Sunday, October 9, 2016

Freaks, Geeks and Alpha Males

This is a guest post from a friend and fellow writer. Needless to say, I disagree with his take on Alpha Males, but it is an interesting piece regardless.

Freaks, Geeks and Alpha Males

Vox’s latest post on bullying and the long-term lives of the bullied crystallised a number of thoughts I have been having along the same lines.  And while I agree with most of his points, there are some issues I feel he doesn't take into account.

The bullied - for want of a better term - face two challenges.  Most bullies, at least in my experience, are quite insecure.  If challenged sufficiently, they either back off or break completely.  The trick, of course, lies in actually doing it.  A pitiful challenge is largely worthless.  If the system - school, university, the workplace - is designed to support the bully’s predominance, beating the bully may be very difficult.  All those inspiring stories about standing up to some over-muscled shithead require the fighter to successfully hand out a beating, which isn't particularly easy.

This leads to the second problem.  The bullied can come to believe, deep in his bones, that resistance is completely futile.  There is no hope.  There is no point in striving because victory is impossible.  Why spend months or years learning to fight when it won’t get you anywhere?

Now, Vox argues that trying will get you somewhere.  Either you become tough enough to thump the bastard or at least tough enough to convince him to get his kicks elsewhere.  But you have to overcome, first and foremost, the belief that you can't win.

If you don’t succeed in doing this, you generally turn into a little shit yourself.  You find ways to hurt the bully, even petty little ways.  (Like the old story of the abused wife who used to serve her husband dog food curry after particularly nasty fights.)  The more you embrace this, the nastier you become.  And you grow more and more disconnected from the rest of society.  No one gave a shit about you, you reason, so why should you give a shit about everyone else?  Cue the birth of umpteen internet trolls.

I don't really believe in the wolf/sheep/sheepdog model.  It is my observation that sheep can become wolves (and vice versa) under the right conditions.  The older brother who is bullied at school goes home to bully the little brother.  I don’t believe, also, in Vox’s ranking of social structure.  The guy I am describing - an Omega male - might grow out of it with some actual help and support.  No one is condemned to perpetual Omega-hood or whatever.

The thing is, as Dave Grossman and Black Five pointed out, the sheep often have problems telling the sheepdog from the wolf.  They look alike.  Both have teeth and claws (muscles), both have ‘top of the world’ attitudes, both see no reason to pretend respect for the sheep, although for different reasons.  The sheep are often just as scared of the sheepdog as they are of the wolf.

Expanding on this a little, true Alpha males feel no inclination to brag or put everyone else down.  Why should they?  Alpha males are secure in ways no one else - even Sigma males - enjoy.  A true Alpha will be friendly towards everyone else because he doesn’t need to do otherwise.  He is not challenged by other men.  His position is not under threat.  The core of his being is never at risk (because, at the risk of sounding sappy, the only person who can bring someone you down completely is yourself.)  The Alpha male is the guy who encourages everyone to do better.

Vox notes that Alpha males are in constant competition.  But the person they are in competition with is themselves.

But Alpha males are relatively rare.

Most geeks - for want of a better term - don’t meet Alpha males.  They are so disconnected from Alpha males that they don’t recognise them, even on TV.  They tend to mistake Beta and Delta males - even Gammas - for Alphas.  And this poisons their opinion of Alphas and a great many others besides.  They see Alphas as people who could turn on them at any moment - and their experience has led them to this.  Tell them they’re wrong and they’ll look at you with incomprehension.  Tell them that Donald Trump is an Alpha male and they’ll find it a great turn-off.

They also wind up being ... well, triggered.  The sort of macho behaviour you get from any reasonably well-adjusted group of men scares them.  And why shouldn't it?  They have no reason to like such behaviour, let alone to see it as anything other than a threat.  It is a threat, to them.  They are unable to comprehend that a friendly punch to the shoulder might not be intended as yet more bullying.

Which brings us all the way back to Vox’s original point.  These people have SJW ‘group trumps individuality’ attitudes hammered into their heads at school.  They are unable to comprehend that there might be decent jocks (or even that jocks are individuals.)  They cannot see any good in them.  As they grow older, they apply this reasoning to everything else.  Right-wingers bring back all their bad emotions from school.  The idea that the right-wingers might have a point is lost in the maelstrom.  They fear that giving right-wingers power will lead to that power being used against them.

Which is tragic.  I feel for them.  But that doesn't make them right.

15 comments:

Leo Littlebook ID:16216229492837658552 said...

Alpha is as morally neutral as millionaire. Just because you don't like fiat currency and centralized banking doesn't change the ranking.

Unknown said...

I see alpha's as two types, leaders or the leading edge

The leading edge types rely on their innovative intuition & always anticipating the direction of their environment. They're the generals of society, leading society by their know how on how to combat society. ie mystery, strauss etc., not alpha's in the traditional, but their know how & mastery commands & influences millions

Leaders are front line troops, alpha's in the traditional sense, battling & bending beta's to his will & dominating women in every room & conference hall.

Leading edge types dont sully their hands with direct confrontation, they dont need to, their hordes of followers empowered by the far advanced idea's of their mentor, confront & destroy the targets of their leading edge alpha with ease

The traditional alpha dominates with his presence & game, the leading edge alpha dominates with devestating focal points & surgical strikes,always looking for that advantage, that edge

Athor Pel said...

How he describes geeks in the last paragraphs is someone perpetually disconnected from reality with little to no intention of remedy. That kind of person is fundamentally broken. Everyone they butt heads with is going to make their life hell by merely being normal. Put that geek in a life or death situation and he will be dead within seconds unless he gets some kind of divine intervention which he will promptly spit on and walk away.

