Monday, February 29, 2016

A Portrait in Alpha

Ironically, both primitive tribesmen in Papua New Guinea and anthropologists appear to understand the true art of Alpha better than most men in the civilized West today. I came across this in book I was reading today:
The New Guinea Big Man, for example, gains his status primarily as an organiser of feasts and dances in which his own group competes with others, and as a public orator on such occasions. He attracts followers by his force of personality and his political skills as an organiser and diplomat in dealings with other groups, and can certainly behave despotically to those at the bottom of society, the ‘rubbish-men’. But while he obviously enjoys his status, he is accepted and regarded as a legitimate leader because he is seen as an essential asset by his group of followers, and in my experience tends to be gracious and polite.
It's not about being a bully. It's first and foremost about being an asset to his subordinates and being a man they want to follow. Everything else flows from that.

It is interesting to note that even primitive societies have developed the concept of the Omega as well.

20 comments:

Dark Herald said...

I saw a less dramatic example of that on Mackinaw Island last summer.

For those who don't know, automobiles are pretty much completely prohibited on Mackinaw Island. If you want to get around you take a bike, a horse or your own feet. There are no fat people on the Island.

Anyway. There was a big group of Amish teenagers that were there for some kind of group getaway, probably rumspringa.

And the social dynamics were clearly in play. Even in that society. You had an Alpha popping wheelies on a bike that he had only just learned to ride with the girls flocking and fluttering around him. You had a few normal guys also flocking around him. And then you had a very sad guy who was clearly and obviously an Omega. He had a bowl cut hair cut, thick glasses and he clearly couldn't get his bike to work at all.

You can't wish it away. No matter how hard you wish.

the dude said...

As was told to me by an experienced horse trainer, the Alpha in the herd is not necessarily the largest, strongest horse. It's the horse that can lead to water and to good grazing that is protected by the strongest animals.

Oliver Märk said...

A great quote. Being alpha is a high value for society, it is not about egotism and definitely not about narcissism, as more primitive minds believe. No society is strong when it’s leaders are less than alpha. We in the West seem have to forgotten about this truth.

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Unknown said...

By these definitions an alpha is any white person who opposes immigration. When the term becomes synonymous with 'he who fails to acknowledge he is conquered', it has lost its meaning entirely. It then becomes irony and a pejorative. It's not there yet, but when white women are beheading children it sounds like the confused bleat of a gelded goat. Genetics clearly isn't your problem, goat.

Anonymous said...

Cataline Sergius said...
You had an Alpha popping wheelies on a bike that he had only just learned to ride



uh, no.

Amish have two forms of transportation: horse and bicycle.

you'll hardly ever see Amish in saddle, it's almost always buggy or sulky.

the other option is used more by the younger Amish( they begin riding bike to school around 6, you'll see 40 or more bicycles lined up outside the one room school houses ) but you can see an 80 year old grey beard peddling down the road if they didn't feel like hitching a horse.

i know that young Amish ride bicycles because they get flattened all the time. used to happen a lot more before they started wearing reflective vests at night.

SciVo said...

As was told to me by an experienced horse trainer, the Alpha in the herd is not necessarily the largest, strongest horse. It's the horse that can lead to water and to good grazing that is protected by the strongest animals.

So... just actually provide valuable leadership for others. Simplest path to alpha.

So you have to increase your leadership skills, because if you go the other direction and find a sub-herd small enough to follow you, then it would necessarily be sucky herd if you were a sucky leader. Kind of like gammas and the Hugos.

So there are basically three tiers of game advice:

1. Actual leadership development. (Good follower development may be a necessary precursor, like the Delta Man series.)

2. Fake it until you make it.

3. Fake it until you bang it.

Anonymous said...

"It's not about being a bully. It's first and foremost about being an asset to his subordinates and being a man they want to follow. Everything else flows from that."

