Thinking about how much insidious harm the fear of strangers does to society.

It makes it harder to develop mass solidarity. We assume that other people’s morals are, by default, unacceptably far removed from our own moral compasses, so we get more and more invested in our cliques and fringe ideologies, and become hostile to anyone outside of them, thus giving others the perception that we aren’t to be trusted and creating further division.

It both causes people to refuse to provide help, and to never ask for help. When everyone fears you as a stranger, you may feel like you can’t ask for help, so you may choose to obtain what they need through violence instead. As stories of that diffuse through communities, they further validate people’s fear that interacting with strangers will lead to violence. Which in turn makes it harder to escape social poverty, which just like financial poverty, can lead to desperation.