And now that I have you reading this let’s replace the word depression with misery, for this essay is not about depression.
It is about men.
The other day, I watched an Instagram Reel from Chris Williamson that said,
Male depression is perceived incorrectly.
Men are made to feel loved and accepted when
all they need to feel is capable and respected,
and something just clicked. That is what I want to talk about.
Men in Love
I know you can buy yourself flowers, but let me.
I know you can pull your own chair, but let me.
I know you can open your own jars and walk on that side of the road, but let me. Let me, not because you need it. Let me because I like it.
I know you can drive through the night, love, but have you seen yourself doze off to a slow song in the front seat? Have you, love, ever seen your lips separate from each other like two lovers by the fickle fate? Have you felt the jitters in my chest as your head sways to the jerks of the car and your jaw drops leisurely to the beats of the song? And you can never wear seatbelts, can you? Have you ever, love, felt my own disappointment when I fail to keep your head from falling against the dashboard without waking you up? Have you, love?
I know you can fight your battles, but let me help you. I know you are a warrior yourself, but love, do you know you’re hope too? Hope – like the little piece of innocence you would shield from the world. Hope – like a picture you carry to war in a locket.
And I know sometimes I go overboard, and you must give me a deserved slap on my wrist. But understand that it’s not because you need it, but because I like to. Not because you would not love me otherwise, but because I would not know why you should.
Now, the world is a random place, and I cannot speak for all men, but I sure as hell speak for many. And the thing I speak of is the undying masculine urge to feel competent, and it extends far beyond men in romantic settings.
The Masculine Urge to Feel Competent
Give a man a purpose and the ability to achieve it,
and watch him crawl over broken glass with a smile.
Why is it so important for men to feel competent?
I must never dare to attempt this question without asking a few more fundamental ones:
Why should you be loved?
Why should you be cared for?
Why do you matter?
We live on a very minor planet of an average star at the edge of one of a hundred billion galaxies of this ever-expanding universe, with a sleeping fear in our hearts – that we may not have the answers. A sleeping fear whose snores send jitters down our spines, for we know it will just be one heartbreak before it wakes up and wrecks havoc.
So, we try to find those answers in the value we have to offer, and that’s where it gets interesting.
Maybe it’s so important for men to feel competent because that is about all the value they can have; maybe because they do not have any intrinsic value. Maybe because biology, history and evolution have failed men that way.
The internet is filled with explanations of how evolution has failed men. It will tell you how, from a species standpoint, evolution has only two priorities – survival and reproduction. It will tell you how women are the limiting resource for reproduction and, therefore, of value – nine months to deliver a baby, only so many babies she can fend for in her lifetime, and a limited number of years to conceive. It will also tell you that what men have to offer is abundant and, therefore, must be chosen from. And how competence shall always be the metric for this selection – only the strongest traits must be passed forward.
Do not get me wrong here. I do not say that is all there is to women. All I say is that biology and evolution give women some answers to those three most important questions. They give men none. Back when we hunted and gathered, if a woman had no other competence, at least she could reproduce. If a man had no other competence, it did not matter if he could reproduce.
So, to create their value, men had to take up the other half – go out in the world and ensure survival through competence. And boy oh boy, they have done that well enough! They fought animals, fought other tribes, conquered territories, invented language, discovered fire and agriculture and ensured survival. They settled down by the banks and built societies that grew into civilisations.
And civilisations cannot exist without rules – rules that people believe will keep them together and help them prosper. But who created those rules? Men, of course, because they were running the show?
Actually, not all men. Competence had a spectrum. The most competent men always rose to power, established kingdoms, fought other kings and captured empires, discovered science and technology and transformed the world into what it is today. Their hunger to conquer was insatiable, fueled by their need to accumulate and assert competence.
Such were the men who knew their purpose. Such were the men who commanded respect. Such were the men who, when they devised rules for the society’s welfare, or sometimes, even for amusement, were obeyed. But these rules also came intertwined with duties:
We will call you alpha, but you must lead from the front and defend your title when challenged.
We will call you king, but you must provide for and protect us when invaded.
Then, there were men not so competent, men who also wanted that respect. Men who knew deep down that their own competence was not enough. Men who did not like this about themselves.
So, they separated respect from duties and latched it to identities.
You must respect me because I am…
A man.
A royalty.
A king’s great-grandson.
A Muslim, Hindu, Catholic, Sikh…
That should explain why so many men fight for institutions they do not even know well enough. Most religious extremists who say they’re gatekeeping their culture have never studied their own history. Most terrorists who claim to do god’s bidding have never studied their own religion. They have just been told they’re the chosen ones. They think it gives them value, so they will fight like hell for it.
That’s how social classes became rigid. That’s how societal rules became stringent. Men wrote, rewrote, and preserved the rules that protected them. And in the process, they brainwashed generations of women into submitting to and internalising those rules, but that’s a story for later. Like I said, this essay is about men.
But what happened to men with neither competence nor social class to protect them? The sludge at the bottom of the barrel? Do not bother; it’s not important. It has never been important.
As the world walks into an age when it’s driven more by cerebral prowess than physical competency, women seem to have lost the effect of that brainwashing. We have seen many feminist movements in the past centuries, and suddenly, just being a man is not enough. Even cultural or social identity or stature does not cut the deal. Women have started questioning everything, and the value system derived from fragile identities can only hold water for so long.
Remember the sleeping fear I talked about? Well, the slumber is over, and the undying masculine hunger for competence is the only thing men have to make something of.
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