This is a rant post. I'd be happy to hear other people's take on it, but this is my way of viewing a problem that i perceive.

It seems to me, and I think arguable is, that in modern society we are very quick to take advantages where we can, even if it means knocking someone out of place. It makes sense everyone has to look out for themselves.

There's a big problem with that attitude though, at least where it relates to marginalized groups. Particularly Im speaking on the drug users and mentally ill people in the world, because as a member of these groups I have experienced this first hand. There will always be exceptions of course, but what I've continually seen is the tendency to wanna push drug users, mentally ill, and really anyone who doesn't fit our "vibe" or "energy" down and away.

If you try and think it through logically it falls apart though. We push these groups down, because they don't "fit in" to society the way that society wants them to. That makes sense at least, the paradox comes from the tendency to blame these people and adopt attitudes towards these people, because of an "unwillingness" or "inability" to be more typical in whatever regards it is. It creates a really interesting problem.

Since it's the users fault, its their responsibility to change to be more of what society wants of them. And yet what you find is that because society blames users, or any marginalized group, for being marginalized, they're unwilling to extend resources, or even compassion and empathy towards these groups. We make excuses like "well if they wanted to they could" and that "if everyone else can do it why can't they".

It's kind of unfortunate because the reality of the situation is this pull yourself up from the bootstraps mentality doesn't really benefit the marginalized groups. Addiction resources, investing into mental health, taking time to understand someone's thoughts and behaviors before assigning the negative values, etc. All examples of things that genuinely help people to become not only what people "expect" from them but often times happier themselves.

but beecause these groups are but a subset of the population and their issues aren't typical, they're like I said pushed down and away, and told to hide whatever that difference is. Which forces them to seek understanding and resources from people in similar situations, because they're the only ones who value those traits, because like I said we only believe and percieve what is benificial to us. For example the points I make are much more likely to be recieved positvely or openly amongst marginilzed people, because they themselves would benifit from this change in mentalitiy, whereas for most people extending the extra energy and effort to seek to understand, isn't beneficial.

Now I make no claims we should encourage drugs, that they don't have negative effects physically and emotionaly, or act like toxic outcomes of mental health in relationships is ok. I just think that when we assign an intrinsically negative value to these things without any consideration of the person, their situation, and their other layers, it stops us from having a realistic dialogue about the issues that plague these groups and make them marginalized. For instance, the inability to openly discuss harm reduction and drug education, because "drugs bad" contributes to the reality that drug use can be dangerous to health and life, even though we have a way of reducing that reality, but that would take an open dialogue. I think we just need to accept that not everyone is at the same level or on the same page all the time. Im not saying go break your back for them, but extend just a little bit of understanding and resources and all of a sudden these groups aren't so marganilized. They aren't forced to become the stereotypes that people assign to them like lying, manipulating, deceiving. And they can learn to change the negative attiutudes or beliefs that caused the problem in the first place.