If

If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
    And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
    And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!

This poem is a call to action. Kipling speaks father to son, man to soldier, and a message that echoes over a century later. IF, it’s conditional. Let me see you do it.

“And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise”. Don’t proclaim your virtue; don’t talk about all your wisdom. This is something we have lost, it seems to me that all most people do is talk. Complaining about what other people are doing, or telling you what other people should do. A friend I have is a police officer. He was complaining about the state of the country: crackheads, homeless, prostitutes, drunks. He said all this whilst eating Chinese takeaway in the kitchen of the house his father had bought for him. I asked him, what are you going to do about it? “Well they need to put this system in place and they need to stop letting…” I held up my hand, said “No,” and pointed my finger at him. “What are you going to do about it?” He tried to make a joke, about how he would go about making things worse. The question of what he could do never even crossed his mind.

If you fail to do these things, to keep to the truth when others lie, to build your world with worn-out tools when it is broken; if you can’t do that, are you not a man? This is a question I have struggled with my whole life. It is an answer I am still seeking to find. What makes me a man? Half the world has a cock and balls, but does that make you a man? Does being a man mean you act the way other men behave around you?

I have spent much of my life wanking to pictures on a screen, living through TV, video games, or on my phone, never leaving my room if I didn’t want to. In 1910 when this was published, you lived as a part of society, you worked and ate and talked with other men. If you were a farmer, you would watch your father work the fields, thank his wife for the food at night, and sleep in front of the fire. Then one day he would take you out into the fields and you would start your journey. If you saw yourself doing and behaving as the other men on the farm did, as your father did, would you feel like a man? Perhaps it wasn’t even a question. Now most of us don’t know what our fathers even do, if we know them at all. Families used to sit and eat together, and talk about what they would do with their lives tomorrow and into the future; instead of living through a screen, you lived in the moment.

Most people aren’t members of the community in which they live. We don’t work together. We don’t pray together. We don’t dance together. Why on earth have we stopped dancing? Kipling lived in a time where all that was in place, and what mattered then was who you were. A moaner? A liar? A coward? A cheat? Or are you a man? I’m not saying it was easy, but it was different. Men had a place and purpose. Now, we live in a world devoid of society, alienated and alone, having our addictions exploited for profit. We used to be responsible for ourselves and for others. When a con man came to a small British town he would be chased away by the men, now they are selling us TV subscriptions, sugar, and porn. We live purely individualistic lives, that is what children do. I’m only responsible for the money I have, the life I have, or even the behaviour I’m displaying; never mind the behaviour of the people around me, that’s not my responsibility.

I had asshole friends growing up, and still do. I’ve been wondering lately if that’s my fault. I never spoke up when I saw behaviour I considered weak. I never stood up for myself, so how could I stand up to others? That is changing. I went for food with a friend who’s obsessed with gangster movies and would become one himself if given the opportunity. We were in the shitty beer-garden of a Wetherspoons. His napkin blew off the table, and keeping a ‘hard’ face he watched it go. In truth it didn’t look out of place where we were. I waited until we got up to leave to see if he would get it when we stood. He didn’t. I pointed and asked if he was going to pick it up. He acted flustered, like he’d forgotten about it, then picked it up. Those movie gangsters, fictional violent men, became his role models, because he had nothing else showing him what a man is.

I don’t see a single line in that poem which would refute the fact that a gangster is a man. Loyalty, respect, a place in the world aren’t achieved through violent gangs, they are a product of organised groups of men sharing a clear goal. That is what we must build.

This poem does not say what we should aim at. Will and strength can be used to build and destroy. Perhaps Kipling knew well that humankind is what brought evil into this world, and knew that you could be evil, a murderer or worse, and still be a man. He makes no case for goodness except for the single line, “If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue”. Keep your virtue. He presupposes virtue. Was that a mistake, or a statement?

I will choose my gang and my words carefully, and put my own actions against Kipling’s words, to see what kind of man I am.