Edit: added a paragraph nearing the end
Usually the question is: "What is wrong with our society?", but I guess my gripe is that if you look at things with a System-lense, usually what you focus on is what has the most influence.
In other words, if our Planet would veer off course, it isn't really the fault of the Ants - even when they could have done more! The reason is bigger gravitational forces, or our Sun wanting some more space.
So, why would you blame a human being for something that seems to be governed by laws, forces and powers we A) don't fundamentally understand, B) can't fundamentally influence C) can't fundamentally change ?
I mean, from a human perspective, there are a lot of answers - Psychology, sociology, anthropology, evolutionary disciplines, religion - even transdisciplinary groups and projects. But again, you only answer the question from inside the box. If the box gives a certain output, and has specific constraints, why blame the Outputs for how the box works?
It makes more sense to me to assign fault at the level where the problem lies. If we dislike and abhor something, at which level does it arise?
A lot of expressions we use are filled with assumptions that are focused on our personal actions. Take murder, for example. Killing is bad, I agree, but is it the personal choice of the killer to enable murder, to make possible the possibility of dying? The pain, suffering, dread etc.? It is the Universe's Laws and principles that are allowing it and actively engaging in it (There are endless ways this Universe can and will kill us), is it not?
That is just one of numerous examples I can think of where I am questioning if by looking closely at an issue, it seems to be the direct consequence of a superintended principle we have 0 direct control over.
I mean, personal responsibility sounds nice, but if you really look at it - does it make any sense? Take genes, for example. They are based on millions of years of biological, and then even cultural evolution. That you have the 'ability' to see a different way than eating your fellow friend, and can see more gains in keeping them alive - is it really "Your" achievement? How many choices are really "Yours", and not the inexplicable results of processes that started millions of years before you were even consciously aware that you had a face and a body separate from the rest of the world?
Because if the problem is the Universe, wouldn't you have to fix its underlying Laws and principles if you wanted to fundamentally change anything? Because any other change would only be superficial, partial and temporary.
To also add that here, you can of course look at humans as 'Part' of the universe, and not separate. Different maybe, but not separate. Which is a relevant vein to delve into, if you have something. As I see it, there doesn't seem to be a reciprocally positive relationship between the Universe and our individual consciousness - which seems odd. If break-ups have taught me anything, it might seem that the Universe is still bitter we stole that god-damn apple.
On a separate note (Joke joke?)
And so It is that I am still looking for the Universe help-desk. If anyone knows the number, or how to contact them, please let me know. If I'm a beta-tester, I believe I should let them know that some things really, really, really don't seem to work that well.
Kindly,
Caerulea-Lawrence
Ah, I see.
Well, first I grew up reading fiction where the heroes had no choice but to win and make things better in an uncaring or outright-antagonistic universe, and subconsciously internalized the idea that everything is my/our responsibility, whether it's my fault or not, and whether it's within my power to change or not.
Then in a meandering discussion I had a biology professor freshman year of college I brought up the determinism/randomness dilemma I posed previously and he asked me, "Well, what is it you want from your free will?" After which I read a whole bunch of philosophy books and majored in physics. Along the way I had one philosophy professor say, in a lecture on moral philosophy, that, "A truly virtuous person would not have friends, just a general disposition to friendliness." AKA that valuing any one person, including yourself, above others is a moral error (Note: I still believe this would be great in a world where everyone believed it and acted accordingly, but I don't live in that world).
Along the way the mindset from the first paragraph, plus a few other things, led to me subconsciously suppressing my ow emotions. That slowly drove me into a depression over the course of about eight years, which it's taken seven years of therapy and five years of antidepressants to break out of. It involved accepting that large parts of the world are just not my problem. Not that I won't make an effort to improve them anyway, but rather that it's ok, and necessary, for that effort to be bounded. And that feeling bad about this fact is a pure loss, to me, to those around me, and to my ability to enact the types of positive change I care about.
One positive note I'd add is that the more I learned about the physical world, the more I was able to see how much improvement is actually possible with the right knowledge and enough time and coordination to build stuff. As many problems and horrors as the world has, the laws of reality contain more than enough possibility for us to reduce, eliminate, or harness them and create a truly amazing future. Most people in daily life seem to think the world is bounded by what they're familiar with, and I can't even count how many times I've had people tell me that things that have already been done are either impossible or many decades away. It's sad how many opportunities we've missed by just not trying or coordinating to make them happen faster, but that's a temporary problem as long as we manage not to destroy ourselves.
I read, I think in one of Daniel Dennett's books, that "The devil is the unfortunate amount of time it takes for sinners to evolve into saints." I would add, "and learn to build angels." But we're getting there. I think this was maybe easier to see and believe a century or more ago, when physical progress was newer and we were less bombarded with images of every horror. The people who were alive to watch the Niagara Falls power plant being built and turned on could appreciate it without thinking about how America was still massacring the native Americans out west, and could feel and notice the wonders it brought to their own lives. But it's really even more true today. For a number of years Nicholas Kristof would publish an end-of-year NYT column about how humanity had just had it's best year ever, highlighting all the amazing progress that'd been made. And it's not that hard, if you look in the right places, to see how we go from where we are today, technologically and infrastructurally, to a future where we've eradicated all infectious disease. solved aging, ensured abundant water and healthy food for everyone, dramatically reduced all forms of waste and pollution, and replaced all dirty energy sources while making everyone much richer. We already know that these will have huge downstream effects on other types of problems (political, social, personal, distributional) and will also let us redirect and target our future efforts on the many problems that will remain. I think it's likely that my nieces and nephew will live for millennia, and at least possible that my parents might as well. In the long run, there's no reason we can't make the Goddess of Everything Else win.