'...attaching the individual self to a fixed definition of a group self - and the group definition subsequently becoming entrenched - can lead to polarisation and even extremism. If you depend on a solid group identity to find individual stability, any questioning of that group also causes individual agony; identity is deeply emotional. And so, if a group's identity is challenged - as British national identity has been, for example, in the past few decades of increased immigration and globalisation - it fragments into the new version and a more stubbornly held iteration of the old, which enables individuals within the group to maintain their own sense of self. It follows that each old version becomes increasingly extreme or more concentrated. This is not just because it is smaller, but because the individuals within it pour in the same emotional significance they once did to the larger group: a narrower definition of the collective self is given the same weight.'
Emily Bootle, This Is Not Who I Am: Our Authenticity Obsession, p.84.