It is stress that everything else flows from. Unlike what one might call 'leadership quality', it has the advantage of being something that is measurable by hormones in other pecking order species. As such, it is more compatible with a reductionist worldview.

"In most species, the low-ranked members of a group typically show more stress symptoms than higher-ranked members during common interaction, often being described as "nervous, insecure" while those of high rank appear "relaxed, confident." We now see that the process of rank allocation, particularly the mechanism of dominance contests, encourages the upward movement of those group members most able to withstand stress and best equipped to impose stress on others; while those with the most difficulty handling stress, or the least interest in stressing others, move downward. Thus, there is a natural sorting process that places individuals who are comfortable with stress near the top of the hierarchy and those who are "nervous" at the bottom. " (Mazur 1985 "A Biosocial Model of Status in Face-to-Face Primate Groups")

Subordinate behaviour is undertaken to relieve stress (e.g. eye aversion). Dominant behaviour is not the opposite of submissive behaviour, but the absence:

"Animals whose behaviour was not limited by others have been called dominant ; those whose behaviour was limited and who showed submission, subordinate" (Deag 1977 "Aggression and Submission in Monkey Societies")

If dominance is simply 'not-submission', the dominance hierarchy is the inverse of the subordination hierarchy.

"It is the subordinate animal which cautiously observes and maintains a hierarchy, while a dominant animal could almost be defined as one which does not 'think before it acts' in social situations" (Rowell 1966 "Hierarchy in the Organisation of a Captive Baboon Group")

To avoid a stressful encounter, the animals who give a fuck are careful to space themselves out from, and pay the most attention to, the animals who don't give a fuck.

"Rank order and the cohesiveness of a cohort, band, or heterosexual group therefore arises out of the persistent attention of subordinates for the more dominant individuals of a group which, since it is directed ultimately at a single dominant individual, tends to space out the members of a rank order around this individual and to organise behaviour along vectors radiating outwards from him when aggression is a prominent feature, and inwards towards him where subordinate behaviour is involved. Priority of access is not therefore a fundamental feature of rank order relations within a group, nor is aggression always associated with high status. Hence, neither can be considered as being fundamental to the establishment of rank order relations. On the other hand, spatial features are the outcome of subordinate behaviour and of the attention to the dominant animal" (Chance 1967 "Attention Structure as the Basis of Primate Rank Orders")

If a female picks a low-ranking mate, he may be nice to her, but her offspring will tend to inherit whatever characteristics make him vulnerable to stress (e.g. weakness, disease). If she picks a high-ranking mate, he may be a jerk to her, but her offspring will probably be badasses who displace lower ranking animals from a food source or mating opportunity by their mere presence.

Aeoli Pera said...

It is interesting to note that even primitive societies have developed the concept of the Omega as well.

Good point. It seems there's a role that must be filled, and any weak demographic will do.

OT: Ladies, don't cut your damn hair.

Aeoli Pera said...

@where id was,

I would happily subscribe to your newsletter.

Aeoli Pera said...

Note that psychopaths are characterized by inability to feel anxiety, as Bob Hare's shock experiment demonstrated conclusively. Hence, more psychopathy means more "leadership" unless the side effects- crime, poverty, getting lynched- hamstring them.

Aeoli Pera said...

So... just actually provide valuable leadership for others. Simplest path to alpha.

It is really only the perception of the herd that matters. The main thing is whether they believe you know where the water is.

liberranter said...

I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point the Academy Awards went from being a celebration of the film industry to an opportunity to sanctimoniously lecture the American people on various social justice issues.

And we know for a fact that 100 percent of the attending audience consisted of SJWs because there was no mass of people rising from their seats, extending their middle fingers, and shouting "FUCK YOU!" at Leo or any of those other phony, sanctimonious assholes as they spewed their condescending, juvenile bullshit.

