The quote you're giving me leads my response and I describe it as "not ridiculous".
"The essay reflected that ______" reports someone else's point of view, not my own. I agree that something is wrong in our culture; it cannot be shown that this represents a change from that of Classical Greece, but it can be supposed to varying levels of certainty. But if I exhort people to stop contributing to a problem of today, whether that problem originated in the recent past or the ancient past is of no relevance. We should still stop it today.
"The essay reflected that ______" reports someone else's point of view, not my own. I agree that something is wrong in our culture; it cannot be shown that this represents a change from that of Classical Greece, but it can be supposed to varying levels of certainty. But if I exhort people to stop contributing to a problem of today, whether that problem originated in the recent past or the ancient past is of no relevance. We should still stop it today.