The Atmosphere of Dublin

Well, I've had a horrible day (which included sending three emails of complaint to different institutions), and it's a stiflingly hot night. Today was the hottest day of the year so far, apparently.

Therefore I'm going to blog to distract myself.

I said in my last blog post that my next post was going to be about Chesterton and atmosphere.

Except that I've already blogged about that. I thought maybe I had.

So now I'm going to blog about the atmosphere of Dublin. I spent all day in the city centre today, so it's a good day to do it.

Trigger warning. This blog post will contain poetry. I see no way around it. I'll try to keep the poetry short as I realize that everybody, except about five people, now hates poetry with a loathing beyond all measure. (Luckily, all five of those people either write or read this blog.)

First things first. I've never really been a proud Dub. Donagh MacDonagh's poem "Dublin Made Me" is a very fine poem indeed, but the attitude is completely foreign to me. Please don't stop reading, I'm only going to quote four lines:

Dublin made me and no little town
With the country closing in on its streets
The cattle walking proudly on its pavements
The jobbers, the gombeenmen, and the cheats...

Since I was about fifteen and started developing my own personality, the idea of a "little town with the country closing in on its streets" seemed far more exciting to me than a capital city.

Also, if you didn't have a happy childhood and you are poetically inclined, it seems you are likely to hold it against the place you grew up. Like Kavanagh and Larkin.

But having said that...

I remember, when I was a teenager, becoming profoundly excited at the idea of O'Connell Street in Dublin, whenever I passed through it. Dublin was the capital of Ireland and O'Connell Street was the "capital" of Dublin. That thought excited me hugely. Furthermore, I liked to think of the angels on the O'Connell Monument as sentinels watching over the four provinces, their eyes penetrating to all the little towns and country roads and rocky islands.

My father was a proud Dubliner. He's the biggest influence on me, but I never sympathized with his love of Dublin. Dublin was the least Irish part of Ireland, it seemed to me.

For instance, I could never get excited about Dublin winning or losing GAA games, except for a very brief period in 1993. The county has the biggest population in Ireland by far. It really didn't seem a big deal to win anything in that case. How could Dublin ever be the underdog?

Anyway, my father very often used to quote Louis MacNeice's poem "Dublin". How much of this poem can I get away with quoting? Just like MacNeice's other wonderwork, "Snow", "Dublin" seems to me a semi-miraculous poem, one of those feats by which language is pushed to express that which seems beyond expression. The Dublin he describes was gone when I grew up, but there was enough of it left for to me to know exactly what MacNeice was evoking:

Grey brick upon brick
Declamatory bronze
On sombre pedestals –
O’Connell, Grattan, Moore –
And the brewery tugs and the swans
On the balustraded stream
And the bare bones of a fanlight
Over a hungry door
And the air soft on the cheek
And porter running from the taps
With a head of yellow cream
And Nelson on his pillar
Watching his world collapse.

I swear to you that, in reading over these lines as I copied and pasted them, I got goose-pimples all over my flesh from my scalp to my toes. This is writing as magic. It's not just that MacNeice has correctly observed several disparate aspects of Dublin. It's that he's managed to convey an underlying aesthetic they create.

Nelson and his pillar were blown up eleven years before I was born, and I can't remember any brewery tugs. But the swans were (and are) still there, as were the fanlights over Georgian doorways, the sombre pedestals, the grey brick, the porter running from the taps (I was no strange to pubs even as a kid), and the soft air on the cheek.

(In my teens I became convinced that footage of Dublin was literally more colourful than footage of other places because the most air heightened the colours. Nonsense, no doubt.)

As brilliant as that opening description is, the most brilliant moment of the poem, in my view, comes later:

But yet she holds my mind
With her seedy elegance,
With her gentle veils of rain
And all her ghosts that walk
And all that hide behind
Her Georgian facades –
The catcalls and the pain,
The glamour of her squalour,
The bravado of her talk.

"The glamour of her squalour, the bravado of her talk". Again; I know exactly what MacNeice is describing here, the sort of rhetorical extravagance which flourished in the inner-city tenements and which then migrated to the satellite suburbs in the forties, fifties and sixties. This is the world of gentleman tramps and pianos in tenements. It was something very real and very recognizable even in my childhood, although it's pretty much gone now. Even Dublin guttersnipes tended to be witty. (My favourite take-down was always "you dropped a triangle", when someone was swaggering, or "throwing shapes". This might have been a hyper-local usage as the only "hit" I can find for it on the internet...comes from a Ballymun page!)

