DIFFERENCE THEORY OF SUFFERING
The cause of suffering is the difference between an individual and their environment. A tree, falling into a river, experiences no resistance when floating down the stream, but experiences maximum resistance when lodged horizontally against the current. In the same way, an organism cannot experience suffering if they exist in perfect harmony with their environment. To exist within an environment is to exist within a network of resistances and limits: for example, the resistance of gravity weighing against movement.
This begs the question, who is to blame for the difference between an organism and their environment? The organism, assembled out of the raw materials of the environment, created from its very essence, yet still in tension with that environment. The co-interaction between the organism and their environment is one of interdependent creation and destruction: the environment perpetually creating the organism, who then by mere virtue of life, changes their environment, which then changes the organism, and on and on. The co-creation of the universe, a dance between organism and environment, leading to a greater and greater power of the organism, with greater and greater adaptation.
Now to apply this idea to social problems. When a social problem comes into focus, it is common to ask: who is to blame, the individual, or society? Right and left wing split on their answers: the right wing favoring the power of the individual, the left wing stressing the immutability of the environment; each side missing one half of the process of co-creation.
Internalization is the process of directing blame inward for suffering. The difference between the self and environment is assumed to be the fault of the individual: if an individual has trouble working, they assume it is because they themselves are defective, neglecting the chaotic role of their environment in their own creation.
The opposite, externalization, is the process of placing all blame on the environment for one's dysfunctions, neglecting to recognize how their own malformed self is causing more damage to the environment, the movement of harm pushing out of themselves back out onto the environment.
Where is the location for intervention? Who is the principle actor, the initiator of change? Where does power rest, in the individual, or in the environment? One becomes senseless without the other: when one changes, the other changes as well. To change oneself is to change the environment, to change the environment is to change oneself. We are constructed from our world, and constructed from one another. To discuss one in isolation from the other is to discuss yin without yang. The quality of one's thought is how expansively it includes all co-occurring elements within it.
As you grow older, and continually adapt to the world, you find the world starts to resemble you. And eventually you can't tell whether it's you who changed or whether the world did.