Wanna know why people hate you? Because you make them.

Anonymous said...

High-functioning Omega/Delta geek here. I was never often bullied, aside from rude comments from strangers once in a while, often of a homosexual nature. (Meshes well with my idea that Lambda is a degenerate subset of either Gamma or Omega.)

Started learning Game (via Heartiste) about five years ago and overhauled my behavior.

Masculine higher-ranking men still scare me a little bit when I meet them in person -- which isn't very often nowadays, unfortunately -- but they are honest, genuine, and likable. Rather, I get the most trouble from white knights and backstabbing Gammas. It's possibly for this reason why I have a seething antipathy for Gammas but like Alphas and Betas fine.

I suspect I would have become solidly Gamma if I had gone to the public schools, but I was homeschooled, and college kids tend not to bully as much as younger kids do, so while I was definitely a geek, I didn't get that bias against high-ranking masculine men in my formative years.

Tatooine Sharpshooters' Club said...

college kids tend not to bully as much as younger kids do

I fear this no longer true. Certainly the colleges have taken up bullying their students (you know which ones) in a big way.

Harambe said...

You get Deltas who lift. Which I imagine is where people get the mistaken idea that Alpha's are violent assholes.

buzzardist said...

The confusion in this post seems to be between "alpha" and "bully." Alphas are always in competition, but primarily only with other alphas. Any alpha who would pick needlessly on an omega would look petty and probably lower his status in most people's eyes. Unless a person challenges an alpha, the alpha is likely to leave that person alone.

So who are the bullies? That's an interesting question. I agree with the poster that most bullies are insecure people, and these kind of bullies especially back down when confronted with a show of force. My guess is that a lot of bullies are gammas. For whatever reason, they may be bigger and stronger, but they act gamma.

That said, there are bully alphas, and bully betas, and bully deltas, too. Some betas and deltas might be looking to move up the scale, and they get the misguided notion that terrorizing smaller people is the way to move up. This is misguided--one establishes social dominance by challenging people at one's own level or higher. But there are a lot of stupid people who think they are puffing themselves up, when really they are just degrading themselves. There are probably even bully omegas, albeit the bullying might only ever be directed at a cat, small child, or some other small creature that isn't much able to fight back.

dc.sunsets said...

Maybe I missed it, but this discussion ignored a key factor: inward vs outward orientation.

Inwardly focused men with nothing to prove may sometimes lead, but mostly stay out of the center of attention (because who likes to be surrounded by MPAI types.)

The weak hate such people. Envy is all they experience.

dc.sunsets said...

My sons were the smartest kids in their public school classes. None were exceptionally athletic, none were overweight, all participated in choir.

None were bullied. Calmly capable, with no need to "elbow" classmates, they simply didn't invite trouble despite their school including plenty of rifraff.

Inward orientation.

JonM said...

High school is also very much a sorting process. People are learning how/when/where to utilize under-developed skills and judgment. Just as the sheep often can't tell the wolf form the sheepdog, high school is where the sheepdogs are learning to tell the difference between sheep and wolves, or between gammas, alphas, and sigmas.

Unknown said...

Know what you'll do, brudda?
You'll croak.
Bummer.
But, yet, so shall I!!
Yippee!!
Dunno when, dunno how...
yet, 1-outta-1 perishes
(check with CNN, dude).
Wanna wiseabove to Seventh-Heaven
where you can have ANYTHING...
and I mean ANY.THING??????
HintHint
trustNjesus, brudda.
Meet me Upstairs.
Let's getta Big-Ol beer...
gotta lotta tok bout.

Jed Mask said...

lol... A "bully's" a *bully* regardless of socio-sexual rank.

Typical person trying to belittle and demean others to make self look "better, more powerful, stronger", etc.

Anonymous said...

@Jed Mask

Sure, but the problem is, sometimes "bullying" is actually either 1) harsh teasing of the type that most men do to each other all the time, but which Gammas and Omegas don't handle well, or 2) justice, where a Gamma gets caught acting like a snake and is called out.

Anonymous said...

I started school at 4, in a time and place where the norm was 5. Then I skipped a year. So when I got to high school I was 11 and my classmates were 13. Some of the idiots were older.

Most of them had a good six inches and 30 pounds or more advantage.

But I grew up with three older brothers, who were far more relentless arseholes than any snotty 3rd former. I was totally zen with the idea I would rarely win. I expected pain from every encounter and regularly got it.

My advantage was that I had no intention to avoid pain but only to inflict it. Only to make the experience cost the arseholes more than they gained. I took a few beatings but I was never anyone's preferred choice of target.

It's not about what happens to you, and it's not about how big you are or how tough you are.

It's only about how you think and act.

Jed Mask said...

@VFM #7634

"1) harsh teasing of the type that most men do to each other all the time, but which Gammas and Omegas don't handle well."

No, I wouldn't say exactly that. Depends on the male company. Only insecure, "wannabe" men usually resort to teasing and bullying other perceived lower-ranking men in order to vainly "puff themselves up" and boost their status in other people's eyes; usually to opposite effect.

Any self-confident, self-assured man need not bully or tease other men down the social totem pole to make himself "look better" because it'll only make people see him as a jerk "picking on the weaker" to stroke his ego. It's a *NEGATIVE* in a social setting amongst people for higher status men to engage in this type of "posturing" with lower-ranking men/people. Just makes them look arrogant, pompous and unsavory company to have around.

2) justice, where a Gamma gets caught acting like a snake and is called out.

That's simply called putting a fool in his place with appropriate correct reproof and rebuke and has nothing to do with getting personal into "bullying" which makes the person calling out said Gamma no better than the snake Gamma.

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