Victor Frankl wrote of his experience in Auschwitz and, more universally, of man’s choice and free will to make it, even in the worst imprisonment while facing the possibility of death each day. He said that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. That man has a choice of actions even in these most terrible of circumstances. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in conditions of psychic and physical stress

He saw sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. You could choose whether you would or you would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become moulded into the form of the typical inmate.
[‘Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor E Frankl, publ. by Rider, Great Britain, 2004]

Nobody is suggesting it is not extraordinarily difficult to make an active choice to retain inner integrity of self, to make a moral decision in regard to how to treat others, how to stay truthful, but the point is the choice is there, no matter how hard, and we should not passively give in to the idea that all is ‘written’ ahead of us, all is ordained, for to do that is to forego responsibility.
And we also should not so easily blame our upbringing and circumstance, because each of us is unique as an individual and capable of independence of thought, despite it.