I find it fascinating that some users here seem to be attached to the concept of an alpha male, reality be damned. It’s clear that this meets some emotional/psychological need for them.
I regard it as a dangerous mind virus. It is hard to rid yourself of it even if you see it is bullshit and harming you because it requires a substantial change in how you see your life. I think that’s because it is some hard truths (“people like powerful people”) mixed in with some cognitive distortions (“dominance is the primary mediator of all interactions”). The lack of a true definition means there is no objective measure of what it is, which makes it impossible to feel secure in. Thus, the endless arguing about whether behavior is really “alpha” or “beta.”
There are good bits there, such as not letting yourself be pushed around. But that doesn’t make it all good or true. I really think the whole artifice is a cop-out for actually doing the work of individuation and self-development because you outsource all the hard work of deciding what you want to be and the temporary, self-imposed emotional exile it takes to actually discern that to following guidelines ultimately given to you by other people.
You’re still not crafting your own life, you’re just changing who you get your life script from.
It exploits psychological vulnerabilities in people and traps them: if you worry about your alpha/beta status, then you’ll be the type of person who wants to fix it, but there isn’t a fix because your perspective is the issue.
A lot of men are terrified of the idea of not seeming masculine enough- and what it would mean for them romantically, socially, and professionally- which is why this is appealing as an idea.
Supposed “alpha behaviors” are seemingly identical to toddler behaviors to me. I think it’s ironically non-masculine to be so terrified of how you appear that you play act as basically a belligerent child incapable of compromise, teamwork, or navigating disagreements with dignity instead of being yourself.
The ancient stoics had a much healthier, and more useful idea of masculinity IMO- that still lets you be strong and not pushed around by others inappropriately.
It's like up-badging a car. Most people won't care about it. Those who are knowledgeable about it will see through it. And those who actually do care about superficial things like that are probably not the kind of people whose respect should matter to you
It is narcissistic at its core. If you had a healthy sense of self, you wouldn’t need to constantly be monitoring how others perceive you, and trying to manage that.
Yes, that is absolutely the case, and while Narcissism appears strong and confident from the outside, it's really driven by massive amounts of anxiety and terror over not appearing good enough. Narcissism is really an awful disability caused by trauma that leads to a lot of suffering, not something impressive and powerful.
This is why I suggested stoicism (and modern therapy methods based on it like ACT and CBT) as a practical alternative that fulfills the same emotional need in a mentally healthier, and more responsible way.
It essentially flips this around entirely, and says the only thing that really matters is how you perceive yourself, e.g. knowing you are acting according to your own goals and values. You can only control how you act and perceive things, not what others think about you, and there is no value or point in worrying about things outside your control.
Instead of trying to "look strong" you can actually just be strong- and stand by your convictions and values.
I think in part it is that the flawed study might actually be relevant to them because of the flaw. It studied captive wolves in an unnaturally constrained (and therefore competitive) environment, and that is how some people feel a lot of the time.
Trying to be the alpha in such a situation, so they can look down at the others and feel better, instead of doing anything to try actually improve the world, is an unhealthy reaction, but one I can at least understand.
Trying to be an “alpha” irrespective and create that sort of situation for others, on the other hand, is rather despicable.
Another factor in the longevity of alpha/beta/other designations is that they don't only come from that study (and those that followed it, or it referenced). The terms were used elsewhere both in science and fiction (and, specifically, in well known science fiction such as Huxley's “Brave New World” which pre-dates the publication of Schenkel's infamous wolf study by a decade and a half).
On the contrary, the so-called "capitalism" that emerges when we respect individual rights is the one way we can escape this.
Too much emphasis is placed on government regulation and corporate environments to "make things right" when, in the end, they are all just rigid bureaucratic structures that trap people and force them into heirarchies.
For my entire life, I have mostly tried to conform to this -- albeit mostly focusing on startups because they are more likely to value individuals, and less likely to have rigid structure and tradition -- but I'm only just now realizing that my autistic and ADHD tendencies being pigeon-holed even this much is a recipe for the burnout I've experienced for most of my adult life. I need to try something different!
And if I lived in a more rigid society (all non-capitalist countries are far more rigid than capitalist ones -- pretty much by definition) my options for fleeing rigidity would be vanishingly small.