In the same way, "seedy elegance" isn't just a cheap paradox. It describes something very real and very definite.

I was a real prig as a child (and well beyond), so I disdained a lot Dublin idioms and usages because they weren't standard English. I shuddered every time someone pronounced "book" as "buke". It's taken me almost half a century to get over this.

I'm going to quote one more poem, OK? It's a sonnet. Fourteen lines. I know you can do it. Just hold your breath and jump in and I promise you it will be worth it.

This is a really obscure one, by an English guy called Osbert Lancaster who's more known as a cartoonist than a poet. If you know where Ctesiphon was you're smarter than I am. (It was in Iraq.)

The distant Seychelles are not so remote
Nor Ctesiphon so ultimately dead
As this damp square round which tired echoes float
Of something brilliant that George Moore once said:
Where, still, in pitch-pine snugs, pale poets quote
Verses rejected by the Bodley Head.
For in this drained aquarium no breeze
Deposits pollen from more fertile shores
Or kills the smell of long unopened drawers
That clings forever to these dripping trees.
Where Bloom once wandered, gross and ill-at-ease,
Twice-pensioned heroes of forgotten wars
With misplaced confidence demand applause
Shouting stale slogans over the Liffey quays.

Lancaster died at a good old age in 1986, but I have no idea when this was written. However, it describes the Dublin of my childhood perfectly. (I'm talking about the city centre rather than the suburbs.) I think the last three lines are absolutely first-rate poetry, and they capture the sense of decay that characterized eighties Dublin perfectly. For once, my recollection isn't at odds with the general perception; do a quick Google search for something like "Dublin urban decay 1980s" and you'll see that.

Of course, I see something romantic about this now. I didn't at the time. Run-down buildings made me shudder.

Lancaster's poem, of course, isn't just talking about buildings. It brilliantly evokes the sense of cultural decay that was definitely there. Everything Dublin claimed as its heritage belonged to a world that had disappeared, albeit recently. The new hadn't really replaced it yet. There was a sense of stasis.

But that's enough about the Dublin of my childhood. I'm going to try to go a bit deeper.

How about symbols of Dublin? The Molly Malone statue and the Millennium Spire are relatively new, so they don't work too well-- for me, at least.

The Ha'penny Bridge works magnificently because it's so distinctive, so easily stylized, and a visible part of the city-scape.

People talk a lot about Clery's clock, but the clock across the street at Eason's always made more of an impression for me. However, the name "Clery's" very much evokes Dublin for me, especially since it's impossible not to hear it in a Dublin accent. This is even more true of the clothes shop Guiney's.

For some reason, the very name "Laurence O'Toole" epitomizes Dublin for me. He is, of course, the patron saint of Dublin. But the truth is I know very little about him and I rarely hear his name used. If it's used at all, it's because of the various institutions named after him.

Another strange one-- the Pro-Cathedral seems quintessentially Dublin to me. I hated it as a child. My father used to take my brother and me into it to light a candle every now and again. It seemed dark, musty, reminiscent of death and mortality, haphazardly laid-out, and ramshackle. Now, of course, all these things appeal to me.

The G.P.O. was never really a symbol of Dublin for me, probably because of its national significance.

Stephen's Green was a symbol of Dublin. Again-- I hated it. I grew up hating parks and I've found it hard to shake this hatred. Perhaps because they are the opposite of wilderness. They always seemed very melancholy to me as a child. And most of the monuments in Stephen's Green pertained to the national struggle which was all about death, suffering, and sacrifice. Did the Irish have to be so morbid?

Well, the night has cooled a little bit and I'm sleepy. I'm going to post this without pictures and without a conclusion. Perhaps I'll expand it another time. Perhaps I'll make a "part two". I don't know. It's hard to write about something that's been so close to you for so many years. I have a lot more to say.

There's one thing that I should add, and that I occasionally become aware of, walking around the city. For all my conflicted feelings about Dublin, the city centre has always had an underlying (very underlying) sense of something very hard to describe. Bliss? Ecstasy? Ultimate fulfilment? History creeped me out but it also pointed to something deep about the human condition, something just waiting for me to dive into. That's the best I can do, right now.

