Interesting writing. At first I started reading because I need more "regular" German material to read (trying to learn German) and ended up thinking about my native language and Höflichkeit (or Zuvorkommenheit) and how we treat it. I mentioned the synonym because we call it something like "Bringing" (from somewhere).

A polite person is therefore someone that knows how to bring (something good) with him. There is also another synonym directly meaning Education. So politeness is almost equal to being educated.