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GrymanOne t1_j111rjr wrote

Reply to comment by 28eord in Do no conform: Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Self-Reliance argues that we should strive for greatness and self-reliance rather than the "meanness" of conforming to the society's dead institutions saying that "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind" by thelivingphilosophy

There used to be this idea of Unilineal Cultural Evolution which we've dispelled. I'm not sure it was so much that Rome had influence, in that people viewed cultures as a linear progression from one era to the next, with more "advanced" cultures being the evolutionary pinnacle of humanity, and that anyone not as "advanced" was simply unevolved. We obviously know this is not true nor correct, but as a whole, at least in academia, it wasn't until recently that this shifted, and continues to shift.

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