More Musings on Atmosphere

As regular readers will know, I'm almost obsessed by the concept of atmosphere. I don't mean the gases and vapours in the sky. I mean atmosphere in a more metaphorical sense.

Atmosphere surrounds us all the time. Or perhaps I should say, atmospheres surround us all the time. They contribute to our well-being, our choices, and even our deepest loyalties. I'm convinced of this.

I've looked for scholarly writings on the concept of atmosphere. Despite my access to a university library (and all its e-resources), I've found very few. If you know of any, tell me. I'm interested in non-scholarly writings on the subject, too.

I went to the Central Catholic Library today. I went to the reference library upstairs. As is often the case, there was nobody there. I basked in the silence and the deep sense of peace.

To browse the bookshelves in the Central Catholic Library is to view the world from a radically different perspective. Not our contemporary secularist perspective, but a perspective which sees a deeper drama going on under the surface of life, and which especially sees the romance of this.

It's the clash of atmospheres between contemporary Ireland and Catholic Ireland that, to a great extent, leads me to prefer the latter.

We are told to believe that pre-sixties Ireland was intolerant, fanatical, joyless, puritanical, grim, austere, etc.

How grim and joyless!

But all you have to do-- or least, all that I have to do-- is to read the books, look at the photographs, and in general attend to the primary evidence of Catholic Ireland. They don't show me the caricature that we are presented with.

Yes, there are a million qualifications a critic could insist on here. The critic could point out, for instance, that Catholic Ireland lasted for many centuries. Which Catholic Ireland am I talking about?

But really, that sort of objection is just carping. Everybody knows what I mean by Catholic Ireland. I'm defending the thing our establishment is always attacking.

Catholic Ireland set up a high and noble ideal for Irish people (collectively and individually) to work towards, and to admire. Contemporary Ireland is obsessed with grievances, and obsessed with identities based on grievances. The cost of everything, the value of nothing.

I don't think the kind of reaction I'm describing here-- a reaction to atmosphere that can actually influence one's view of public events, or of history-- is at all unique. It reminds me of Chesterton's description of the Boer War, and his own reaction to it, from his Autobiography:

I saw all the public men and public bodies, the people in the street, my own middle-class and most of my family and friends, solid in favour of something that seemed inevitable and scientific and secure. And I suddenly realised that I hated it; that I hated the whole thing as I had never hated anything before.

What I hated about it was what a good many people liked about it. It was such a very cheerful war. I hated its confidence, its congratulatory anticipations, its optimism of the Stock Exchange. I hated its vile assurance of victory. It was regarded by many as an almost automatic process like the operation of a natural law; and I have always hated that sort of heathen notion of a natural law. As the war proceeded, indeed, it began to be dimly felt that it was proceeding and not progressing. When the British had many unexpected failures and the Boers many unexpected successes, there was a change in the public temper, and less of optimism and indeed little but obstinacy. But the note struck from the first was the note of the inevitable; a thing abhorrent to Christians and to lovers of liberty.

Chesterton very often writes about atmosphere in this way; some of his best writing, in my view, has to do with atmosphere. Come to think of it, that will probably be my next blog post.

Five Minutes of Magic

What's the hardest place in Dublin to get an appointment?

Walkinstown, of course. (Because they only do walk-ins there.)

Walkinstown is also renowned for the spontaneous public celebrations that occurred there after Ireland reached the quarter-finals of the 1990 World Cup in Italy.

You can watch five minutes of it here. God bless Daithí Ó hAirtnéada, who had the foresight to film it in those pre-mobile phone days.

It's hard to convey just how crazy the country went over the 1990 World Cup. It seems to have been one of those unique moments in social history where conditions are just right to bring about an unprecedented and unrepeatable phenomenon.

The Walkinstown celebration might be the most famous, but there were similar scenes all around the country. 

I had little if any interest in the tournament as it began, but I was gripped with excitement as it went on. It was really contagious. As you can see from the video, there are as many women celebrating as men. Everybody got in on it.

I was an avid soccer fan (and player) for about five years after that, although my interest slowly diminished over the next five years or so. These days I don't follow any sport, although I sometimes feel mildly ashamed of this. I think it's good for people to play and follow sports. I wouldn't go as far as to say that everybody should, though. There are lots of other good things to do, after all.

