It’s a horrific three step process.
- Let a boy fail.
- Let the boy think or convince him that failing makes him worthless as a person regardless of whatever else he accomplishes.
- Gamma.
When failure isn’t an option, then the Gamma will no longer compete, lie about his accomplishments, and become delusional about himself. It’s also why the Gamma forever seeks revenge against foes, never forgives himself or others, and is nearly insufferable to be around.
If you are around young men and boys and see one taking failure too hard, please, help the young man out. Let them know that failing is part of life, and getting back up is what makes a man and will make him feel better about failing. Don’t remind him of past failures, completely forgive him when he is truly repentant, and encourage and support future endeavors.
Alternatively, Gammas can make themselves. Wil Wheaton explained how at his Mensa speech:
I was at his speech, and yes, he confirmed that his entry to geekhood, one of the defining moments of his life, was precipitated by getting his ass kicked at dodgeball. While going to wash gravel out of his hands, he met an asthmatic(lucky) kid who didn't have to play. They bonded over D&D. He never played dodgeball again.Cowardice and the avoidance of any chance of failure. That's how gammas are made. All the lies and the delusion bubble and everything else will spring from that.
29 comments:
That speech just reinforces the theory that low status, personality disordered folks are running the show which explains...basically everything that matters.
I dunno man.
I see gammas created when:
1. Let a boy fail/lose.
2. Convince him that he didn't really fail/lose. He was a victim of other mean and nasty people. The "winner" cheated. He is really better than they are, it's just that the only persons who can see he's better are mommy, and maybe daddy. He really "won", it's just that the only people who see he won are himself and maybe mommy and daddy. And then give him conflicting stories: sometimes he didn't fail/lose; and sometimes he really did fail/lose, and he's a worthless fuck.
3. Gamma.
Actually, the surest way to create a Gamma (99.99999 percent success rate) is this way: let a single mother raise him, without any lasting male influences whatsoever in his life.
I would imagine that giving children participation trophies and certificates of attendance contributes. Children can have very well developed BS detectors. They can tell when adults are scamming.
let a single mother raise him, without any lasting male influences whatsoever in his life.
It's worse than that. The public school systems all across the Western world are essentially gamma factories. So not just not having a father at all will do it; even having a father who's merely naïve or trusting of the school system, or not paying attention, will.
Doesn't sound like cowardice to me. Sounds like what you wrote at the start: an influential authority figure early in a man's boyhood persuading him that failure at something makes him a failure at everything. There's a world of difference between cowardice and breaking a boy's legs before he can learn how to run.
This post is a little different in your approach to gamma, I think. It's almost there. It almost recognises that mocking and ridiculing gamma is what that leg-breaker and ego-evicerator did back when gamma was a boy. Interestingly, this is what modern women do routinely with men; there's something distinctly feminine about mocking and ridiculing gamma.
A boy's ego must be suffused with promise if he's to become a man. All it takes to break him, to be an ego-evicerator oneself, is to recognise the broken parts within yourself and hate them with a will. A broken boy needs the love only men can provide to be able to heal from this.
Game is helpful but it can sometimes backfire. Game sometimes causes men to hate those parts of manhood that are broken within themselves to the point that they hate not only the brokenness but broken men as well. It'a a small step from detesting a thing in others to detesting others because they have the thing. Yet it's critical that other men recognise this sort of hatred can also give them the power to break others, especially boys without strong. compassionate men in their lives. Men need to be able to sympathise with brokenness. If their sympathy and generosity is excised with their brokenness, they may begin to detest everyone who is weaker than themselves. This is essentially a return to jungle law.
Civilized men need to be able to respond better to those who are broken, to be an agent of something different to the world, to recognise that worthy manhood is that which knows how to build worth in the broken rather than respond to their worth. This is the essential message Jesus came to deliver, the essential mesaage that hypergamy and the Feminine Imperative seeks to erase.
One could say that civilization depends on generous and sympathetic men, particularly in their response to men who are struggling. Civilization depends on the belief that broken boys and men can be saved. Lose this quality and civilization begins to crumble, becoming a place where only the unbreakable breed and every conflict is a fight to the death.
Gamma is still a broken boy in many respects. He can yet become a man, but he can also turn into a neutered henchman of the Mother Goddess if he's mocked and ridiculed by small-hearted, unsympathetic and ungenerous men.
