It's such an obvious repression metaphor. I mean, really. Like, wowza.

Everyone's basically pressured into looking and acting the same, and while they all superficially attest to open freedom of expression, the very nature of their society constrains it to within certain "acceptable" bounds. And then Hydaelyn comes and splits the world in such a way that people can no longer hide who they really are, and the few survivors of the past age go on a rampage and lament the "good old days" when they weren't constantly confronted with the differences of others. Like all of that was acceptable, of course, but only when they didn't have to think about it.

Not that Oda and Ishikawa intended it that way, per se, ("Death of the Author" is a thing), but the work's overall stance on which world was better has been pretty clear since that first roundtable with Varis.