But people who refer dismissively to "sports-ball" or "twenty-two men chasing a pig's bladder around a field" seem like unimaginative killjoys to me. You could apply such a reductive description to any activity human beings perform for its own sake-- which would leave us with a depressingly utilitarian existence. (Yes, I've made this argument often on this blog. Apologies to long-term readers.)

At the time, I didn't realize how unique Italia '90 (as it was termed) would remain. There has never been anything like it since. I was Ireland's first World Cup. We qualified again in 1994, with many of the same players, and actually beat Italy (who were eventually runners-up) in the first game, before getting knocked out in the second round by Holland.

Home come the heroes...

But it wasn't the same, probably because it wasn't as spontaneous. There was incredible hype beforehand (for months!) but it just couldn't live up to the magic of the first time.

The uniqueness of Italia '90 in Ireland transcends sport. I've never known any national event like it, or even close. It has always remained my ideal of national togetherness, national consciousness. Perhaps because I didn't experience John Paul II's visit to Ireland, when a million people went to see him in the Phoenix Park. (Well, I actually did. I was there. But I was only a year old, so I wasn't taking much in.)

One of the things I like about this video is that Walkinstown is such an ordinary suburban sort of place. I firmly believe the suburbs have to be enchanted.

The early nineties in Ireland were a special time in themselves, actually. I've written a blog post about it here. (One of my many posts that got no comments.) It wasn't all good, of course-- the Church took a real hammering-- but it certainly had a distinctive character, and a certain excitement.

I talk about Italia '90 so much that someone bought me a badge of the Italia '90 logo, last Christmas. I wear it all the time. (At least, whenever I put that coat on.)

(The only public event that even remotely resembles Italia '90, in my experience, is all the hype and discussion around the Lord of the Rings films at the start of the millennium. Everybody seemed to be watching them and talking about them. It was also the beginning of my time in UCD, which makes it more memorable to me. Obviously, though, this wasn't unique to Ireland, and didn't have the same quality of a communal event shared in real time as Italia '90. But it was still very special, and seems even more special in retrospect.)

A Nice Notice for this Blog

In a blog post which begins by mourning the sad death of a blogger called Zman, and then turns to theme of blogging in general, Professor Bruce Charlton has some nice things to say about this blog:

As an example of a recent example of the kind of blog post I like best; here is (non-famous) blogger Irish Papist; with a very personal and honest, free-associational development of ideas on the theme: Everything comes back to religion.

As often said: writing is thinking (or it can be); and here you can sense IP thinking as he writes; and share his excitement at the insights as they emerge from the exploration.

I've been sampling Irish Papist on-and-off for several years - long enough to have decided he is a Good Bloke; and from this assumption I find that he produces a stimulating post every so often, that seems to set off associations and notions in myself.

Well! Not only did that please me greatly, but it may have been literally an answer to a prayer. This morning I asked God for something to happen, today, that would encourage me.

I first heard about Professor Charlton on Edward Feser's blog (which I still follow) and I then bought his book Thought Prison, about political correctness. (It can be read online here.) It's amazing how few books have been written about political correctness, even all these years later. Thought Prison actually took political correctness very seriously, instead of treating it as some kind of joke or freak. I've followed his blog on and off since then.

His thoughts on blogging are very interesting, and indeed timely. The Chesterton and Friends blog recently had a post mourning (or at least commenting on) the disappearance of most Chesterton blogs. Blogs seemed so terribly voguish not so long ago and they are already passé.

Professor Charlton says: "There has to be some kind of basic affinity with the blog persona - but especially with the person we infer behind that persona. I say infer, because we don't need to know much specifically about the blogger "in real life" - so long as what we do know is honest and unpretentious."

I personally think this is true, not only of blogging, but of all reading. The author's voice is what draws me.

He goes on: "Blogging benefits from a careless attitude of freedom, and the ability to shrug-off those times when posts don't take-off or just don't gel."

Amen! The almost throwaway nature of blogging is something I cherish. Anything goes in the pot. I suppose its progenitor is the newspaper column, such as the "As I Please" column written by George Orwell, or the Keith Waterhouse columns I read as a kid (in book form), or "Cruiskeen Lawn" by Myles Na Gopaleen, which is legendary in Ireland. And Chesterton, of course.

