So true …

The poet Montale, whom I mentioned earlier, spoke not long before his recent death of the modern rejection of solitude and singularity, singularity, saying that “the wish to huddle in groups, to create noise, and to escape from thought is a sign of desperation and despair.” He said that the need to accept a group ideology and generational conformity is contrary to the nature of art and of poetry. Similarly, for the artist, Montale said that the subordination to a method of thinking that one has not worked toward oneself implies a surrender to uniformity, to officialism: “Only the man who lives in solitude can speak of the fatal isolation we all suffer under this inhuman, mass-produced communication. Being in fashion and famous now seems the only accepted role for the contemporary artist…. And I ask myself where this absurd absence of judgment will lead us.” 

— Shirley Hazzard, “We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think”