On strangers and strange ideas:
“Arrival of the stranger, concretely presented in mythology, constitutes a “threat to the stability of the kingdom” (…). The stable meaning of experiential events, constrained by the hierarchical structure of group identity, is easily disrupted by the presence of the “other”, who practically poses a concrete threat to the stability of the present dominance structure and who, more abstractly – as his actions “contain” his moral tradition – exists as the literal embodiment of challenges to the a priori assumptions guiding belief. (…) The mere existence of the (successful) stranger poses a serious threat to the perceived utility of the general culture (…).”
“The incautious, imaginative (and resentful) can easily use their gift of socially constructed intelligence to undermine moral principles that took eons to generate and that exist for valid but invisible reasons. Such “invisible” principles can be subjected to facile criticism, by the historically ignorant (…). The consequence of this “criticism” is the undermining of necessary faith, and the consequent dissolution of interpersonal predictability, dysregulation of emotions, and generation of anomie, aggression and ideological gullibility (as the naked psyche strives to clothe itself, once again).”
Peterson, J., Maps of Meaning (1999), pp. 249-51.
Writer Between Worlds 