as people moved from one-family settlements to cities, the ties between nuclear families and extended family networks weakened. The melting pot of denser cities put a new emphasis on individualism. On a small family farm, having a familial name made you a part of the family, but in the city a name set you apart from other cultures, ethnicities, and classes. This period of change didn’t just erase a batch of old names and replace them with a fresh batch. It forever changed the way people thought about names as identities, creating a virtue around newness where formerly none had existed.
Birth of Western civilization is the moment Odysseus identified himself to the cyclops and suffered for his hubris. The good and bad of individualism.
