I was specifically thinking of the Roman empire at it's apex, ca 300 AD. Romans did employ slave labor but, to my understanding, the percentage of the populatio

I was specifically thinking of the Roman empire at it's apex, ca 300 AD. Romans did employ slave labor but, to my understanding, the percentage of the population that were slaves is still mostly unknown. This paper gives a ballpark figure of 1/3rd of the population of the Italian peninsula.[1] Ethnocentrism, the attitude that one's own culture is superior, coloring an individual's perceptions of other cultures as inferior and incorrect, has been mostly in decline over the last 70 years in Europe and the US. There has been a slight nationalist push in the other direction in the last 3-4 years but even that seems to be in decline. (Example: Turkey seems to be moving away from their nationalist president.) Russia is going to stay Russia, Stalin killed millions.[2] Ethnocentrism is not about identifying as part of a group. People retain their cultural identities when taking a multicultural posture adopting the best parts of other cultures and integrating those traits into their lives. American's love doing this and even get accused of cultural appropriation. Just look at American cuisine. > Though nationalism is very different in a place like the USS or Canada, it's still forms part of people's natural identity. I don't dispute that American's are patriotic but every city and town is different. Social norms, popular songs on the radio and driving habits all vary across America's cities and towns. American cohesion is mostly due to the power of our popular culture, media, political parties and religions. > That said, some things, like Scientific knowledge tend to be humanist, i.e. transcending ethnicities, and of course we often need to be reminded of this. Biased science is bad science. [1] https://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/scheidel/050704.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/scheidel/050704.pdf [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge