"The urge to transform one's appearance, to dance outdoors, to mock the
powerful and embrace perfect strangers is not easy to suppress . . .

The capacity for collective joy is encoded into us almost as deeply as the
capacity for the erotic love of one human for another.

We can live without it, as most of us do, but only at the risk of succumbing
to the solitary nightmare of depression.

Why not reclaim our distinctively human heritage as creatures who generate
their own ecstatic pleasures out of music, color, feasting, and dance . . .

There is no 'point' to it -- no religious overtones, ideological
message, or money to be made -- just the chance, which we need much more of
on this crowded planet, to acknowledge the miracle of our simultaneous
existence with some sort of celebration."

-Barbara Ehrenreich, *Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy