ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the possible mechanisms of the motives and emotions that people go through in such changing societies. It offers a model that helps to understand religious isolation, extremism and terrorism in psychological terms. The principles of self-preserving and self-transcendent orientation will be addressed, and linked to psychological theories on human motivation. Holarchic theory implies that the meaning and agency of a living creature cannot be reduced to any of the system's organs. Open Hierarchical Systems (OHS) states that, when the higher holarchic level, which defines the meaning of the holon, is lost, it disintegrates into its lower, semi-autonomous parts. The chapter focuses on the dynamics of emotion and motives in relation to changes occurring in secularised cultural as well as religious groups. Humans are unique in their capability to form mental representations of themselves and construct a more or less stable identity' or self' by which, in some sense, they become the centre of their own world.