Ugh, too real. My mother not only defined all failures as moral failures (I'm so smart and talented that obviously if I fail the only reason is lack of effort, therefore failing makes me a bad person) but also made success illusory because if I'm able to succeed, I clearly didn't take on a sufficiently challenging goal. Luckily (I suppose), I'm female, so I didn't turn out Gamma. Even as I was going through it, I recognized how a male child in a similar situation would have been even more messed up by it than I was, especially since, as a daughter, my father offered some sanctuary that I'm certain he would not have provided to a son. All I really had to do was stay attractive and chaste long enough to land a solid husband who would be patient while I got my psychology in good enough shape to raise non-Gamma men. So far, so good.
VD
Let a boy fail.
correction:
create a situation in which it is impossible for him to succeed.
then tell him it's his fault.
Can't you become a Gamma by succeeding a whole bunch and then thinking you can't fail?
TKB. To my French bros: please start striking back. Let the Civil War of Liberation begin. +
Meanwhile, I wonder about curses
House of one Gaybull, Glenn Beck.
I sort of don't want to reread certain passages of scripture.
I miss dodgeball. Once I realized All Offense worked great for me I had a blast. Of course that was 40 years ago.
Definitely agree with the single mom part. They are incapable of raising a boy to normal, psychologically healthy manhood.
Will there be a game/masculinity book in the future Vox? Or at least a nice collection of these extended aphorisms?
"Can't you become a Gamma by succeeding a whole bunch and then thinking you can't fail?"
Sounds textbook alpha to me?
Alternate instructions for single moms to create a gamma:
1. Lavish un-earned and over-the-top praise upon child, inflating their ego and self-worth to an unhealthy level. The most trivial accomplishments should be met with ridiculous levels of praise.
2. Emotionally abuse said child with total cruelty when they fail or transgress your expectations in even the most minor, insignificant way.
3. Rinse, repeat.
"Cowardice and the avoidance of any chance of failure."
The Gamma allows himself to be defined by his failures and not much else. It is not our failures and mistakes that should define us, but how we meet them, what we do with them, and whether or not we can grow into better human beings because of them.
The Gamma also has an obsessive desire for admiration and affirmation and yet who do most people admire most? Is it not people who persevered and overcame obstacles? Who didn't ever complain, but pressed on in the face of adversity? Who didn't blame others for their mistakes, failures, and setbacks? Who were always striving to achieve, even if they never fully achieved but nevertheless spent a lifetime doggedly pursuing their goals?
No one admires or respects the complainer or the one who shrinks back in the face of an obstacle or a little adversity, while claiming he could achieve a whole host of things if only everybody and everything weren't conspiring against his concerted efforts.
It's the man in the arena facing down the challenges that we admire at the end of the day. Not because he is necessarily victorious every time he steps foot into the arena, but simply because he dared to enter it in the first place and did not shrink back or run away at the first sign of danger or possibility that he might fail. It's the man who gets back on the horse that we admire and respect, not the secret king who walks away while bitching about the saddle.
Same principles, different context:
Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame ... (cf. Romans 5)
Even G-d takes no pleasure in the man who shrinks back in the face of opposition and adversity:
"But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed ..." (cf. Hebrews 10)
The Gamma's life is ruled by shame and so he expends a great deal of time and energy to keep it covered up at all costs. But, sadly, he is fooling no one but himself. The Gamma loves shortcuts and wants to achieve his successes easily without expending any real effort and without experiencing the unpleasant difficulties, and yet wants, expects, and even thinks he deserves to bask in same love and admiration that is reserved for those who have real, authentic achievements, unaware that real achievements are not granted to us and are fraught with mistakes and failures along the way.
As long as the Gamma is determined to look at himself and others through the lens of his failures, he can only look forward to a sad, lonely and worst of all, bitter existence.
I don't think that's right.
Gamma is characterized by ego and false belief. Here's how I think you make a Gamma:
1. Have problem.
2. Problem causes pain.
3. Treat pain with delusion.
4. Delusion forms identity.
5. Identity feeds ego.
6. Ego seeks prestige.
7. Prestige-seeking causes problem.
8. Goto line 1.
The problem is that this emotional strategy works in the short term.
