Man: Destroyer or Creator?

Man is perhaps the most hated being on planet Earth. Perhaps even more hated than bedbugs, spiders, and mosquitoes. Everywhere you look on social media or television, the male gender is the one labeled as "the one who destroyed the world," as "the useless one, who serves no purpose," and who "spends his days exercising violence and control against everyone and everything, especially women." In the eyes of the world, we are bloodthirsty beasts, ready to destroy anyone and anything just to soothe our instinct for brutality.

I am a man too. I am part of that portion of the world that has a beard, body hair, thinning hair, a penis and who, apparently, enjoys going around harassing women and destroying private property, just for the sake of displaying my apparent violence. The comical thing is that I know it’s not like that. If I look at my life, I am not responsible in any way for the destruction of this world; I don’t spend my days harassing and raping women, but only stressing out my sister—though that has to do with the duty of brotherhood (poor woman, she should be made a saint).

As for the fact that I am useless and serve no purpose, I wouldn't know. In short, I haven't had an impact on the world yet. If you think about it, almost the totality of women hasn't had any impact on the world either.

What I ask myself is: is man really as destructive, violent, and useless as he is described? Furthermore, what is a man?

The Destructive and Violent Man.

I would start this paragraph by not denying the obvious: man has amply demonstrated himself to be destructive. It was us men who started wars, who destroyed entire countries and killed millions of people. All wars and economic crises were provoked by kingdoms, nations, and companies run by men. Even modern news shows how man is destructive. Just take Russia, America, and Israel as examples. When testosterone (or dementia) takes control, man has caused such severe damage that humanity has taken years, in some cases generations, to recover. The truly sad thing is that women never had a say, suffering through male stupidity and brutality, working in factories to produce weapons and becoming field nurses to rescue men suffering from physical and mental dramas they created themselves.

If we were to look only at this side of the coin, men should be locked up because they are extremely dangerous. And that is also what many feminists are loudly calling for. What is not seen, or what people don't want to see due to partisan interest, is that brutality is only half the truth. The other side of the coin is right before everyone's eyes.

Anything you see and use that makes this world what it is bears a male footprint. Every single physical or digital product we use was invented, produced, or distributed by men. There isn't a single thing that doesn't have the mark of man. Don’t get me wrong: especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, women invented, designed, and patented everyday objects or systems like the windshield wiper, Kevlar, or the circular saw. Although these were great inventions, they would not have seen the light of day if there hadn't been male help through the investment of money for production and distribution.

If man had been only violent, none of the female inventions would have seen the light of day. Given the economic and actual structure of the time, male investment was and still is, in many cases, a mandatory step. Not only that, but without the "violent" man we wouldn't have the technology we have and use today, such as concrete houses, airplanes, cars, clothes, and all today's infrastructure (like transport, telecommunications, roads, etc.). Not to mention social media and OnlyFans (platforms created by men where women have made and are making millions). Furthermore, if you look at history, wars have been just a blink of an eye compared to human history. But it is easy to remember one minute of evil compared to entire days of prosperity.

Would the world be different if women had been free? Honestly, I wouldn't know. Also because women have used their confinement in very rigid and narrow social cages for their own benefit as well. I have two examples in this sense.

For centuries, women have claimed to be the only ones used primarily for arranging power marriages. Aside from the fact that men were also touched by this drama (given that everyone except the firstborn was forced into arranged marriages), widowed women with children (and there were many) often used their own daughters to enrich themselves. For centuries women "were in a cage," but they used that cage for power.

The other example is recent: when women finally had the opportunity to be truly free (from the 1950s onwards), they trapped themselves again, thinking that "staying at home was a prize." Of course, social pressure was high and in some areas, it was difficult for a woman to have a career. However, that pressure often came from other women. Men, seeing the social pressures women were exerting for change, had given women the opportunity to break free, only to then witness women segregating other women (the story of the working mother as a sign of neglect was a rhetoric used by females as well). In a context where women practically excluded themselves, who could have carried society and the economy forward?

So yes, on one hand, we have committed enormous atrocities, but we are also those who created this world... a world that women criticize and use, but which they often struggle to change radically, sometimes due to past conditioning, sometimes for a silent personal gain.

The Useless Man.

The other great criticism is that man is a useless being who has no purpose in modern society. On social media, it is stated that "since a woman is equal to a man and can do the same things, man is an obsolete being."

