When Julius Caesar was repeatedly stabbed in a Senate meeting in 44 B.C., it wasn’t just Brutus, Cassius, or the other 60 "liberators" who were killing him — it was, in their minds, "the people." While the Senators miscalculated — the "people" were furious at them for killing Caesar — their goal in acting together is one often associated with collective action: the diffusion of responsibility. When more people become involved, the less accountable each individual will feel. "Society," the Senators wanted people to believe, was culpable in Caesar's murder.

Meritocracy and individualism, even when pursued imperfectly, were once the core values in Western society.
The modern West has been plagued by a shared mindset that normalizes blaming society for individual failures. Instead of "liberators," we now have "liberals" who cite systemic discrimination as the cause of marginalized groups’ struggles, while ultimately creating a culture of stagnation and helplessness. (READ MORE: The Surprising, Uplifting Truth About Inequality)
It is often the case that when a group of people are "underrepresented" — have small numbers of people from that group — in certain jobs or educational institutions, it is because few people from that group have performed at the same standard required of others. Rather than delve into how or why we see these outcomes, intellectuals have preferred to discuss "glass ceilings" or "opportunity bias" in order to explain them. This has perpetuated the belief that the system is fundamentally unfair to individuals in certain groups.
In Life at the Bottom, Theodore Dalrymple describes how intellectuals and activists have taught the underclass to blame society for their struggles. Such a pernicious mindset reflects a diffusion of responsibility, where stagnation is attributed to external forces like inequality, rather than internal ones, making individuals feel less accountable for what is often, as Dalrymple terms, socially destructive behavior.
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