On preferences, opinions, habits, norms, traditions and immutable laws

We tend to think of laws as things written in books, backed by governments, and enforced by courts. But in our day-to-day lives, some of the most powerful "laws" aren’t laws at all. They’re habits. Or traditions. Or inherited opinions. And yet we follow them as if they were handed down from some sort of higher power.

So how does a preference — a personal or cultural choice — evolve into something treated as sacred, untouchable, and binding? Why do certain habits feel as unbreakable as laws? Let’s explore it. 

1. The First Step: Path Dependence and Institutional Inertia

Sometimes, it starts small. A preference becomes a routine. A routine becomes a rule.

This is known as path dependence — the idea that once a certain option is chosen, it becomes easier to stick with it than to change, even if better options exist. Think of the QWERTY keyboard layout. The QWERTY layout became popular with the success of the 1878 Remington No. 2 typewriter, and it’s still standard today — not because it’s ideal, but because it got there first and everything else was built around it.

Political scientist Paul Pierson (2000) has argued that once institutions begin forming around certain decisions, they become sticky — hard to reverse — leading to what he calls “positive feedback loops.” 

2. Social Norms: The Invisible Law Enforcement

Even more powerful than inertia is social pressure. Human beings are exquisitely sensitive to what others expect of them — and often act not out of preference, but from a desire to avoid disapproval.

Philosopher Cristina Bicchieri, in The Grammar of Society (2006), explains that we follow norms not because we personally agree with them, but because we believe everyone else expects us to. 

This creates a kind of informal legal system: break a tradition, and you won’t go to jail — but you might get shunned at Thanksgiving.

3. Tradition: Recently Invented, Yet Treated as Sacred

Astonishingly, many traditions we treat as timeless are actually recent inventions.

Historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger explored this in The Invention of Tradition (1983). 

They show how British royal ceremonies, Scottish clan tartans, and other seemingly “ancient” customs were often created in the 19th century to foster nationalism or identity.

Once a preference is framed as a tradition, it gains immunity to critique. People start to say, “It’s always been done this way,” even when “always” might really mean “since last Tuesday.”

4. Habits: Bourdieu’s “Habitus”

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu introduced the concept of habitus — the idea that our preferences, gestures, and tastes are shaped by our upbringing and social environment to the point where they feel “natural.”

As these habits become embodied, they stop feeling like choices. They just are.

So when people say, “This is how decent people dress/eat/speak,” they’re not appealing to law, but to a deeply embedded social conditioning. 

5. When Norms Function Like Laws

Anthropologist Sally Falk Moore coined the concept of semi-autonomous social fields — spaces where communities enforce their own rules outside formal law, such as kinship groups, religious communities, or corporate cultures.

In these spaces, social norms act like laws. They may not be codified, but they carry consequences. 

Break a wedding seating custom, and you won’t be arrested — but you may never be invited again.

6. Memes and Cultural Evolution

Finally, some ideas simply replicate better than others. Cultural evolution — or memetics, as proposed by Richard Dawkins — suggests that opinions that spread easily (whether true or not) are more likely to become normalized.

Like genes, the memes that survive are not necessarily the most rational, but the most resilient. Susan Blackmore has extended this idea to explain how religions, ideologies, and traditions propagate over time. 

Conclusion: The Law of What Feels Normal

So, the next time we are tempted to think, “That’s just the way it’s done,” let's stop ourselves to pause and ask: Who decided this? And when?

Too often, we are following a law no one wrote, enforcing a rule no one agreed to, upholding a tradition that isn’t as old — or as necessary — as it seems.

Even our most arbitrary opinions can, over time, be carved in stone — and treated as if nature itself had written them.


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