Blogging is especially valuable for sidelights, or what I might call "second order" considerations-- for which I have an appetite which may be unhealthy. To take an example: I can't tune into a debate (whether a recent debate or one stretching from the dawn of civilization) without also getting interested in the debate itself, aside from the truth or falsehood of the issues at question. I get fascinated in the contours and dynamics of the debate.

Somebody once rebuked me for this, comparing me to the spirit in Lewis's The Great Divorce who is unwilling to enter Heaven because he would prefer to theorize forever. And I accept there is a danger of this.

But this interest in "second order" matters seems natural enough to humans. I remember being surprised, in my teens, when I would read Tory politicians' memoirs and find them to have a great affection for House of Commons customs, characters, and camaraderie. I'd rather assumed that Thatcherites would see Parliament as a sort of necessary evil, like government itself. I feel the same surprise when agnostics and atheists have opinions and preference about the Catholic Church or the Church or England. But I find this endearing rather than frustrating, myself.

JFK in Ireland...1945!

John F. Kennedy came to Ireland as a reporter in July 1945, fifteen years before his election as President. I write about it in this week's Ireland's Own.

Rules for Conversation

Here are some rules for conversation I've come up with, over years of floundering in the conversational ocean. I have no expertise or authority in this realm whatsoever.

They mostly start with "Don't". Maybe this is negative but I don't care.

1) Don't try to prove how funny, clever, or well-informed you are. I've come to the conclusion that most conversation falls into this category, at least between people who don't know each other that well. This despite the fact that most of us fall into a median zone of all these characteristics. And if you rise above that level, well, why do you need to prove it?

Nothing is more irksome than somebody continually trying to be funny or witty. Most people are funny when they're not trying.

Go to the other extreme. If somebody mentions an arcane or obscure fact, and you already knew it (and can even outdo your clever-clogs interlocutor with an even more obscure, related fact) don't let on. Just smile and nod and act impressed.

2) Don't use the royal "we" or talk about your kids incessantly.

3) Don't bring up your own accomplishments. Even from considerations of egotism, this is good policy. It's surely much better to eventually get a reaction like this: "I say, old boy, you never told me you'd single-handedly foiled a terrorist attack..."

4) Don't make everything about you, and don't make your own experience the yardstick of everything someone else says to you. If somebody has rhapsodised about their favourite TV show for twenty minutes, for God's sake don't say: "I don't watch much television myself..." Or if somebody tells you about a Facebook meme, don't say: "I'm not on social media myself, it's probably marvellous for some things but I never quite got it..."

I know you really, really want to do this. But don't.

5) Don't back someone into a conversational corner. There are some phrases which just kill a conversation. Like: "Well, it's whatever you're used to, isn't it?". Or: "I suppose everybody has their own opinions on these things." Conversation should open up, not close down.

6) Be giving of yourself in conversation. Nothing is worse than talking to someone who, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde:

Has set a seal upon his lips

And made his face a mask.

Unless you already have previous reason to be hostile or suspicious towards somebody, try a little self-abandon. You don't have to tell them your deepest, darkest, most intimate thoughts. But let them in a little bit.

7) Be easily impressed, but not gushing.

8) Never use words such as Kafkaesque, Manichaen, or Foucauldian.

9) Don't assume someone agrees with you on subjects which are, at least to a foreseeable extent, matters of controversy. This might put them in an awkward situation of either introducing a strain into the conversation, or swallowing their opposing point of view.

10) Don't probe for personal information. This should go without saying but doesn't.

11) I honestly think that classic advice holds good: Just be yourself. Most people are perfectly likeable underneath all the pose, performance, and insecurity.

Everything Comes Back to Religion

"Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless."

This C.S. Lewis quotation (from Surprised by Joy, my favourite book) pretty much expresses my view of the world before I accepted Christianity. I was an instinctive sceptic and agnostic, but I wasn't at all happy about that. I had virtually no interest in scientific progress, although I enjoyed science fiction. I was interested in ghost stories, folklore, traditions, ceremony, ritual-- everything that was, in fact, giving way to "progress". Even as a child, I can remember feeling depressed that there was nowhere left on earth to explore. As soon as I was old enough to know the word, I started (pretentiously) calling myself an obscurantist.

