It's kind of a continuum. There are grand philosophies and psychologies about how the present state of things or people arises from past conditions, and yes that includes Marxism. There is truth to it. It can be as complex as explaining history itself, or why one seems to start spouting the ideas in the last book you read or video you saw, even if you didn't believe it all 10 min ago.
The problem is the continuum itself. I definitely fall into the camp of "yes, things are an effect of past causes" myself. But where you, I, and maybe also your friend differ from the "just do it" self-help types is that we recognize at certain levels, there are systemic blockers to just doing it: capitalism at the societal level, ADHD at the individual, etc. Some people get confused or choose to ignore this.
I think that having a mind for these unique situations is deeply connected to this cause-and-effect view of nature. I won't get too deep into things, but some philosophical jargon is "haecceity" and "anaptyxis" (I made up that last one, might be hard to look up). Basically, if things aren't categorized by rigid top-down classifications but rather evolve and arise situationally and individually (eg. how the family trees of species in biology might lead one to believe the opposite of the actual nature of evolution as messy and gradual) then you don't have much choice but to understand each thing as unique.
TL;DR generally yeah cause and effect works as a worldview but by itself is too simplistic
On the question of labeling the ideology:
It's kind of a continuum. There are grand philosophies and psychologies about how the present state of things or people arises from past conditions, and yes that includes Marxism. There is truth to it. It can be as complex as explaining history itself, or why one seems to start spouting the ideas in the last book you read or video you saw, even if you didn't believe it all 10 min ago.
The problem is the continuum itself. I definitely fall into the camp of "yes, things are an effect of past causes" myself. But where you, I, and maybe also your friend differ from the "just do it" self-help types is that we recognize at certain levels, there are systemic blockers to just doing it: capitalism at the societal level, ADHD at the individual, etc. Some people get confused or choose to ignore this.
I think that having a mind for these unique situations is deeply connected to this cause-and-effect view of nature. I won't get too deep into things, but some philosophical jargon is "haecceity" and "anaptyxis" (I made up that last one, might be hard to look up). Basically, if things aren't categorized by rigid top-down classifications but rather evolve and arise situationally and individually (eg. how the family trees of species in biology might lead one to believe the opposite of the actual nature of evolution as messy and gradual) then you don't have much choice but to understand each thing as unique.
TL;DR generally yeah cause and effect works as a worldview but by itself is too simplistic