Walk through the busy shopping street and you will see all kinds of things. Students, teenage mothers and of course the vagrants. The world is a place where many differences exist, are created and often maintained. The social failure is a person who has experienced a lot of adversity. No job, no money, no partner, but often a lot of aggression. It is a hard world for the social misfit where there is a fight for the various resources.
Recognizable
Often we don’t want to see it and don’t care about it. The wanderer who walks down the street and begs for a few cents often chooses to do so himself. Piet, 52, who still lives without his wife and children with his now very elderly parents, has no longer become a rarity in many cities and villages. Sjon, 29, who has been in trouble with the law several times for theft, drug use and immoral behavior, is an indispensable part of certain neighborhoods. In the depths of the most unsavory places there are people that we, as normal and well-functioning citizens, would rather have nothing to do with. They say it’s tough, but they do it all themselves, right? However?
When are you a social failure?
Let’s first provide some nuance. A social failure is a view that not everyone will have the same understanding of. One person thinks that a social failure is someone who comes into contact with the police and often has to serve years for what he has done. The other will consider someone who has not studied to be a social failure. Of course, there are also people who define a social failure as a person who has not found a partner. This last view is an important sentence! Finding a partner is one of the most important things we deal with as humans. We often do not do this consciously and do not want to admit to it at all; After all, we are not simple animals!
The man and the woman
Finding a suitable partner appears to be very important. It is so deeply ingrained in our genes that we cannot avoid it. Every person desperately wants to have a partner and make love with them. An ultimate goal of a partner is to have and raise children. Your genetic blueprint will live on through the children.
It is very important to realize that having children is not a goal of life per se . The purpose of life can and is a different experience for every person. The question is of course what getting a partner and being a social failure has to do with this.
The aggressive man as failure
Men and women are different, we all see and know that. Men and women also differ in behavior. The man is often more aggressive than the woman and the man also often takes greater risks than women in general. As we also know, aggression is often an undesirable phenomenon. However, aggression is in every person, but does not appear to the same extent in every person. Men are generally more aggressive than women. Why is that actually so?
Gender differences in aggression
- Men show more aggression than women:
- Men exhibit much more violence than women. Below is a short list:
- Men are more likely to be involved in murder than women. As an example, the country of Canada where the proportion of men (compared to women) involved in murder is a staggering 94% (2,965 men vs. 175 women).
- Men are arrested much more often than women. Many more men are arrested between the ages of 20 and 30.
- Men and boys are bullied much more often than women and girls. Bullying that involves physical violence is especially popular among boys.
Aggression in men
Men are more aggressive than women because men have a different hormone balance than women. Men have more of the hormone testosterone in the blood. Testosterone ensures a more aggressive lifestyle. The amount of testosterone in the blood in men varies per stage of life. Young men have more testosterone in the blood than older men. A phenomenon that is very recognizable by a higher testosterone level in the blood is the young male syndrome. This means that young men with a higher testosterone level in the blood take more risks and are more aggressive than people with a lower testosterone level in the blood. Have you ever wondered why car insurance premiums are higher for young men than for other groups? You know now!
Testosterone and young men
Of course, there is no such thing as testosterone in men. Taking more risks and being more aggressive has certain advantages, especially for the young man! However animal and flat this may sound, the following is important to realize. Men must fight for women. More testosterone in the blood therefore ensures that you dare to take more risks. You dare to chase away a certain competitor and you dare to approach that beautiful girl. So the bottom line is that men have a hard time because there is a lot of competition! In science, this explanation is found in the parental investment theory (Trivers, 1972).
Losers vs. Toppers
What if you, as a man, have not found a partner? This is where the social failure comes into play. As we know, your testosterone levels decrease as you get older. The aim of this is to ensure that a lot of testosterone is simply no longer necessary. If you’ve done it right, you’ve produced children and you no longer have to worry about finding a suitable partner. However, many men have not produced children. This is not the case with women. Almost every woman will give birth to a child in her lifetime. For men it is a different story. There are many men who do not have children at all, but at the same time there are also many men who have multiple children (with different women). You could see it among men as a lot of losers vs. many top players.
Man but no partner?
Men without a partner are often men with low social power. This means that these men often have not studied, do not have a job and are not married. These men generally exhibit substantially more aggressive behavior. Perhaps there is an unconscious process going on that encourages the man without children to still try? Still, no matter what situation you are in, continue the search for a partner. If we look at the figures we see that men with a low social status are killed much more often and also commit murder much more often. The same can be seen among unmarried men. These men are also more likely to be involved in homicides than married men (Daly & Wilson, 1990).
What does this mean for us?
If you want to be very short-sighted, you will come to the conclusion that as a young man it is best to find a partner as quickly as possible. With this partner you will build a beautiful life and, no matter how banal it may sound, take care of your offspring. Research shows that an existence that does not produce children can consciously or unconsciously make life a lot more difficult. The vagrants we see every day in the park or the drunk and aggressive men on the street may have had everything to do with the inner urge that we as humans experience to find the right partner. If this does not work, it will have major consequences, in which the aggression component plays a very important role.
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