> I find it fascinating that some users here seem to be attached to the concept of an alpha male, reality be damned.
What sometimes happens is that people use flawed reasoning to arrive to correct conclusions. Has it ever happened to you that you made a mistake but then you made another mistake and these two cancelled each other out? My take is, wolves might or might not have an alpha male, that is completely irrelevant, but if so many people subscribe to the idea, then there must be something true about it. In particular, most human societies are highly hierarchical. Heck, "the land of free" elects a new alpha male every four years, many other countries don't even bother holding elections.
> The lack of a true definition means there is no objective measure of what it is, which makes it impossible to feel secure in.
Just because a concept cannot be easily defined it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Example: tell me what is consciousnesses.
> It exploits psychological vulnerabilities in people and traps them: if you worry about your alpha/beta status, then you’ll be the type of person who wants to fix it, but there isn’t a fix because your perspective is the issue.
This way of thinking is extremely common. When people face a concept they don't like, they just deny it. Otherwise their belief system would turn out to be incomplete.
The simple fact is that alpha males are a fact of nature. In wolves and in lions and maybe especially in primates like baboons and gorillas.
It's hilarious that something so obvious is considered worth denying, but I guess it's an example of how intellectualization can be used to exploit psychological weakness.
> The simple fact is that alpha males are a fact of nature. In wolves and in lions
Dude, you are literally responding to someone arguing that alphas are real with an article that completely disproves your thesis.
This isn't even a new revelation. Biologists have long known that the whole "wolf alpha" thing was BS.
But further, we aren't wolves, we aren't lions. Male lions taking over a pride will murder all the cubs, should we? Female Cynomolgus monkeys will have sex with every male in the troupe so as to confuse who that father is of the offspring, should we?
No species of animal is the same and there are no "norms" in the animal kingdom.
Nothing more beta than confidently spouting BS without taking the time to research your own positions.
> I find it fascinating that some users here seem to be attached to the concept of an alpha male, reality be damned. It’s clear that this meets some emotional/psychological need for them.
Grifters and people selling right-wing politics have figured out how to market to male insecurity. They're selling politicians of course but also quack supplements, self-help nonsense, masculinity gurus, hilarious "boot camps" where you spend tens of thousands to have some dumbass yell at you, etc. All that stuff will leave you still insecure, and with less money.
Andrew Tate is probably the undisputed master of the alpha male grift. He's known as an abuser of women, and he is, but really men are his main marks. In a way part of his grift is to make his marks utterly repulsive to most women, keeping them alone and insecure and customers.
Sure, but don't lose sight of the fact that female insecurity has been leveraged and marketed to as well, for pretty much forever. Fashion, makeup, beauty standards -- flip through a magazine and look at the ads, and think about what the ads are suggesting the reader needs or would benefit from, and further think about whether the reader will be more or less insecure afterwards.
(And male insecurity has always been a target. Don't let that bully kick sand at you at the beach! But I agree that the targeting has recently been vastly more tuned and optimized and the most egregious forms have become socially acceptable.)
That's what I was getting at -- historically female insecurity has been more aggressively targeted, but that's been changing. I now see all kinds of marketing and propaganda tilted toward male insecurity, a lot more than I remember.
Well put, but the countermeme ("Hey did you hear that the alpha wolf thing was bullshit?") seems to be as popular or moreso than what it's displacing. I did some light googling yesterday to see if I could find any references of "alpha wolf" before the 40s, and all I could find was page after page of articles exactly like TFA.
I think the same reasoning applies - it is vague and easy to apply and people want it to be true - just for different people.
This is my thought. I have no attachment to the idea, I've been comfortably and happily married for years. But dismissing the idea of "an alpha" among animals seems stupid based on one study. Isn't this the case among gorillas, lions, etc? And it apparently is the truth even among wolves in certain circumstances as the study points out. The OP should apply the same logic to interrogate his own motivated reasoning.
I think the truth is in the middle: people took what they wanted from the study in the 40s, and people are taking what they want from the updated study as well. Worse, the topic seems to be popular enough that it's being used as seo spam now. At this point, if someone with a deep understanding of both wolf behavior and human behavior were to review all available data, think deeply on the subject, draw meaningful and valuable insights, and write a popular essay conveying them, I don't know how I'd find it among all the dross.
