I often like to sum it up as: "Thinking gangs observed in prison represent human households."
This goes along with an imagined mockumentary, narrated by a David Attenborough figure, ex: "In the living room, a confrontation is brewing. The Big Boss has informed the bottom-tier Henchmen Homies that it is time for lights-out, but they are not ready to leave the television and they resent the privileges of the older Made Man, who is permitted to remain. This is a problem for the Big Boss, since directly punishing them might undermine his claim to control the group as a whole. Fortunately for him, his Enforcer is arriving from the kitchen, attracted by the noise..."
When I was younger I made a switch from IT to teaching at elementary. One of the teachers that guided me, hinted to watch series about a dog trainer to see how he takes the lead, what happens between those. Although I respect that man, that really didn't resonate with me, realizing that I wouldn't want to learn that way; so I don't want to teach that way.
This article explains a lot better how I feel about this than I was able to 15 years ago.
I'm also curious. When I first taught some younger kids I went in thinking they were like little people... that did not work well.
When I instead started to treat them as glorified chimps, everything went better for them and for me.
In the meantime I'm still somehow expecting that my children will behave like little people... Haha, humans really suck at learning, even from our own experiences.
Interesting. In my dealings with younger (and older) kids, thinking of them as little people seems to work well. Little, fully complete people, with many parts dramatically simpler (and more straightforward) than adults.
But then, I also think of adults as glorified chimps. Many parts are somewhat more complex -- though if you look closely enough, you'll see that much of the complexity is more of a veneer than anything deep.
Basic human nature shows through more with kids. Much of human nature is animal nature. Growing up seems to be mostly about setting those impulses against each other and delaying, suppressing, and avoiding the manifestations. In the process, we convince ourselves that we've had earth-shaking fundamental realizations about Truth and Beauty and Morality that lesser beings like children could never comprehend, as we go about our day with a sippy cup of caffeine in one hand, capturing the value that others have created as we lie and deceive to advance our supposedly noble goals, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the herd.
I have a child and I'll be honest it was only when she was like 5 that I'd say that she was more complex than a dog. Small children cannot be reasoned with, only bribed and given sufficient motivation or demotivation via a carefully balanced set of prizes and punishments.
After that she could be reasoned with, but had reduced ability to keep to her intention long term due to lack of experience and inability to imagine outcomes, so a lot of teaching an early elementary schooler involves setting up experiments to demonstrate the wisdom or lack of wisdom in particular actions. At least in my parenting. I imagine this is what is meant.
Yip, pretty much exactly this. It's easy to get confused because they have all the makings of a person, but their minds are just still extremely underdeveloped.
For a silly example in teaching chess - a typical issue is kids moving way too fast. You can explain to them why it's bad, and they understand. They can then even show you exact moments where they really hurt themselves from moving too quickly, and so on.
So after this you think to yourself - 'I did a great job. He not only knows not to do this, but more importantly - why.' Then next game he's right back to playing like he starts with 10 seconds on his clock.
So then - ok forget all the logic stuff. Each move I want you to literally sit on your hands for at least 10 seconds before moving. And suddenly - the problem is resolved.
> schools bear more than a passing resemblance to prisons.
The qualifier some needs to be applied to that too. None of the schools I have any personal knowledge of in the UK or Norway bear (or bore in the case of my own childhood) the slightest resemblance to a prison. Well, there was one. I accompanied a colleague in the US when he picked up his daughter at the end of the school day, I was astonished to find that he had to present himself at a reception desk that was guarding locked doors that were the only way in and out.
It is not about having bars and armed guards, it is about having a strong fixed hierarchy, fixed routines, rules far stricter than society outside, punishments such as being put in isolation etc.
A lot of this applies to some other highly disciplined environments such as the military too, but it is not the norm for most of us (and the military volunteer to be there).
The physical and security aspects of a school in the UK are not like a prison, but the social and discipline aspects are. More so at some schools than others and I think people who have only had contact with better schools do not realise how bad the bad ones can be.
> I think people who have only had contact with better schools do not realise how bad the bad ones can be
I grew up in a poor rural area and my wife an upper class coastal community, both in the USA. It’s amazing to compare and contrast our public school experiences. I was just trying to survive a situation that was both psychologically and physically abusive, with public humiliation rituals, solitary confinement, and gangs of bullies that cornered and robbed people and violently punished social non conformity- I still feel terror remembering it decades later. Even the lessons were nonsense propaganda- science classes literally focused on creationism, history class on “states rights,” etc. She was in a playful relaxing environment that included regular upper class leisure activities like sailing, skiing, and horseback riding, and had well equipped science labs with teachers that were passionate about science.
While I didn't go to more wealthy schools as a child, I grew up in a 'middle class to poorish' rural area in the midwest and moved to a poorish area in the south.
I'll use your own words to describe the change in the experience
>I was just trying to survive a situation that was both psychologically and physically abusive, with public humiliation rituals, solitary confinement, and gangs of bullies that cornered and robbed people and violently punished social non conformity-
I got the full 'the science teacher is the bully coach and believes the world was created 6000 years ago, and if you were one of the kids they liked you could commit crimes, and you were not liked then crimes could be committed against you' experience.
