Tip-Off #212 – Fear and Hospitality

The politics of immigrants without a culture of immigration is flounder. But in today’s hyperpolitical vibe, “culture” sounds like a street fair – colourful and harmless – even worse, it’s like the coastal elites telling them when they eschew difficult realities. Culture does not register next to dislocation, low-wage labor, or difficult questions about who belongs to where.

Without that culture, fear of strangers fills the void. It’s timeless – natural reflection. It stands out most in the Magazine movement, where Donald Trump transformed it into his ace: political strategies that define his appeal and reform public conversation.

A culture of fear, humiliation and hope is reconstructing the world. It leads to fear of hope, hope for humiliation, humiliation, pure irrationality. Fear strikes when people are captured in the midst of inconsistencies that they cannot name. They may long for the patience of a society’s mobility and stability world that admires chaos. What is framed as xenophobia is often a non-flammable response to disorientation. A stranger will stand in for something more intimate: a loss of place, identity, or control.

Modern politically charged fears of foreigners are a recent invention, not an ancient curse. Hospitality, the antidote, is not just a personal virtue, but a practical and constructable framework. Revealing the origins of this fear reveals a more welcome blueprint for the world.

Psychiatrist historian George Macari follows the method Xenophobia– The words coined in the swirls of nationalism, empires and massive migration of the late 19th century, called out those who resisted colonial rule. During the anti-colonial boxer rebellion, Chinese patriots were labelled not as defenders of their homeland, but as patients grabbed by the irrational fears of foreigners. Invasion forces cast themselves as merciful. Those who opposed them were said to suffer from cultural disabilities. By projecting the fear they caused to the victim, attackers can brand and dismiss it as pathology. “Xenophobia” originally had little to do with fear of strangers than fear of us.

History reminds us that fear is cultivated. It could be dismantled. Relief is less in politics than in welcoming everyday art. Hospitality cannot be legislated, but you can speak up and nourish culturally without waiting for Washington. Policy works best when it resonates with the neighborhood and reflects our own sense of self.

Sociologist Eileen Bloomrad offers a roadmap. Her comparative study shows that immigrants are more likely to naturalize and enjoy acceptance in civic life. It means a church language class, a school gym soccer league, or an open microphone at the city hall. Such venues allow neighbors to discover that what they fear in others often reflects something unstable in themselves. Before others become strangers to us, we are strangers to ourselves.

Princeton physicist Peter Putnam called this the “logic of contradiction” of the mind. A guided understanding of the world by first dealing with tension, then testing patterns and revising beliefs. Recognizing our own inner knot is the first step to satisfying the contradictions that others face.

Unions for inclusion are built not on sentimentality but on an expanded perspective, sometimes referred to as the “spatiality of thought,” and the shared values ​​of work, family, faith, and reciprocity. Hospitality is not sporadic kindness. It is the words of philosopher Jacques Derrida, the question that defines “culture itself,” a society that defines who it is and how its members live together.

Let’s consider a small example: Front pouch Republic (FPR) is an online forum dedicated to localism and co-living. It starts with a diverse group of writers across the political spectrum, and is concerned that centralized power and social fragmentation are eroding authentic communities. The site explores both current historical patterns and current challenges, including immigration, on terms of location, tradition and civic responsibility.

The spirit of that forum is as replicable as the neighborhood email. When I felt the email was still novel, I sent one: “Pray for peace –Anyway.Monday, 7pm, 2515 Kemper Rd. People appeared, confused but intrigued. Immigrants and lifelong locals, strangers and friends of different races and backgrounds, even Zoroastrians who fled Iran are several missionaries from the troubled people.

The meetings were sometimes dull and sometimes heated. There is no miserable flute played in the background.

Such stories are not rare. We were all able to tell them. Meanwhile, the rest of the world settles for more Trump talk.

Deeper work begins in neighborhoods where contradictions meet awareness rather than headings.

Notes and reading

• Hospitality as a culture – Jacques Derrida, About Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (2001). Derrida argues his claim that “hospitality is culture itself” in “refuge” for aliens who reside in biblical “refuge”. The phrase “spatiality of thought” comes from the philosopher Gaston Bachellard. Universe poem.

• Understand through contradictions– Amanda Gefter, “Find Peter Putnam: The Most Wonderful Man You’ve never heard of” NautilusJune 17, 2025. “Jaz is the mathematics of the soul.”
  The evening of work as a janitor, Princeton physicist, and former professor of union seminary, Peter Putnam was declared to Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, a former seminary student who was once a teacher of my brother David, developed an unpublished “logic of the mind.”
  Putnam claimed that humans are rational Inductive– By confronting contradictions, test patterns, and revisions of beliefs. He didn’t deal directly with AI, but his model contrasts with how rules-based AI systems work today. deductionfrom fixed facilities, with logic that is exponentially axiomatic.

• Xenophobia history– George Macari, Fear and Stranger: The History of Xenophobia (2021). In a globalized world, fear plays an increasingly important role in determining who belongs. Famous for both psychiatry and history, Macari approaches xenophobia with outstanding authority.

• Emotions and power– Dominique Moisi, Geopolitics of emotions (2009). Moisi maps how cultures were organized around fear, humiliation, or hope, leading those emotions to politics, law, and identity.

• The Geometry of Fear –Research link fractal Brain waves and heart rhythm patterns to fear Re-return Nature. Recognizing these patterns like finding a getaway helps us resist their pull. For a vivid and popular take, see Badansen’s Fractal Emotions (April 2025, Vocal Media). We explore ways in which self-similarities of emotions reveal hidden order under the mixed chaos.

• Actual citizenship–irene Bloemraad, Become a citizen (2006) compares how the US and Canada embrace immigrants and refugees. This is key to understanding multicultural policy.

• Liturgy – to protest against strangers –Bryce Trupen, Political dedication, Substack (April 10, 2025). “I was inspired by Thomas Merton and three DC protests.”

Tip #211 – The truth hurts

Tip #210 – Dance in the quicksand

Approx. 2 + 2 = 5