Sometimes there is no profit in pidgeon holing what characteristics are “alpha”, or “beta”. However the broad concepts have some use to men, obviously. Being alpha, as the term is used on manosphere blogs, means being attractive to women. It’s useful to know what aspects of personality are charming.
Women are attracted to selfishness and a personality that has the power to get away with being selfish.
And so here I’ll again introduce a counter intuitive idea. Spectator sports are beta.
I agree that some aspects of sports are masculine. But is masculine equal to alpha? I think not. Males have paternal ways of being nurturing, protecting, and providing. On manosphere blogs we categorize the provider traits as beta, and contrast that sexual strategy against the rogue cad seducer attitude, which gets lumped in with alpha traits. My idea is that alpha traits are defined by selfishness.
Testosterone causes an increase in selfish behaviors, and many of the behaviors that we categorize as alpha have a defining characteristic of being individual oriented.
I think we can all imagine a group of teenagers railing off their sports teams stats and drooling in homo-erotic fandom as they share their group fascination with their heros, and quickly see those sports fans as lacking in individuation, and leaning heavily into the group oriented follower side of personality. Trying to fit in and using a group oriented concern to fit in.
The idea to ponder is individuation versus following the group.
Humans have a contingent hive mind – without which our groups would never be able to survive group crisis. However this hive mind aspect is marked by being a drone and a follower. That aspect should be contingent on crisis, not a default mode of being. Spectator sports exemplify a follower mindset.
It may seem that the point of this post is to diss the slope headed football jocks and violent soccer hooligans as all being drunk on blindly following authority, for the lock-stepped thrill of belonging.
That’s about right.
But it’s also about clarifying masculinity into it’s component aspects. The selfish, rogue, individualist side of masculinity, and the protective, fierce, group oriented side.
Alphas are rogues.
Random Xpat Rantings 
Agree, but not fitting in with the herd can take its toll in terms of lack of social skills, one of the traditional characteristics of the alpha male.
Interesting point. Which I suppose is why we often find Machiavellian abilities to be so creepy. People who are very good at fitting in and at the same time in their hearts really don’t feel the need to fit in at all, kind of seem like aliens with strange, heartless, cold, magical powers.
It’s possible to be ruthlessly individualistic and at the same time socially skilled, and those who are are noticed to be dangerous. When they are noticed at all.
Maybe Vox Day’s Sigma comes into play here. Alphas in the manosphere sense are socially dominant. Selfish, but outgoing enough to work the room. Vox’s Sigma probably could do that if he wanted to, he just can’t be bothered. Maybe sigmas are introverted alphas?
This is one of those reasons why a society of alphas is bad. It’s anti-social, even psychotic. You can’t form an actual society of just alphas. I think western society largely worked because its a society of betas, where both alphas and women who worship them are curtailed. Alphas are much more into zero sum actions, betas much more into positive sum actions.
I’ll agree that many of our useful civic minded traits are basically socialist in nature. I also agree that human society needs a balance of individualist and socialist minded people and attitudes.
I’d probably disagree with you that on the whole alphas tend to quite as psychopathic as you paint them, however I will agree that a lot of psychopaths and those with the “dark triad” traits are alpha.
Politically I’m pro socialist, to a small degree. I think humans need some socialist efforts in our organizations, to care for the public common land for instance. Personally and how I live my life I’m largely pro-individualist. However if I purchase virgin rainforest land (which I’m looking in to), I’d consider it my duty to manage it responsibly.
Isn’t that just another way of saying you use political stances (which largely don’t affect you) to assuage guilt from selfish actions take in private (which do affect you).
Alphas are by nature selfish. They will or won’t benefit society to the extent that selfishness can be channeled into useful outlets. So when alphas channel all that energy into starting useful companies, benefit. When they channel all that energy into ripping people off as investment bankers, destructive.
You’re basically saying that you want to play the game in as selfish a way as possible, but that you want someone else to set up the rules so your selfishness isn’t too destructive. However, I don’t think there is any possible rule set that can work if everyone takes a me first attitude. Any system is going to require social capital and altruism. To many alphas and that breaks.
I’m not really following you. Are you suggesting that I personally live a lifestyle that is destructive to others, and that in order to assuage the guilt of this I allow myself some political empathy towards some socialist ideals?