At least in the UK creationism is a rarity. The huge difference between good and bad schools exists though.
My kids were home educated up to 16 and then went to a sixth form college (school for 16 to 18 year olds) that is pretty good and well funded with some really good teachers (the physics teachers are outstanding - one that taught by older daughter now works for CERN, the head of department has a PhD, and they are all passionate about the subject). its not immune from league table pressure, the curse of education in the UK.
It is probably more about the difference between women and men experience growing up. Women usually do not face violence directly. They face other problems though.
Don't believe for a second that growing up in an upper class environment does not have social dynamics. I grew up in one in Europe. In an upper class school there are bullies as bad as you could find in a lower class one, probably worse, because they have resources and connections to create harm. And sometimes their parents are worse than them.
Do not idealise what you have not live. You could go skiing and they can choke with the ski poles. This happened to one of my friends because he criticised one guy.
You are not understanding the extent of violence and abuse I am talking about, and how it was systematically led and encouraged by the teachers and staff. I’m not talking about just bullies being at the school- or normal boys dominance and fighting - of course that can happen anywhere.
Despite going to a poor school, my family was well off, and I had personal experience with other environments including Boy Scouts, summer camps, etc. that still included normal social dynamics between boys with plenty of fighting, etc. but that is absolutely nothing like what I am describing above.
> it is about having a strong fixed hierarchy, fixed routines, rules far stricter than society outside, punishments such as being put in isolation etc.
What do you make of the recent claim that something like 20-30% of people are fundamentally authoritarian in nature and want these fixed hierarchies and routines?
> their (Chimpanzees') social dynamics aren’t solely based on violence
Correct. A book on Chimpanzees was connected to human nature by a reviewer in the Chicago Tribune, a 1999 Time article and the obviously totally-scientific pick-up book The Game [1].
not solely through violence. alpha chimps are often big, but not necessarily the biggest.
best way I've heard it explained: the alpha chimp usually does the most grooming of other chimps of any of the males in the troop.
they're out there making deals and building relationships. tough guys can try to overpower those so the top chimp also gotta be tough enough to stand up, but it's as much about relationships as it is about muscles
Everywhere where you are unhappy and/or uncomfortable is a prison for yourself. It could be a football stadion where some weird guy has made you the mocking target.
another analogy would be: aliens abducting a bunch of humans and recreating the Stanford Prison Experiment and write up on human society based on that, which ends-up reshaping alien culture.
I think they are, but causality is the other way around. A lot of gang originate from prison. Its really logical too, you put all the crime-graduates in a place together and you think they wont become friends and partners in crime?
Street gangs are really fascinating, and aren't, like, "well-oiled crime machines" in general.
Economically, you have to understand some of the function of a street gang as we currently understand them: it is to be able to provide retail drug sales without either elaborate vetting of clients (which many potential clients will be unable to comply with), and without having the police be able to trivially shut it down.
The thing that makes this work is the use of juveniles to take the money/hand off the drugs. The police can easily find and arrest them, but they don't suffer prison sentences or unsealed criminal records as a result. Adults monitor the process but do not handle the drugs or money out in the open, so it is non-trivial to arrest them.
As a result, gangs have to be attractive to juveniles (almost exclusively boys), and function in a lot of ways as a social group and/or a somewhat violent community sports team (the sport in question being "having fistfights with other gangs"). Adult criminals who lead the gang push towards more serious violence with economic goals (eg: seizing the most valuable territory) and less social activities, the teenagers who are in the gang push towards more recreational violence and more social activities. Depending on what the size of the economic opportunity is in the area, you get more or less professional-seeming gangs.
So for example you see all this kind of D&D-like creation of iconography and myths in street gangs, strange coded symbols that they use in graffiti and superstitious beliefs (Bloods avoiding the use of the letter "c" in their words because it evokes their rivals the Crips), that I, at least, felt an undeniable resonance with in terms of my own adolescence. This doesn't serve an economic rationale and I think that adult gang leaders mostly are annoyed with it as a distraction, but reflects the interests and proclivities of the rank-and-file members.
You also need most of the teenagers to age out of the gang and leave (the gang can't absorb lots of adult members), which means being somewhat relaxed about entry and exit to the gang.
Absent an economic rationale for the gang, like prior to the rise of organized drug sales, my understanding is that teenage-dominated gangs were in general just social circles for malcontent teenage males, who largely did, like, vandalism and antisocial pranks, not Real Big Serious Crime.
Prison gangs, lacking the juvenile component, seem to me to be seriously different, though I've never read much about them.
It's fairly common historically for gangs to arise out of organized communal self-defense that itself happens in response to some threat. Once the threat is gone, the structure remains in place and members keep looking for ways to apply their newly acquired skills, with protection racket being a popular choice.
You go to prison and have your rights stripped away and you pretty much have nothing. As much as gangs use violence they also provide protection and friendship.
