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Europe’s key competitive advantage since antiquity has been that, for whatever reason, it’s the one continent that has seen persistent violence among its inhabitants.
In 1500 there were 500 political units in Europe and by 1900, there were 25.
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Another way of looking at it is that since the Romans, no one power was able to enforce hegemony over Europe - owing in large part to its geography as a peninsula split up by mountains and rivers flowing away from the centre. In contrast, Mesopotamia, China, and India (sometimes) had powerful centralized states that could enforce cultural and political hegemony.
The eternal conflict between European states meant they were violent, yes. But also diverse and innovative. Where kings and emperors elsewhere suppressed innovation as dangerous to the status quo, the European nobility of the late middle ages could not afford to fall behind their rivals by thwarting commercial and scientific energies.
And while that unbridled commercial avarice was the source of much brutality and exploitation, it's also a major reason why Western culture since the renaissance has fostered such unusual diversity, dissent, and cultural dynamism compared with the more stagnant and authoritarian cultures of Asia and the Near East. The Ottoman Empire was the richest and most technologically advanced in the world in the 16th century. By the 19th century it was sclerotic and poor.
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European history is defined by stories of the strong devouring the weak, and of constant conflicts that inevitably end with the strongest party left standing.
We can see this tendency emerging as far back as the Middle Ages, when a knight on a big white horse, fighting for his faith, became an era-defining image. The elision of nobility and the military has long been an important element of Europe’s identity.
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That differs from other cultures how?
The nobility everywhere has always associated itself with martial virtues. The Arabs who those knights fought in the Crusades hewed to the same martial values. As did the Ottomans, Moghuls, Aztecs, Japanese, etc.