We have run into the habit of calling practices and heuristics useful in of themselves. Manners, codes of conduct, systems of communication, social structures, law, everything seems to have brought us one step closer to the pinnacle of humanity we presume to have reached. (This might be true -- I am the last person to bother myself with subjective evaluations of whether we are greater for who we are or not).
I contend the assumption that these 'advancements' are really advancements in of themselves. We tend to look at things in an additive manner. Law made things better than they were before it. Same goes for etiquette, family structures, democracy and what-not. I strongly believe that they do not have any inherent utility. They interact with each other in complex ways. Calling one of them innately useful is like calling one card in a House of Cards innately capable of holding weight if suspended in the air at 30 degrees. The universe's laws are apathetic to the human condition and these 'advancements' are therefore not designed upon any natural law. They just are. There is a very real Darwinian evolution of customs and ideologies. The victors are not inherently the fittest but only those most suited to survive.
I feel we need to divorce the inherent qualities of these entities from the utility they provide. Standing in a queue and maintaining order is an efficient solution when there is promise of receiving what you wait for. The same practice will be discarded without a second thought when rushing into city-gates as an invading army approaches. Consideration and empathy makes life better for all of us but the same emotional energy might be rationed in more trying times. I am obviously not commenting on what is right but simply what serves the purpose of a group when traced to an individual level.
Being cognizant of this makes us humbler not only when judging objections against certain practices but also when looking at other cultures and our history.
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