Researchers have described the “underlying force” of extremism as “the basic human desire to matter and have meaning in one’s life.” They call this “the quest for personal significance,” and there are three main parts: need, narrative, and network. Everyone experiences feelings of need. What sets budding extremists apart is an imbalance, “the tendency…to privilege one need over the expense of others.” This disparity “allows formerly constrained behaviors to become liberated” and “be considered as reasonable and permissible” in service of the big need, the nagging one, the one that a person’s
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