Why I Prefer Dating Women Who Are Martial Artists

I'm such a beta male I can't keep up. I hate to ask but what's a sigma male?

 

A predatory marketing tool, designed to attract the next stage of young impressionable consumers, who feel alienated from society.

So basically the same demographic as Lynx/ Axe body spray.

 

Lol, what happened to this thread? It went into socio-political debates, Jordan Petersen, Captain America and hazel-nut milk. Lmao

 

Anyone who ascribes to the alpha/beta male nonsense in human culture needs to watch the film "The Admirable Crichton" and let it sink in a bit.

 

Looks good.


The alpha thing has also been rejected by the guy who did the original research, and then withdraw the research once he did further studies:

There's no such thing as an alpha male


Of course there's also the argument that "high school never ends," put forward by bowling for soup et al.




So maybe hiarachies exist, they're not binary, and they are context dependent.

Of course when the hiarachy doesn't work for the benefit of all/most, that's when revolutions can start / leaders get rejected by the rest of the hiarachy.

 

Exactly. An alpha male chimp is an alpha male chimp no matter what. Until he's deposed and another assumes the alpha position.
But human society has so much cultural layering and complexity your status at any time is very context dependent. Hence the relevance of "The Admirable Crichton" where the butler goes from being a very low ranking person in one situation and then the highest ranking person in another. Without him, or the people around him actually changing as people.
Technology and technology dependent jobs also change the dynamic so that simple strength, size, attitude, confidence or gender aren't the main factors in being an "alpha".
Francis Ngannou is pretty "alpha" in his context (although strikes me as nice guy who wouldn't care about such games) but would need to take a back seat, listen to and take direction from a 120lb nervous nerd where I work.

 

Is this the best thread on MAP ever?

 

I never did see much validity to the whole 'beta' and 'alpha' male concept as well. Ironically enough, I've been called both of those labels by different kinds of people, which made me chuckle because it showed to me just how subjective these 'social tropes' can be

I don't consider myself neither. There are always shades of gray that comes with context and situations etc as Smitfire mentioned above as life is constantly changing as we know.

All I can ever be is my own man and not let the world define who I should be

 

I would definitely call it an alpha thread!

Or should that be a sigma thread, I can't keep up!

 

I think recently world events have shown, that people who have essential jobs, really arnt valued enough in society, and perhaps those at the higher levels of the income hiarachies, are less essential then perhaps they are valued as.

It will be interesting at how that destabilises the current hiarachies.

 

I think the guy who came up with the "alpha beta" thing has been trying for years to get rid of it as a thing because he realised his research was wrong and even animal societies are more complex than alpha and beta.

 

Link to original researcher explaining why he was wrong.

 

No, that wasn't. That was some schmuck who wrote an article.

http://www.wolf.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/267alphastatus_english.pdf

That is a link to a 1999 paper from Mech L. David where he discusses that, "In captive packs, the unacquainted wolves formed dominance hierarchies featuring alpha, beta, omega animals, etc. With such assemblages, these dominance labels were probably appropriate, for most species thrown together in captivity would usually so arrange themselves."

So it seems there are merits to the alpha/beta discussion under a certain context, and that can certainly be a plausible explanation under a myriad of scenarios for different species, including humans. Discussing alpha/beta status among human hierarchies may be a valid way of understanding human behavior in certain instances.

So . . . . my personal conclusion is that unhealthy social structures potentially form in unhealthy environments. So instead of saying, "aLpHa MaLeS dOn'T eXiSt" I'm prone to think that if there is a similar alpha/beta social dynamic going on in a social structure then it might be an early warning sign of an unhealthy social situation. Sounds more like a mindset that's potentially important to be aware of for self-defense purposes.

 

The article quoted the researchers updated thoughts, gave context and linked the original paper.

The original context is that wolves show this behaviour in captivity.

You are not a wolf and are not in direct captivity.

So apart from that your 100% correct.

 

Your post makes me suspicious about whether you read the paper linked in it.

He says the term is redundant, and specifically gives humans as an example of how the term is silly. On his website he calls it outdated terminology and says he has pleaded with his publisher to stop selling the book in which he posits the alpha concept.

Most importantly, in the paper you linked, he dismisses ideas of inherent alpha properties in pups, something that was inspired by his hypothesis but not borne out by evidence of fluid hierarchies in captive wolves. This is the whole shtick espoused by the "born to lead" crowd.

It's more akin to astrology than biology in the way people ascribe these inherent qualities to themselves and others to excuse behaviour.

 

I think your right here, overly hiarachical situations can enable abusive situations, some hiarachy is normal and is probably essential, but too much doesn't work well with our primate brains.

 

Undoubtedly some animals are heavily "alpha/beta". Elephant seals perhaps? Elephants? But much like Peterson's lobster boys I think we draw too many parallels with nature at our peril.

 

I just had a quick look at elephant seals, and it seems that the term "alpha" is just as redundant as it is in wolves, where an alpha male or female is just a wolf that breeds. It just means a mature male in elephant seals. The cultural connotations of the term "alpha" or "beta" add confusion to the lay person (like myself), and suggest there is some connection in behaviour between alpha elephant seals and alpha wolves, when the social hierarchy and pack structure is different, as is the mating behaviour.

Not only is it dodgy to draw parallels between this terminology in the animal kingdom and humans, it is also dodgy to draw parallels between animal species using this terminology.

 

Aye. I'm no biologist.
Just seen plenty of Attenborough programmes where there's a big "beach master" elephant seal who fights off all-comers and gets to mate with all the hot lady seals while the frustrated losers sulk in the waves.
Let's face it...that's exactly what human "alpha" males think they are like when they use those terms to describe themselves and others.