It is the fundamentals of philosophy (particularly, of ethics) that an
anti-conceptual person dreads above all else. To understand and to apply them
requires a long conceptual chain, which he has made his mind incapable of
holding beyond the first, rudimentary links. If his professed beliefs—i.e.,
the rules and slogans of his group—are challenged, he feels his consciousness
dissolving in fog. Hence, his fear of outsiders. The word “outsiders,” to him,
means the whole wide world beyond the confines of his village or town or
gang—the world of all those people who do not live by his “rules.” He does not
know why he feels that outsiders are a deadly threat to him and why they fill
him with helpless terror. The threat is not existential, but
psycho-epistemological: to deal with them requires that he rise above his
“rules” to the level of abstract principles. He would die rather than attempt
it.
“Protection from outsiders” is the benefit he seeks in clinging to his group.
What the group demands in return is obedience to its rules, which he is eager
to obey: those rules are his protection—from the dreaded realm of abstract
thought.