I guess it has a life of its own now. Seems like a good example of the semiotics concept of the signifier becoming disconnected from the signified: a heated debate over the finer points of wolf pack social dynamics being carried out by people with no particular knowledge of or interest in wolves.
> I find it fascinating that some users here seem to be attached to the concept of an alpha male, reality be damned.
But the reality is that wolf packs have alpha males. Both in the wild and in zoos. The article itself clearly states so. The only difference is that in the wild, the alpha male is the biological father of his offsprings that make up the wolf pack. While in the zoo, the alpha male is generally unrelated to the other wolves.
We know alpha males and alpha females exists. The article doesn't deny that fact. It just sneakily twists the difference of alpha males in zoos and nature as an "alpha male myth".
> It’s clear that this meets some emotional/psychological need for them.
It doesn't. I could give a rats ass whether a wolf pack has a male and female alpha ( aka father and mother ). The only ones emotionally upset about alpha males are people like you who for some odd reason want to deny it's existence, reality be damned.
It's ridiculous that those denying reality are the one's accusing others of denying reality.
This myth has several things that well-designed misinformation needs in order to supplant good information:
1) it fits into existing worldviews - the myth of the alpha validates people continuing to do what they want to do and what they've always done. it's a lot easier to accept information that tells you that you and the systems with which you're already familiar and comfortable are correct
2) it's intuitive to understand - "the big guy kicks the crap out of the little guys and takes all their stuff" is not something that has any sharp edges to snag unwary intellects. We've all seen this system at work. Also the popular understanding of evolution at the time was that competition happened at the level of the organism, which dovetails nicely with this theory of competition and dominance where our more current understanding of competition at the level of the gene complex introduces the possibility of cooperation and even self-sacrifice as valid survival strategies.
3) it trended in the same direction as society at the time - the book came out in 1970, about the same time that we started trending toward neoliberalism which is a hyperindividualistic, hypercompetitive worldview. If you like neoliberalism then this is why you like it, and if you don't this is why you don't. This means that as this idea was becoming more and more well-known there was a lot of room for it in the emerging zeitgeist. It's the political and sociological equivalent to 1, but with significance added by people who were already dedicated to engineering our culture in that direction in the first place latching onto this idea because it indicates that they're so correct that the whole world is already designed around principles of individualism and competition.
trending away from post-war/new deal-ish liberalism in a way that wouldn't be defined until neoliberalism emerged. I'm playing a bit fast and loose but with Thatcher in 79 and Reagan in 80 that's the spot where I'm marking the emergence of neoliberalism as essentially the default political platform for the english speaking world. Because nothing comes from nowhere and nothing happens overnight in national politics I'm essentially inferring that there had to be a bit of a groundswell of support for that socioeconomic framework in the years leading up to it but also that it likely wasn't the primary focus of a party that represented roughly half the electorate until then. Look at eisenhower's platform, you could be a republican in the 50s and support labor unions and the minimum wage. Then Kennedy and other center left dems dominated the 60s, barely held it together through the 70s, lost the fight against small-government, free market conservatives in the 80s and became small-government, free market conservatives in the 90s
I regard it as a dangerous mind virus. It is hard to rid yourself of it even if you see it is bullshit and harming you because it requires a substantial change in how you see your life. I think that’s because it is some hard truths (“people like powerful people”) mixed in with some cognitive distortions (“dominance is the primary mediator of all interactions”). The lack of a true definition means there is no objective measure of what it is, which makes it impossible to feel secure in. Thus, the endless arguing about whether behavior is really “alpha” or “beta.”
There are good bits there, such as not letting yourself be pushed around. But that doesn’t make it all good or true. I really think the whole artifice is a cop-out for actually doing the work of individuation and self-development because you outsource all the hard work of deciding what you want to be and the temporary, self-imposed emotional exile it takes to actually discern that to following guidelines ultimately given to you by other people.
You’re still not crafting your own life, you’re just changing who you get your life script from.
It exploits psychological vulnerabilities in people and traps them: if you worry about your alpha/beta status, then you’ll be the type of person who wants to fix it, but there isn’t a fix because your perspective is the issue.
Hope that was helpful for someone.