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The knife is considered the most important tool of all time... perhaps not to eat with, but handy in general:

https://www.forbes.com/2005/08/31/technology-tools-knife_cx_...

Socialization seems to be turning knives into taboo things to carry and use out of the kitchen.

Knives are generally useful, but not specifically useful. They are often a good substitute for a more appropriate tool. One can use a knife as a can opener, or to cut down a sapling, or to dig a foreign object out of a wound. It may be that a knife is the most generally useful tool of all time: if one can only have one tool, it should almost certainly be a knife. Part of that generality includes misuse, and people tend to have more specifically-useful tools (such as can openers, saws, and surgical implements), which tend to be both less useful and less misuseful (because that's a perfectly cromulent word, no matter what spellcheck says).

Most recently used mine to pull out a credit card from an ATM that wouldn't regurgitate it.

Got a bunch of odd looks from folks in the crowd around me, but got my card back.

A knife is a tool (the tool) which focuses human force, at a point and/or along an edge. That's about as generic as a tool can be.

Knives, much like fire, are both hugely important, but they have their places. Bringing either onto a flight seems unneeded.

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