Line 7 is because underlying problems never actually get fixed, which causes error cascades.
The process in the OP is how you make an Omega, which is characterized by either despair or social oblivion or both.
That point where a boy fails and his father's response is "What in the hell is the matter with you?" He will forever ask himself that question and find hopelessness in any answer.
Sometimes your genetics just will not let it happen. I can think of a boy(me)whoe raised by a woman who was damn sure going to see that her son was not like her no account ex husband. The kids a wee bit too smart, likes chess. Tends to beat the nerds who play it, so he hangs with them. Belittled, no men in life, hangs with geeks. Then comes puberty. 14 years old already 5'11, strong as hell, fast as a cat, undefeated in wrestling, takes up football because the coach begged him too (a man in life). Oh blond hair, big blues eyes, long lean and hard. Within a couple of years comes self confidence. That came from a few girls beating his once shy head to get his attention. Sometimes God is just on your side.
But notice it was sports that started it all
I cannot imagine the evil that dwells in the heart of a parent who would do this to their own child.
This:
"1. Lavish un-earned and over-the-top praise upon child, inflating their ego and self-worth to an unhealthy level. The most trivial accomplishments should be met with ridiculous levels of praise.
2. Emotionally abuse said child with total cruelty when they fail or transgress your expectations in even the most minor, insignificant way.
3. Rinse, repeat."
Single mothers are notorious for this. In my own experience and with several others in my peer group single mothers use their boys, particularly if they are an only child, as a kind of surrogate husband. Of course since they are divorced that boy must pay, pay, PAY for their total unhappiness at the male gender. Mix this with a smattering of churchianity for some real fun. True story:
Child is bullied at school
Child is set upon one fine day by one particular bully
Child rolls up in a ball until the bully gets tired of punching him and goes away
Single mother lavishes praise on child at hearing this - he followed her explicit instructions because fighting is "bad" and you should "turn the other cheek"
I don't know whatever happened to that kid but I'll be amazed if he isn't extreme gamma or openly gay right now.
Very concise. Very helpful. Thanks for all you do. A few mediocre things that come to mind;
Life is not fair, get up, fails happen - let those go, move on, stand up. Grieving deaths is part of life, dry your eyes
Failure of what seems to be a fail is part of life, stand up, be of good cheer, let a challenge or failure throw one into another dimension of success, stand up, stay strong, dont gamma down, accept your past beliefs were wrong and advance to the next level. Stop the gammatudeness.
Speaking of Gamma...
If you want to see an Alpha fucking with a gamma without pause, watch the 2014 World Series of Poker footage of the action between Keranen and Rystadt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gns6E1NYGhM&list=PLViasp1oG1PtTlIurJrYKscOujEmBxtnh&index=3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB8u8p0FKhs&index=4&list=PLViasp1oG1PtTlIurJrYKscOujEmBxtnh
As a guy who has some Gamma tendencies if I don't hold myself in check, I find their interaction hilarious...and revealing. Everyone else at the table loves Rystadt, is laughing at his jokes, or is egging him on. Except for the Gamma, who is resolute in showing just HOW MUCH the Alpha is NOT getting under his skin. And it never enters into his mind that if he actually DIDN'T let Rystadt's jibes get under his skin, or if he through some barbs right back at him, Rystadt would laugh, smile, and go back to spreading the shit-talking around to everyone else. But by trying and failing spectacularly to act nonchalant, Keranen has only revealed his weakness and drawn the ridicule of the Alpha further onto himself, like the eye of Sauron focusing from across Middle Earth.
It's comic.
And chilling, as I recognize those same tendencies in myself. If I hadn't gone into submarines and had that self-focused insecurity beaten out of me...
*shudder*
I think this is slightly more demonized then what it actually is. People if punished excessively for failure, or given unreasonably high standards for success at a young age can easily develop a fear of failure, and use avoidance, procrastination, denial to get around it. Parents can instill in their children too. Often though I don't think its intentional, I think it was passed down the same way it was passed down to them. Perhaps the only way out is it see it for what it is, fear of not being enough.
I wouldn't say it is specifically a 'Gamma' thing though. Looks like men and women would have this behavioural trait and it also looks like it would damage life in more than just the field of 'game'. Good read none the less :). Thank you.
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