Read a random comment on the r/AsianAmerican sub and it got me thinking…
I mean my mother is so fricking weird… like she tells me she loves me, but whenever she gets angry, I get yelled at and I get rold how much she sacrificed for me, and I now remember those memories of my mother just complaining about coworkers and then tell me that I “不爭氣” (“don’t work hard enough”/“disappointment”/“failure” or something) and told me to “爭氣” (which is the antonym, so I guess “work harder”?)… so, I remember just feeling so sad and crying…
Now I kinda understand… its not my mother’s fault, its society…
I have good memories of her, I remember us having fun when I was a kid… it was society that disrupted that…
Now I understand… I should really redirect my anger away from my parents, it’s not their fault, this society did that.
Society is why I spend so much time in afterschool programs having no friends, and why I’d be just sitting alone during dismissal time wondering when my parents would pick me up from school, as the sun is setting. Society is why I was often left at home alone with my older brother, why we fought a lot.
From now on, I’m just gonna blame the system, the system did this to my family. The same thing that happens to all families.
Who know how many loving families got destroyed by this system.
Coming from a deterministic point of view, I still don’t think that everyone is innocent. Everyone does the only thing they can do at any given time.
Acknowledging that some actions are wrong, suboptimal or evil and lifting the fact that a lot of people have the capacity to do good in hard scenarios can create pressure and inspiration for people to grow. Not that we have a choice.
I’m a man of privilege and have had an easy time making solid choices imo, I’m really inspired by people who make great choices from a rougher place and I’m appalled by people of fortune who act heinously even if I believe that they do so because it’s what life taught them to do.