But it is also a hugely celebratory collective insanity, a world away from the portentousness and individualism of much current hip-hop and rock.
The pressure-cooker culture among academics is creating an individualism which means that we turn a blind eye while trying to keep our jobs (at best) and advance our careers (at worst).
Exactly the ranking and division rampant individualism dreams of, where some people's struggle matters more than others and the new underclass are set against each other.
That voter has a hotch-potch of sometimes conflicting political feelings about the world, which might be summed up in Matthew d'Ancona's phrase "individualism plus the NHS".
His answer to the 'why are we here question' is, basically, 'to fully be', but his idea of being fully is a kind of Late Romantic heroic individualism.
The government in which he served invented "city academies: they are a perfect example of how – by replacing public provision with the individualism of the "choice agenda" – the interests of the articulate, self-confident and determined minority are promoted at the expense of the community as a whole.
Bus drivers in Wales, university staff in Sussex, BBC staff worried about station closures – the raw statistics tell the story of declining union membership, power and militancy in an increasingly post-industrial state where individualism prevails over social solidarity.
This subject matter has always struggled to find a home in the US, where "vaguely socialist" equals "un-American" and individualism fits better with the hero's-journey template anyway.
One of the most valuable virtues in modern politics, especially amid the decline of large parties and the growth of individualism, is the ability to give the impression that you can see the world from the other person's point of view.
Though "no Luddite" technophobe himself, Schama said, he was against the fake individualism of cyberspace, the fraudulent triumph of the second rate, with all that me-me-me noise.
The Ulster Presbyterian mindset is moulded by a tenacious individualism and a dedication to personal conscience.
