Free Will, Individualism, & My Problem with Personal Blame

The system, what is it? Culture, economics and society at large. This question comes up for me sometimes. Now people seem to have this idea that systemic blame is not helpful or meaningless, laughable, conspiracy bullshit. But I take the opposite perspective. I would say that individual blame is meaningless and that you can’t do anything from that perspective, however recognizing that the system influences all of our lives in countless ways, at-least gives us a place to start, a problem to fix, But if it’s all just individual choice what do you do? What can you do? Wish upon a star that people will just do better, but like cdp grey said, that’s a terrible solution every-time. I want to build a society, a system that incentives people to do better, and allows people to be the best they can be.

    Cultural expectation certainly plays a big role in who we are and what we do. Gentlemen have historically been expected to be the breadwinner. Women have historically been expected to be the home maker. Certainly this played a role influencing the lives of gentlemen and women. Of course it goes beyond that. Children are expected to learn, adults expected to labor, politicians expected to rule, cops expected to serve and protect, the mentally unhealthy are expected to get over it ETC. And everyone is expected to have free will to make their own individual choice. But of course, it’s no choice at all. Your whole life these cultural expectations have been influencing you consciously and unconsciously. And even before. See how can free will be a thing when every option you select is an inevitable result of an infinite chain of cause and effect going back to the foundations of the universe. So if good and bad are not just choices. What are they then?

    What is a bad person? What is a good person? Do either exist? Certainly there are people who consistently do bad things, Just as there are those who consistently do good. But maybe that’s it. No one inherently good or bad, no good gene or bad gene, but simply behavior based on environmental and systemic factors. With that in mind, given the right conditions anyone could be good or bad as without free will, everything we do, and everything we are is a result of determining factors. This means that given equal conditions, I would behave as you, and you, as I. The killer, the thief, the doctor, and the lawyer, are different because of genetics, environment, economic status, cultural expectation, ETC. Choice is only a result of these factors. So how ought we treat the consistently bad? Attempting to rehabilitate seems like a decent Idea. But what if someone cannot be rehabilitated? Well then it’s kind of impossible for them to be anything but a consistently bad individual, at which point it’s hard to blame them personally for doing literally the only thing they can do. Put another way either people can do better at which point helping them seems the most ideal. Or they cannot do better, at which point it is impossible for them to do good, and therefore senseless to blame them for doing bad.

    Our system hurts everyone, the rich, the poor, the good, the bad, the ugly, the smart, the brave, and even the beautiful. So does success come from hard work? Like some right wingers may insist. Or exploitation? As many leftist would assert. Well neither. We know it’s not hard work because children who dig lithium out of the ground for 15 to 20 hours a day 7 days a week, arguably working harder than anyone I have ever met but are still poor as shit. Then what about the trust fund brats, who don’t do shit but are richer than 90 percent of the world. Can’t be hard work. The right is wrong. So what about exploitation? And, well simply put most con artists don’t make it as far as Frank William Abagnale Jr. And he himself made it no where near the level of that hypothetical trust fund brat I brought up earlier. So the left is also wrong. So why do some people make it and others don’t? In a word, Luck.

    Anyone can make it. You’ve probably heard that thrown around. You have also no doubt heard it objected to. Though technically it’s true. In the same way anyone can walk into a casino, pull down the lever, say come on cherry, and hit the jackpot. Sure maybe there are some who work hard on mathematical algorithms to figure out the best odds at any given machine. And maybe a few Abagnales pull an Ocean's 13 and scam the house. But the vast majority of people who win the slots don’t win because they work hard, nor because they fix the game, but because they get lucky. And that is disturbingly comparable to our economy.

That is it. My problem with personal blame. I believe it to be meaningless. Theres nothing I can do and it just makes me angry at an individual, who ultimately was either fucked by the system, can’t possibly do anything other than bad, or both. And the only reason that aint me is that I won the slots, I got lucky. And I would rather use that luck to make the world better for EVERYONE, than waste it on angry revenge fantasies. But if you're still not convinced I’ll paraphrase V from V for Vendetta. If you want to blame an individual, we can certainly do that, but truth be told, if you are looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror!