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In 1986, Peter Gabriel had a hit with the song “Big Time,” in which a man with an inflated self-worth declares his liberation from the provincial values of his community of origin. He aspires to be what the American writer Tom Wolfe called a “master of the universe” in his 1987 novel Bonfire of the Vanities. The protagonist of Gabriel’s song declares, “There’s so much stuff I will own” and “I’m on my way, I’m making it.” Mo …