I feel that too many people feel that either their problems or their children's problems are due to society. There is a problem with that theory. Too many people try to blame outside influences for their own problems instead of looking at themselves. I feel that people should stop blaming others and look inside themselves for problem resolution. I grew up listening to music from Black Sabbath to Motley Crue. I know some of the music describes suicide and causing pain to other people, but does it force a person to persue these actions. I say no. Also, I grew up as an American Indian in mostly a "white" world. I do not blame "them" for causing my strife. My mother was sent to an ophanage and forced to attend an Indian school for assimilation. Do those things make me feel sorry for myself? The answer is no. She taught me to be a strong person and how to believe in myself. I do not believe that these manic depressed people really have a reason to be so depressed. They simply are unable to cope with everyday struggles and the blame needs to be placed on themselves. We have all encountered different levels of adversity but it is up to the individual to overcome these obstacles. I feel that people should stop blamming outside influences and take responsiblities for their actions.
My beliefs may not be accepted or popular but these are my opinions and I welcome your comments.
Of course as an individual we have the power to overcome most adversity, but when the adversity is the system in which you live under and you see all those around you getting bullshitted by that system it takes an extraordinary amount to strength to overcome that. Society (American) is naturally inclined to be hardest for those at the bottom, and all that talk about you are equal and you can do whatever you want is right for the most part but if you neglect to realize that superficial things like race, poverty, and religion in this American Society can greatly impede your progress then you are sadly mistaken, and if you are one of those individuals that were lucky enough to be born of the dominate culture and you believe that in America you can be what you want to be well you just will never understand. Everyday struggle is different from generational struggle and we do encounter different levels of adversity but to place all the responsibility on the individual rather than the societal conditions is really just Social Darwinism, and that is just non-sense.
It's impossible to be an artist and a bread winner at the same time. Sometimes I think I oughta chuck the whole business.
-Amiri Baraka
I understand some of the points you are have written, and I agree that people have to start taking more responsibility for themselves. However, there are certain conditions, like the one in the previous comment (by Blues), that must be examined as well. For my example, I'll use homeless people. Are they all responsible for their unfortunate fate on the streets? Should the fact that most of them are mentally disabled due to birth defects or war trauma (most are veterans, you'll be surprised) be overlooked? It's imperative that we have to examine other views, and in the process, expand our own. I've found that most of the time the correct view is usually somewhere in between the two opposing ones.
Man, they robbed your land, tried to exterminate your ancestors, introduced your people to alchohol, introduced their rules and laws and made your people assimilate, you have every right to blame "them". I'm Irish and the British pulled the same shit in my country, that's why we were piss poor until we managed to get them the fuck out, now we are prosperous, but we don't have our language any more, we don't have our religion, we were a pagan people before they brought us Christianity, thanks for that, Irish people are still killing each other over that. Do I blame the British? Yes. I don't hate English people or anything stupid like that, but when I look back a generation to how hard people had it in my homeland, when I see the scars left by war, genocide and assimililation, when I read about how they bred Irish and West African slaves like animals in the carribean, when I read about how they continued to run us into the ground when we reached America, the land they drove us to through orchestrated famine, I blame them for shattering our identity and trying to erase our culture. Things like that have a lasting effect. When I see Irish Americans standing proud with the rest of white America, I see our identity crushed and my people standing shoulder to shoulder with their ancestors' persecutors. I see a people blinded by something as trivial as skin colour into believing they have more in common with the rest of white America than they do with Africans, Indians, Latinos, etc. I blame "them" and their society and their laws for convincing my Irish American brothers to forget their history, for forgetting that we were a slave people, that all white people hated our guts when we arrived on American soil, for forgetting the fact that we were known as "white niggers", but most of all for forgetting that if we had so much as a tint to our skin colour we would not be where we are today. I believe people should be accountable for their actions only if they have not been crushed by a society they neither created nor wanted thrust upon them, especially in their own country. Does a rape victim need to blame themselves for being raped? And are they expected to get over the trauma just because the rapist has promised not to rape them again?