Suicide and Men
Why there is a lot of it, and why there's not a damned thing that can be done about it.
Suicide is a most damning problem for men, and much more so than for women. Men off themselves at a far higher percentage, so a far higher number, than women. Men continually account for 80% of suicides in the United States. A similar percentage holds for most Western countries. Men account for a large percentage in a rising tide. Suicides in total have trended higher since entering the 2000s.
Given the data, to label suicide a most damning problem for men would appear to belabor the obvious, but some nuancing is worth considering. The problem is compounded by a conundrum, which elevates the problem to an intractability, and that is what can a man do when convinced the mortal coil is too burdensome to bear?
The answer is straightforward for women. The first is the obvious, and that’s to confide in a friend, likely another woman. Women have been culturally empowered to express themselves openly. Women are allowed to unilaterally unburden themselves – to other women, to be sure, but even to men – without suffering recrimination. If a woman relates her suicidal thoughts, or attempts at suicide, to another, she is treated with empathy. She will be nurtured, and usually with the understanding that the mother nurtures the child who has experienced a nightmare.
Men are afforded no such grace. Words and emotions hold no standing for men. On the contrary, words spoken by men are as likely to detract as to add. And when spoken too freely, words are sure to diminish. As for emoting, it’s at best a last resort. An emoting man can be a most contemptible entity.
Action holds sway in the masculine world. With men, it’s what have you done, not what you say you’re going to do. The sentiment extends to the doing. Men should mostly remain silent while performing the task. Only those who need to know should know. Mention the task only after it has been completed and completed competently.
The ethos extends to suicide. When a man confesses to thinking of suicide, or worse, confesses to an attempt, the confession will fall on suspicious ears, with men, for sure, and I suspect with women, too.
The confession from a man is perceived as a ploy to manifest attention, and for a man to manifest attention with words is unbecoming. He is acting womanly in this desire for sympathy. If a man must unburden himself verbally, he is best served to do so within the confines of a psychiatrist’s office, where a confession is a business transaction. A man has bought the right to unburden himself with no loss of social standing.
When a man confesses to a male friend, the friend will outwardly express empathy while simultaneously concealing discomfort. It’s not callousness. Men are instinctively repelled by the risk of verbal contagion. The male friend being confessed to will attempt to lift his friend’s spirits at the outset, most likely with humor. Inside, though, he squirms because something else registers, if only subconsciously. This confidant cannot help but think, “Why not get on with life?” The man confessing may even register as a failure, so as a disappointment. If an attempted suicide is confessed, the perceived failure is exacerbated by incompetence. “You couldn’t get that right, either?”
An incompetent man is a useless man; a useless man is an expendable man. This is a function of nature that no amount of nurturing can neuter. If a man were solely concerned with gleaning sympathy with suicide, he would complete the act with nary a word. Those closest – a wife and children, perhaps parents (though not necessarily, if the offspring is an adult) – will be initially devastated. Those further afield will be shocked and might mistily comment, “If only I had known,” even though if they had known, they would have first thought of how to avoid the person and so how to avoid subsequent conversations on the matter. The suicide might even glean admiration for a task completed with no fanfare.
Here’s something else about suicide: only intelligent people commit it. This is true of both sexes. Imbeciles and the insane will skip merrily along, oblivious to most of life’s landmines, regardless of the number that have detonated. The autonomic man working the assembly line at General Motors, screwing the same nut onto the same bolt hour after hour, day after day, year after year, gives suicide nary a thought, as does the insane man shuffling along the sidewalk, head down, eyes focused on the moving feet, his incoherent mumbling punctuated with bursts of outrage. The matted hair, the dearth of hygiene, and the repelling stink of ammonia that emanates from grime-encrusted clothing fail to persuade him that life is no longer worth living. Only alpha and beta (though, rarely, sigma) males commit suicide. And if I were to bet, I would bet on the betas in the greater numbers. To continually pull up short and be fully aware of this inability to follow through withers the will to live for those with a conscience and intelligence.
“If you do not want to commit suicide, always have something to do,” wrote Voltaire three centuries ago, thus forwarding a possible antidote. Given his prodigious output, suicide must have been continually tempting our great philosopher. Voltaire did a lot of doing. He lived to see his eighty-third birthday.
I find Voltaire’s sentiment on suicide prevention plausible, though incomplete. Intelligent men must imbue doing with meaning to motivate them to continually do. Women, in contrast, imbue being with meaning.
A beautiful, intelligent woman who failed to develop sufficient charm and presence as she aged to compensate for the inevitable wilting of the bloom will grow despondent when her beauty ceases to afford the privilege to which she had become accustomed. Regret sets in, followed by despondency. The formerly beautiful, stupid woman will adapt and ensure continual trade by lowering her price lockstep with the passing of time. Perhaps what’s gained with volume will compensate for what’s lost in shrinking margin, she might instinctively reason.
Men must imbue doing with meaning, because meaning enables doing to completion. Completion is all that matters. Doing is only time wasted if the task fails to be completed. Nothing lifts a man’s sense of worth as surely as a difficult task well done. Repeated doing is drudgery, and meaning empowers men to transcend the drudgery.
Few men are motivated by the interest of only themselves. A wife and a family imbue doing with meaning for many. God can also imbue meaning. But there must be someone or something else in addition to the individual. When there is nothing, the will wanes, and purpose is lost. Men, for this reason, are damaged more by tragedy than women. A man is much more likely to commit suicide after the death of a spouse than a woman. A woman can view her husband as a savior but rarely as a purpose for existing, as a man will view his wife.
An intelligent man who has failed to conflate doing with purpose can exist on the YOLO and FOMO ethos during his youth. Frivolity offers enough satisfaction during these early, indestructible years, but only during those years. Frivolity will prove fleeting to the intelligent man. The danger is that too much time passes before the reality is acknowledged. Like beauty lost to the intelligent woman, the horror of youth wasted registers on the intelligent man. If he continues on with youthful indiscretion when no longer youthful, he digresses into a joke for his contemporaries and further still into a fool.
A man is a solitary creature, by nature enforced by nurture. Stoicism mandates a man neither complain nor explain. A wife might be sympathetic to his struggles, but her sympathies are limited. A man who carries on with his laments soon loses his wife’s love and then her respect.
For men, life distills to a simple maxim: “Get on with it or get out,” but either way, keep it to yourself because no one really cares.