I'm surprised that your essay doesn't deal directly with the branch of philosophy known as ethics, as practiced by such canonical philosophers as Kant, Hume, Bentham and Mill, and by contemporary philosophers like Peter Singer, Michael Walzer, Jonathan Glover, and John Rawls. Their work addresses some of the most general questions (what is a just action or a just society?), and it seems to meet your utility criterion: if you find it convincing, you have to do things differently.

Is this not an example, from within the mainstream of philosophy, of the thing you're calling for?