Hello Amber,
thank you, I am good and hope, you are, too.

I jump right into what thoughts your reply caused with me.

My life experience tells me that if I myself am in conflict with my environment and the circumstances in which I live, it has to be me who changes something, if something is to change in society as a whole (who is to judge?).

Usually society does not sit on my lap, I cannot get hold of it, nor can I influence it as a whole. What I can do though, is make my own decisions over which I have influence.

It is probably clear to both of us that some traditions do not change quickly, and that adherence to them represents one side of the spectrum, while the other seeks to overturn those traditions. It seems to me to be an ongoing thing where change is slow but steady.

If I myself am in a situation that makes me think and feel that the social superstructure does not meet my own needs, I truly have no choice but to choose my own path, do I?

This is not an easy path, I would even say it is a very difficult undertaking that will cost me a lot. Do I therefore dare to violate existing law, do I dare to break habits and become an outsider? If I see that I have no alternatives left in my environment (this would have to be carefully examined, sometimes we are blind to see alternatives), the logical consequence would be to leave this environment behind me, wouldn't it?

It is much expected that other people bear the consequences vicariously for me if I do not dare myself or lack the courage to make myself an outsider or ostracised family member.
Yet this is exactly what happens and I would think that people who felt imprisoned and unhappy in their own culture and then decided to take what is arguably the most difficult of all paths served as an example to those who still hesitated. From what stories you told me, I would interpret it as one step forward and two steps back, but already on the whole, steps are being taken and will continue.

One can, if one also thinks along these lines, tell their success stories. Whereas I would argue that a person who has successfully freed himself from a life circumstance that was unbearable for her/him will also name the dark side of it, precisely what it cost, what one had to give up.
I am sure that you know this wisdom.

If you go against conventions, you'll get a terrible beating. Well, you could tell these stories differently, couldn't you? It's part of it, because if it were so easy to break established habits and socially accepted concepts, they wouldn't be so established in the first place.

To give you an extreme example of success (if you consider such success), I will tell you about a young woman from Afghanistan who one day decided to escape her arranged marriage and flee to the West. She told me this story in one of our sessions when I was still working as a social counsellor. At first I suspected that the young woman had been abused and beaten, that she would even have had to fear for her life if she had openly refused. She said, however, that this had not been the case, but that she still did not want to accept the non-life-threatening consequences.
She fled across Turkey, over the high mountains, to Greece, off whose coast she almost drowned, and then finally here. I was captivated by her story.
At the time, she had been here for almost three years. She was working with me to apply for training, she was determined to become a doctor. When I asked her if she was anxious about the upcoming interview, she lightly replied, "No". This woman, who had been through far more adventurous things than I ever had to go through myself, was not at all afraid of something like a meeting with future employers. Her price had been that she had left her mother and father, which had certainly been painful, as I could hear.

I worked a lot with emigrants and refugees and was able to learn first-hand about their family structures.

Why I said, that I do not expect an answer is, that I know, those are very intimate questions and they point away from society but towards you personally. As we have not built up a relationship of mutual trust here, I thought it might be impolite and too demanding from my side to expect an answer. And I still think that might be the case. So I thought to ask them but leave it up to you to answer or not :)

I could say a lot more but this reply got already very long. Maybe I'll ad something in another separated comment.

I greet you sincerely and with respect.