HolyKnowing said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

"In the park we'll notice the ducks squabbling, but not how carefully they keep their distances when they are not." - Keith Johnstone, Impro

As human social behaviour takes more complex and subtle forms than bird and primate social behaviour, so too does our submissive behaviour. In addition to a physical realm for status dynamics to play out, we have a cognitive-emotional realm. But it still comes down to reactions to stress.

The clearest example of this is "frame control". Just as the spatial presence of a dominant animal will displace a submissive animal, so will the conversation of the dominant animal displace the conversation of the submissive animal. The weaker frame is the frame that reacts more - it 'goes along to get along'.

To be "shit-tested" is to be stressed with the subconscious motive of revealing your sensitivity to stress (and thus your rank). A baboon might lunge at another baboon. To 'pass' the shit test, the lunged-at baboon could just sit like nothing happened. To 'fail' the shit test, the baboon might run away. A woman might say "that's not very gentlemanly". To 'pass', the player might say "you're not very ladylike" and just continue flowing. To 'fail', the player might stop and try to apologize. You fail by being reactive, which is to say that your behaviour/identity changes in response to the stress.

Being "stifled" is being limited due to status-anxiety. It occurs when you are afraid that your behaviour will create a conflict between reality and an identity you have for yourself (which will create stress), and prevents you from freely moving and expressing yourself. Being in "state" is the freedom from stiflement. One RSD guy even calls state "relaxation".

If baboons could talk, and you asked a low-ranking one why it didn't try to mount a female in heat, the set of responses it gave you would be akin to "social conditioning". He might say he didn't want to be a creep. He was being polite. Civilized. He stood against the objectification of women. All are rationalisations to avoid identity related stress. Social conditioning to an alpha is water off a duck's back. Social conditioning to a gamma is how male feminists are born. Social conditioning is to a chode what patriarchy is to a feminist or what morality is to the weak: self-imposed limits that are percieved as real constraints arising from outside oneself. To believe that society is holding you back threatens your status quo more than the belief that nothing is holding you back. The limited ego clings to limiting beliefs.

Being alpha is not about being the leader, though it may help. Imagine you're going on a small tour with 10 people plus a tour guide. At the centre of everyone's attention is a guy on the tour who is confident and loose, amusing himself by bantering with everyone. The tour guide initially walks faster than the group but slows down because the group is not keeping pace. The tour guide waits for a lull in conversation to inform everyone of the next place they're walking to. If everyone's attention falls back on Mr Confident, who then moves where the tour guide directs before everyone follows Mr Confident, who is the alpha of the group? It's not the surface level reactions, it's the matrix of reactions. The animal that is implicitly followed is the alpha, and it is not always the animal that explicitly leads.

Aeoli Pera said...

This I disagree with: Being in "state" is the freedom from stiflement. One RSD guy even calls state "relaxation". "State" is the same creative flow state reported by creative sorts and athletes, and is a combination of subject mastery, engagement, and mindfulness. The sensory experience is a combination of dissociation and deja vu.

Aeoli Pera said...

Everything else makes sense.

Anonymous said...

@Aeoli Pera

"Note that psychopaths are characterized by inability to feel anxiety, as Bob Hare's shock experiment demonstrated conclusively. Hence, more psychopathy means more "leadership" unless the side effects- crime, poverty, getting lynched- hamstring them."

I suspect psychopaths do well with women beyond their tendency to assume leadership positions. Alpha resides in the behaviourally subcommunicated subordination hierarchy, not the mind made 'social status'/'leadership' hierarchy (that a woman's hindbrain is not wired to appreciate). A physiological beta in a leadership position won't slay poon like a physiological alpha who is not in a leadership position.

See: https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/psychopath-game/

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Aeoli Pera said...

I suspect psychopaths do well with women beyond their tendency to assume leadership positions.

Your suspicion is correct. PUA techniques mirror dark triad behaviors, and "Inner Game" is intended to mirror dark triad personality traits.

Aeoli Pera said...

Heartiste is very forthright about this, the idea being (presumably) that nerds and psychopaths are now on an even playing field, therefore eugenics.

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