That everything gets worse (or at least, less interesting) was, to me,...well, I was going to write "an article of faith", but it wasn't even an article of faith, in truth. It was just a fact. I didn't think about this much. It was pre-reflective.

Even today, now that I believe in God and the miraculous and the supernatural, I'm still haunted by this worldview. Or at least, something very similar to it.

The world itself, without the supernatural and the religious, doesn't seem satisfying to me, or ultimately that interesting.

Take history. I've started reading the book pictured above, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada by Mark A. Noll. After some time reading secular history I grew increasingly bored with it.

The more you dig down into secular history, the less interesting it becomes. The story of mankind is the story of power politics, the quest for status and prestige, for supremacy. And, where it's not power politics, it's basically utilitarianism. We are all utilitarian most of the time. People stopped telling stories around the fire because the TV was more convenient-- and, frankly, more entertaining. I hate Aldi and Lidl and Tesco, but I give them my custom because I can't afford not to. And so on.

Take nationalism as another example. I'm a nationalist, in the sense that I strongly believe the nation should be preserved and cherished. But really, the emergence of a national culture is generally an accident of history. People developed a distinct culture because of geographical barriers, or some such mundane explanation. There's nothing mystical about it. Perhaps asking people to cling to their national cultures, in the face of the overwhelming pressure of globalization, is like asking people to avoid supermarkets for family-run firms.

They might do it for a while. The Gaelic Revival is proof of that. But, as the Radiohead song puts it, gravity always wins. Whatever aspects of national cultures will survive (if any) will ultimately depend on their price-tag of inconvenience. Sentimentality will go so far and no further. Many people will eagerly sacrifice their lives for their fatherland. But very few indeed will sacrifice their convenience, or their hunger for novelty.

When nations emerge for reasons other than an accident of history or geography, it can generally be traced to religious reasons, even if not directly-- as, for instance, with modern Israel and the USA.

I've recently written about Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man. Fukuyama thought that history had, in a sense, ended with the end of the ideological battle between the West and the Soviet bloc. Democracy and capitalism now reigned supreme, even if wars might continue.

But how much of the conflict in history has ever been ideological, anyway? Very little, I would suggest. It's overwhelmingly been about power politics-- not under the surface, but on the surface. I'm reminded of the infamous reply of the Athenians when the neutral islanders of Melos complained about being invaded, during the Peloponnesian Wars: "The powerful take what they can, and the weak yield what they must." Might it be said, in fact, that the Cold War was an anomaly in being ideological? What was ideological about the Napoleonic Wars, or World War One, or indeed most wars?

I believe, contra revisionists, that Brian Boru was fighting the Danes to defend the Christian faith and Gaelic civilization. But why was most of his career spent fighting all the other Gaelic petty kings?

I'm especially baffled by the nostalgia of Catholic integralists for the political order of Christendom. What was it except an incessant dogfight between kings and aristocrats, using peasants as ammunition? Aside from the Crusades, it very specifically wasn't about religion because-- as intregalists always approvingly emphasise-- everybody was Catholic.

I'm not denying there are exceptions to this primacy of power politics in conflict. It really seems to be the case that the American Civil War, to a great extent, was fought for the sake of freeing slaves. People from all over Europe volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War, for whatever side they believed in. But the exceptions are just that, exceptions.

And the great exception is, of course, religion. There have been religious wars, even if power politics generally played a role in these as well. Personally, although I hate all war (as does every ordinary sane person), I've never understood why fighting over religion is wrong in principle. Religion seems as good a reason to fight as any other, and better than most.

The point I'm making about history applies to everything else. Literature, for instance. It seems obvious to me that literature quickly descends to decadence and triviality when it ceases to be nourished by the religious impulse, however distantly it is receiving that nutrition. I don't have the energy to make that argument right now. Probably most of my readers already agree.

"Life is first boredom, then fear" wrote Philip Larkin, somewhat famously. In history, I suggest, the order is reversed. We've had millennia where life was mostly fear for most people-- fear of starvation, sickness, or violent death. In developed societies, this is now changed to boredom, whereby we live comfortable but humdrum lives, in commuter towns and office blocks, and entertain ourselves by watching stories about fear and violence.

This is a huge overstatement, of course. I don't even think it's true, ultimately. But there is a certain truth to it. Without religion, the human story is a pretty paltry thing.