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And thirdly, and perhaps most importantly,
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because it creates meaning.
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It helps us to understand ourselves in time in a deeper way
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by exposing twenty-first century attitudes
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and values and experiences to a much deeper comparative context.
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Looking at the distant past can alert us to the sheer otherness
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of the past,
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to the reality of deep and fundamental change
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in the course of four or five centuries
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and to the provisional and contingent
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and temporary nature of so much that we take for granted
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today, as well as the family resemblances