Five Dangerous Ideas that Inflame Us

Eidelson and Eidelson some years ago pointed out five dangerous ideas that lead to conflict between groups. Notice how authoritarian discourse and today’s social media promote these across the world:

Vulnerability: We feel that what we value is threatened (e.g., identity, country).

Helplessness: We try to avoid feelings of helplessness and try to control what is important to us.

Distrust: The world is black and white. We avoid harm by trusting those ‘with us’ and distrusting those ‘against us.’

Superiority: We compare ourselves in ways that show our superiority to ‘those others.’ We often focus on what is worst in those others.

Injustice: We think we have been or are being mistreated and so we react with anger, resentment and a desire to punish.

What is especially important to understand is that most people today carry these ‘ideas’ as feelings, from experiences of undercare in babyhood when the brain is self-organizing worldview (along with physiological, psychological and social systems).

Why? Because babies resemble fetuses of other animals until nearly age two. They are extremely vulnerable and helpless, and malleable. When expected care (our species’ Evolved Nest) is not forthcoming, they learn to distrust their feelings, the people around them, the world.

In the first two years, their right hemisphere will be left underdeveloped from the missing expected care, establishing an insecure true self, trapped in fear, with a sense of injustice.

When their left brain’s growth spurt begins around age three, it is missing the foundational true self. Thus, they must develop a false self to make it through the world. The false self with its ego defenses acts superior while protecting the true self.

The size of the ego that develops may be a signal of how much they suffered. The notorious, sensitive ‘male ego’ that women learn to appease likely is an indicator of the undercare boys receive. Boys’ brains need much more nurturance for longer because they are more fragile.

The depressive orientation that undercared for people carry can be temporarily overcome with various substances (e.g., illicit drugs) but also with mobilizing anger against an Other (‘those dangerous people’).

In our ancestral context, egalitarian hunter-gatherer civilization, the evolved nest is experienced by all, avoiding seeding the aforementioned dangerous ideas. Of course, people can fall into these feelings from mental or physical illness, and so require community healing (which takes place regularly and as needed).

Further, superiority, the inflation of the ego, no matter how small on average, can become inflated in any group. Hunter-gatherers have community practices that counter ego inflation because they know it is dangerous to the community. Hunter-gatherers deflate the ego primarily through teasing. For example, others in the hunting group tease the hunter who lands a large animal, joking that the group should keep hunting because the animal is so small, that ‘a rabbit would be bigger.’ This goes on until the targeted hunter laughs heartily, bringing down any sense of superiority.

Elder women do the teasing in other situations which goes on until the target laughs and realizes they are the target.

How do we heal these ideas/feelings, apart from restoring the species-normal babyhood? In Minnesota, my home state, recently communities are rising up against authoritarianism. They are learning skills to counter a sense of helplessness. Neighbors are coming together to help neighbors decreasing their sense of lonely vulnerability. Discerning who is to be trusted is ongoing but is building among neighborhood residents. Justice requires education how wellbeing of some groups has been curtailed across generations through the thwarting of basic needs fulfillment. Having basic needs met (not the invented needs of capitalism) is a basic human right, from the beginning of a life.

Superiority deflation can come about through the arts and through play—actions that bring the group to the present moment of connection. Group singing can shift the atmosphere. In one case, a Minnesota group protecting a school from ICE agents sang the ABC song, leading them all to break into laughter.

And remember Gene Sharp’s 198 forms of nonviolent resistance.

Let’s help one another remember our humanity, our connectedness, as a species, as Earthlings, countering those who seek to break our bonds.

References

Eidelson, R. J., & Eidelson, J. I. (2003). Dangerous ideas: Five beliefs that propel groups toward conflict. American Psychologist, 58, 182-192

See also Roy Eidelson’s website and blog: https://royeidelson.com/dangerous-ideas/

Katz, R. (2017). Indigenous healing psychology: Honoring the wisdom of the First Peoples. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press.

Lee, R. B. (1979). The !Kung San: Men, women, and work in a foraging community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Max-Neef, M. A. (1991). Human scale development: Conception, application and further reflections. New York and London: The Apex Press.

See also the summary of Max-Neef’s views.

Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality: Evolution, culture and wisdom. New York: Norton.

Schore, A.N. (2017). All our sons: The developmental neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of boys at risk. Infant Mental Health Journal, 38(1),15-52. doi: 10.1002/imhj.21616

Schore, A.N. (2025). The right brain and the origin of human nature. W.W. Norton.