I saw a new movie/documentary coming about that says people are fat because of the government and corporations.  It's not a fat person's fault they're fat, it's a higher power.

I read a discussion about a kid that blames the school for not educating him or making him smarter and he wants to take them to court over providing a sub-par education.

My friends moan and gripe about their life situations and don't make changes.

How much of your life do you blame on outside factors?  How much do you take responsibility for?  

I personally do not see any point to blame others about my faults, the way I live and the things I do, I take full responsibility all of them. But then again I sometimes feel like I have to take responsibility about other peoples lives, especially my friends. But that is my own choice and I don't blame them if they do not want to listen me when I have something important to tell them or if I want to help them and they wont take my help and wants to solve those problems them self.

There has been times when I felt like my life is going to waste and everything felt nothing and I wanted to blame someone about it, but in the end I realized that I have to do something about my life and not to wait others to do them for me.

About that kid who blames his school for not educating him, I bet he was just too lazy to do anything for himself and was looking someone else to blame because maybe he just lacks self confidence.

This topic is very hard to answer properly, but I'm interest to see what other people have to say about this. Good thread.

I take a lot of the blame for what goes wrong with my life. I will admit, I am usually at fault here. I choose what to do with my time after school (usually), and most of the time, I just sit around playing games or watching anime instead of studying, or doing something productive, such as learning a language (which I will do, starting this summer, see that? Taking responsibility, sort of). I cannot really blame anyone else for my personally choosing to not do as well as I could have in school if I studied more, and worked harder. There are, of course, also those occasions where it actually is not your fault. I blame my little brother for a lot of my frustration, well, because he does. I cannot frustrate myself, not unless I try really hard, and I never feel like actually doing that. We also had a really bad teacher for Algebra 1. Wow, that really screwed me up for the rest of my math career. The teacher ruined my foundation, and really could not teach at all. The teacher got constant complaints from parents and faculty, but they could not fire the teacher because of the contract that was signed (oh, how I wish that contract did not exist for this teacher, in particular). Of course, I had to study and learn the math outside of school, but it did not end as great as I had hoped. It would have been better to have more direction, and a teacher that could teach, but whatever. There are also the social classes that someone is born into. I am in the middle class. For now, I can have absolutely no influence on that, not while I am still in high school, at any rate. There is nothing I can do to change it. Just a minor gripe, but I will take no responsibility for that. Anyways, other than some of the scenarios listed previously, I do have an influence on. I influence daily conversations, whether I choose to exercise, skipping breakfast, etc. I can say that I have the most responsibility, but everything is not exclusively to blame on myself. 

I take a lot of personal responsibility for my life because I know that doing that is crucial and it will help me to do many important things after I graduate high school.

I take responsibility for everything in my life. I take the blame for the good and the bad. I don't just blame it all on some devil, because that's basically saying that you did nothing, and that devil must have done everything. I am usually very responsible, and I will always strive to be that way.

Not as much as I should. I'll be completely honest I blame a lot of people for my faults. I'll find blame in every person or thing. I'm not really proud of it but it's general human nature. I could probably bet that all the people here that have said they take responsibilty for everything have blamed others a lot more than they can recall. It's basic psycology. Human will always find some fault in something or someone other than themselves.