It's easy as a housing professional to become insular, focusing on particular problems in our own communities and failing to look beyond the horizon for support.
Drained of life post Margaret Thatcher, the party became increasingly insular, focused on older, native-born, white, male, rural voters, as the country became younger, more diverse and suburban.
All of this fuels an insular domestic focus among the rising powers, who are more concerned with troubles at home than those around the globe.
George W. Bush entered office with a modest, insular agenda, focussed on tax cuts and programs like No Child Left Behind.
"If it's climate change we've already passed the point of no return and it doesn't seem to have inspired any action and that makes me wonder what would it take to get people and companies to change what they're doing?" And she also worries about the typical things: about people becoming more individualistic and more insular and focusing on themselves and being quite selfish.
Aides say that Bartholomew's embrace of environmental issues is part of his agenda to modernize a deeply conservative church that can seem distant and insular, with its focus on long Byzantine rituals and mysticism.
As much as tech's ranks have grown, the space remains unusually insular and inwardly focused.
Darren Aronofsky, the director of "Black Swan," told me, "A lot of people in the ballet world, which is a very insular world, are very focussed on their art".
And the focus is resolutely insular, as we would expect from our nationalistic education secretary – a real departure from the current syllabus, which shows an interest in parts of the world beyond Britain and introduces children to critical thinking.