With equal rights and opportunities, there is this conception that a woman would be better than a man because she does the things a man does in a better way. This, however, is a distorted truth. Why distorted? Everything is based on comparison. A woman compares and judges her work with that of a man. In the universe where gender equality is respected, the conception of the female world is that man is useless.

But there are many fields where man is fundamental—practically in all the services that differentiate the first world from the third. Let’s reason together. A woman uses water, turns on the lights, uses the phone, browses the internet, and turns on the heating. To us, it seems like something taken for granted and absolutely normal. However, the following question is never asked: who manages all those services? Because the pipes, the cables, and everything that defines our lives was created from nothing and is maintained. The answer is only one: men. It is men who manage all the infrastructures that make our lives what they are. If, for example, we can turn on the heating, have drinking water, and have roads in excellent condition, it is because of men who do the dirty work. This is a side of reality that often remains invisible to anyone not working in the sector, leading to a distorted perception of social utility. It is sad to say that man is useless simply by judging the piece of the puzzle one holds. One should see the whole puzzle to judge.

If tomorrow all men stopped working for 24 hours, not only would offices stop functioning, but water would stop flowing from the taps and there would be no power in the sockets. Perceived uselessness is, in reality, a symptom of how well that service works, and therefore of how perfectly a man can work, contrary to those who say a man is useless.

What is a man?

So a man creates, sometimes destroys, but recreates and allows life as we know it. So, in the end, man is important. If it isn't something negative, the question arises spontaneously. At least it arose for me, I don't know about you. What is a man? Because we need to find a new definition, given that man is a crucial part.

The Man Outside.

Well, a man is a creator. A man is capable of creating something beautiful and extraordinary. Let’s look around. We can live hundreds of meters above the ground, thousands of people or tons of goods can travel for entire weeks on water without having to row, and we can fly by the hundreds at a time in aircraft weighing thousands of tons. Man created every possible infrastructure to guarantee a comfortable life, such as the water, sewage, electrical, and internet networks. A man created all the logistics behind commerce. In short, everything you see was realized by man.

Man is a protector. Man is responsible for everything running smoothly. When the car breaks down, the mechanic (almost always a man) repairs it. If the power grid fails or a pipe leaks, a man repairs that damage immediately. If the sewer doesn't drain, the man cleans it. Roads are repaired by men. While man manages the technical and tiring 'behind the scenes,' he allows the rest of the world to focus on living life without worrying about the gears.

A man solves problems. He has always done so. In modern society, there are always details that could work better. In this, man is perfect. Our minds force us to solve problems. Take the telephone for example: Meucci invented it to talk to his sick wife at home while he was in his shed in the garden. Karl Benz invented the engine to speed up transport and avoid the drama of horse manure on the streets (and his wife successfully tested his invention). The first buildings were built to solve the problem of too many inhabitants and too few houses without expanding into territories, which might have meant conflicts and wars. All the result of a problem and the male capacity to solve it.

The Man in Love.

All this also reflects on romantic life. A man creates. In the life of a couple, it is the man who creates the couple, if you think about it: he is the one who makes the first move and he is the one who woos, not the other way around. Of course, there are also women who make the first move, but even they do not disdain a suitor. It is the man who creates the premises for the love that the woman then uses to create a family.

Once that love is born, and that family exists, he will protect it with all of himself. A man will ALWAYS keep the woman he loves and his children safe. If necessary, he would sacrifice his own life for the survival of those he calls wife and children.

And he will protect them from an economic point of view too. A man will provide for his family. He will even be willing to work all day, every day, just to see his children have a better life than his own. He will do anything just to give his child that opportunity for a better life, even if this means not seeing his children and being hated by them because he is always at work and absent.

And he is a problem solver. For him, it is a matter of peace. A man seeks peace for himself, but above all for those he loves. A man must solve his woman's problems because he is programmed that way. He cannot stand to see his woman suffer and cannot accept not being able to do anything. It is something inconceivable. For a man, solving a problem is not just a task; it is the only way he knows to bring calm back into the world of the people he loves. It is his silent mission.

Final Reflections.

Is a man useless, violent, and destructive? Yes, he is. There's no point denying it. But like all things, a man is not just black or white, but a shade of gray that people often don't want to see, in order to carry forward a very specific rhetoric. Or perhaps one cannot afford to see that shade, to avoid seeing their own house of cards swept away by reality—namely, that a man is much more than what a good part of the female world relentlessly tries to destroy.

M.