Zodiark's Codex entry what do we think about it?

[Lurina]

Amaurot's beliefs around conformity and governance aren't overly important, because everyone has their own cultural preferences and biases around these things. Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that the leadership of a democratic system need intrinsically be less corrupt and self-serving than a nation led by a self-selecting group of oligarchs. Even if the Convocation's rule was absolute, at the very least you could come to see them as benevolent dictators prior to Zodiark's influence. Conscription into public service is just a practical consideration that can occur in any society.

The real question is simply whether you unironically take Emet's beliefs that his people were 'superior' to ours at face value. I think if you do want to artificially elevate the Amaurotines to be 'superior' to the rest of us, then you are in fact depriving them of their humanity. How could mere mortals like ourselves attempt to relate to the whims of 'the gods'? If, on the other hand, you recognize that Emet's claims are strongly influenced by his jingoism, then you're humanizing Amaurot. We've seen plenty of empires through history that have claimed to be 'the greatest nation that ever was', even when they're well past their prime. What's to say that Amaurot is any different from the likes of ancient Rome?

I don't think anyone in the current conversation is arguing the Ancients are intrinsically superior people than modern ones in the setting. They seem more peaceful and to have more communal values, but that's more a product of circumstance than nature. Even if the real world, people who don't have to contend with scarcity much tend to (with a strong emphasis on those last two words) be more educated and less prone to conflict, but it's a reactionary perspective to think this is evidence of them being somehow less "savage" on any kind of fundamental level. It's easy to emotionally disarm oneself and get used to thinking about the big picture when life is comfortable and you're not constantly competing to survive.

That being said, while Emet is a racist (even if it's more of a coping mechanism than a sincerely held belief, as Y'shtola points out explicitly at the end of Ultima Thule) I think it's a mischaracterization to say he's an Amaurotine-supremacist in specific. Let's look at his dialogue from The View From Above:

What? You thought ancient beings like us incapable of crying? Well, rest assured that if your heart can be broken, then so can mine! Back when the world was whole, we had family, friends, loves... Men knew peace and contentment, and with our adamant souls, we could live for an age. There was no conflict born of want or disparity. Our differences paled into insignificance next to all we had in common. And then there was Amaurot... Never was a city more magnificent. From the humblest streets to the highest spires, she fairly gleamed..."

Emet singles out Amaurot and obviously holds a special affection for it as his home, but he doesn't idolize Amaurotines as superior from other Ancient humans. In all his dialogue, he only compares ancient mankind in totality with modern mankind in totality. He's less a jingoist nationalist - if Garlemald and Allag are good examples, he regards jingoism as an exploitable flaw with Sundered humanity more than anything - and more an extremely stubborn version of the protagonist of I Am Legend, killing what he regards as undead abominations born of the "real" human race.

Still, it's frustrating how the text talks about Amaurot because it feels like the writers can't decide if they wanted it to be the only real culture of the Ancients (how EW and the grapes short story seems to lean) or just one of many (as ShB seems to lean). The Codex entries in particular seem to treat "Ancients" as synonymous with "Amaurotines" and the Convocation as some sort of global government in defiance of Debate and Discourse's worldbuilding, which is something I find extremely annoying - my headcanon is that Amaurot became the global government by virtue of being the last one standing, but that's a stab in the dark. So it's difficult to say what their relationship was to other nations, and whether they really were "provinces" or if Amaurot was just the Sharlayan of the time and a little conceited about itself.