feeling of membership - but this is only for those emotions people joined the crowd to share.