“This is one of those reasons why a society of alphas is bad. It’s anti-social, even psychotic. You can’t form an actual society of just alphas.”
This reminds me of the game’s theory hawk-dove problem played not one on one, but in populations over an infinite number of iterations.
It’s a self correcting mechanism: as the # of hawks increases, there is less and less benefit in being a hawk. So, with a lag, their # decreses, leading to more benefits etc. (Here hawk and dove refer to the members of the same population, or ‘species’ with different strategies).
You explained that better than I usually do. My clumsy explanation is that niche markets mathematically demand that all our current various sexual strategies exist, in perpetuity, and in tension and opposition.
You can’t socially engineer away the alphas, nor teach all betas to be alpha. Both strategies, as well as others, exist because the system automatically creates niche markets for them to exist.
“Are you suggesting that I personally live a lifestyle that is destructive to others”
I obviously don’t know enough about you to suggest anything that specific. Merely your line of reasoning suggests it:
“Personally and how I live my life I’m largely pro-individualist.”
In the context I’m assuming for this conversation based on your post: individualist = selfish.
“in order to assuage the guilt of this I allow myself some political empathy towards some socialist ideals?”
Well, if we assume the context noted above it can certainly be interpreted that way.
I think it is quite a leap of interpretation to spin selfish to be equal to harmful.
I don’t even think that you believe what you are saying, and so it’s difficult to try to take you seriously.
Nobody could possibly believe that being selfish necessitates being destructive to others.
You are just trying to chose sides in a game of ego investment. The dutiful betas versus the rogue cads. You are arguing with emotion, and being careless with logic.
self·ish /ˈsɛlfɪʃ/ Show Spelled[sel-fish]
adjective
1. devoted to or caring only for oneself; concerned primarily with one’s own interests, benefits, welfare, etc., regardless of others.
So the definition of selfish is that you enrich yourself at the expense of others.
The definition you quoted is self enrichment regardless of others, not at the harm and destruction of others.
You are making wild free associations, and calling it logic.
Did you know that harming others causes all humans who are not born with the distinct brain setup of a sociopath to feel pain? It is in all normal humans psychological makeup to avoid causing harm, for selfish reasons. Most humans, aside from sociopaths or others with affective personality disorders also identify with an ingroup, and often that ingroup idendification can in some contexts mean all of humanity, and even animals. Causing harm to members of ones ingroup causes our mirror neurons to make us feel pain. Empathy is an automatic brain process.
Naturally it is selfish to avoid causing pain. And conversely it is selfish to make others feel good, as that also feels good.
Sociopathy is not a personality trait, it is an innate brain wiring condition. It can not be treated, and you can not get it. Normal people are not subject to becoming sociopaths, and sociopaths are not subject to becoming normal people.
For non-sociopaths, being selfish will not include causing harm, because such an act will naturally feel bad. Humans don’t act morally only because God told them to. We do so because it is in our natural inclination, because we want to feel good.
Merry Christmas.
Homer: This isn’t fair! How can you tell who’s sane and who’s insane?
Doctor: Well, we have a very simple method.
[stamps his hand, `INSANE’]
Whoever has that stamp on his hand is insane.
Its very neat to divide people to sociopaths and non-sociopaths. It makes things easy. These are the normal people, these are the freaks. No messy moral choices involved.
I think the use of “ingroup” is important here. For many, its an ingroup of one (I’m looking out for #1). For others it might be your family but no more (the mob boss that steals and murders for a living but treats his wife and kids fantastic). For others it might be an ethnic group or social class. The important thing here is that the out group is the enemy, and you do harm to them for your own benefit. If that’s being a sociopath, then we are all sociopaths to one degree or another. We just adjust the size, nature, and contexts of our in and out groups.
Alphas have very narrowly defined in groups, often a single person. And their relations to outgroups can be very antagonistic. You see a lot more dark triad traits with alphas.
Betas tend to define very wide inclusive in groups. For the purpose of sports, it can be your entire city. This can be dangerous if you take the outgroup two seriously (say, like WWII). But at least it starts from the basic idea that the in group is a wide net, and that other people do matter as more then raw materials for your own advancement.
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