Part of cooperating and forming groups means adopting social norms within said group. That's where the inclination for social norms and influence ultimately derives from. Because a group is hardly going to be truly cooperative and cohesive without a basic set of common rules group members are expected to abide by.
I'm not making any statement about how any societal norm is "justified" based on the biological pressures that drive it. That's called the naturalistic fallacy.
But it is complicated. If you accept that cultures are different and each develop their own norms based in their own set of circumstances mixed with chance... Then condemning a culture for their norms is basically ethnocentrism. I.E. you're holding them to the standards of your own norms and thus declaring those norms in some way superior. Which in a way I think is fine. As long as you know that's what you're doing.
|