It's easy to play the victim in life, especially these days where society, for some unknown reason, seems to promote it as a perfectly acceptable state of being. It's also easy to lay blame, to shift it away from oneself rather than take ownership and responsibility for one's own thoughts, attitudes and actions.
Unfortunately it seems that most of the society is like this. I have some relatives and friends who won't accept the possibility that the solutions to their problems are available at hand. They'd rather go on with the negative narration in their heads. Over the years it become clear to me that this kind of attitude is not about resolving the actual problem, as it would remove the object of interest from the mind, but somewhat about feeding from experiencing the negative emotion. For the mind it makes no difference. It can fuel itself from either positive or negative energy. Just so it happens, the negative is easier to use, and as you said, there's no need to take ownership and responsibility.
You summarise it really well here and I've nothing really to add I guess. I think people just feel a little overwhelmed by the prospect of turning things around and improving a situation - which takes hard work - so they stay in their little sphere of negativity for the comfort. It doesn't make much sense to me, but so many people do it.
In most cases it's not a conscious process. 95% of who we are to this day is made of the past experiences. Often times, just wanting to make a change isn't enough, as the subconscious machinery is working against it.
Yes, change requires the right attitude and actions.