Now you get out of prison and you have that big old criminal stain on your record. You're having trouble surviving and making enough, but you remember your new gang friends tell you to find a guy when you're out and he can help you. Congratulations, the circle is complete.
It seems clear in all your replies here that you see ‘alpha’ as a synonym for ‘leader’, and as a somewhat relative term (like, my boss is an alpha to me, and a beta to their boss). Given your definition, of course it’s obvious that it apples to many facets of human society. Leaders and followers are all around us.
But in popular discourse there’s also a sense of ‘alphas’ getting into their position by violence or assholery that I think your definition is missing.
Even in scientific discourse, there is the idea that ‘alphas’ must gain their position by dominance - not by other methods (prestige, age, etc).
People use words in different ways, so in a way your definition is as good as any other, but (as with anything language related) you can’t really insist on it if others think it means something different and you want to have reasonable conversations with them (ironically, insisting on your definition seems like an attempt to assert dominance).
Edit: removed some snark, sorry. But I’ll also add: the article uses the scientific usage I mentioned above: wild real wolf pack ‘leaders’ aren’t ‘alphas’ because they don’t maintain their position by dominating the other wolves.
The claim that "alpha" is defined as requiring violence or assholery is incorrect, and this is backed by scientific studies, dictionary definitions, and leadership psychology research. Here’s why:
1. Official Dictionary Definitions
Oxford English Dictionary (OED):
Alpha (in social contexts):
"A person who assumes a dominant role in a particular group, especially one who is respected or influential."
Oxford English Dictionary - Alpha Definition
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Alpha (as in 'Alpha Male/Female'):
"The most dominant, powerful, or assertive person in a particular group."
Merriam-Webster - Alpha Definition
Nowhere in these definitions does it state that an alpha must use violence or aggression to gain dominance.
2. Scientific Studies on Leadership & Alpha Behavior
Study: Dominance Hierarchies in Social Animals
Dugatkin, L. A. (1997). "Winner and Loser Effects and the Structure of Dominance Hierarchies." Behavioral Ecology, 8(5), 583-587.
"Dominance hierarchies in animal and human groups are often established through social signaling, resource control, and cooperation rather than brute force."
Dugatkin, 1997
Study: Leadership Without Aggression in the Animal Kingdom
Smith, J. E. et al. (2016). "Obligate Sociality Without Cooperation: Insights From Other Taxa." Behavioral Ecology, 27(1), 1-14.
"Alphas are often those who exhibit superior social intelligence, cooperation, and decision-making ability rather than reliance on aggressive behaviors."
Smith et al., 2016
These studies explicitly state that alphas do NOT require violence to gain or maintain their status.
3. Leadership Psychology: Alphas Lead Without Coercion
Goleman, D. (1995). "Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ." Bantam Books.
"True leaders, or ‘alphas’ in human social dynamics, are those who possess high emotional intelligence, resilience, and ability to influence without coercion."
Goleman, 1995
Bass, B. M. (1990). "From Transactional to Transformational Leadership: Learning to Share the Vision." Organizational Dynamics, 18(3), 19-31.
"Successful leadership is based on vision, respect, and strategy. Coercion and force are indicative of weak leadership rather than true dominance."
Bass, 1990
These sources define "alpha" as a leader who influences others positively, not through aggression.
4. Debunking the Claim That "Alpha" = Violence
L. David Mech (1999). "Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs."
"The term 'alpha' is often misunderstood. In both animals and humans, successful leadership is based on intelligence, decision-making ability, and social bonding—not brute force."
Mech, 1999
This refutes the claim that alpha = inherently violent.
Final Conclusion: The Definition of "Alpha" Does NOT Require Violence
Dictionaries define "alpha" as dominance through leadership, not necessarily aggression.
Scientific studies show that dominance in social animals is often achieved through cooperation and intelligence.
Leadership psychology research confirms that true human "alphas" lead through respect and influence, not assholery.
The idea that "alpha" = "violent dictator" is a pop culture myth, not backed by science or formal definitions.
> These sources define "alpha" as a leader who influences others positively, not through aggression.
No? Look:
Your Merriam-Webster quote (although I can't find it online)
"the most dominant, powerful, or assertive person"
That's not becoming a leader by being helpful and getting people's trust.
It's instead dominance and assertiveness, that's something else.
I think you mistakenly what to have the word "alpha" mean the same thing as "leader". But I think that's not how people in general look at these words.
I just checked your #2 Dugatkin. I am only able to access the abstract [0] (though interested in the full article as you appear to be quoting from part of it which is not publicly available).
It does not at all represent itself as even taking a specific side on the meaning of "alpha" let alone testify to an academic consensus of any decisive proof one way or the other. It doesn't even have anything to do with the study itself at all.
The line you quoted seems more like an aside. The study was apparently about a simulated game theoretic model, and even refers to the units in the simulation as "combatants". It is an attempt to model and simulate "winner effects" and "loser effects" in tandem over time. It's mostly interested in contrasting this approach with models that only deal with "winner effects" or "loser effects" but not their simultaneous dynamics.
It ends with a modest expression of hope to spur future similar studies and is not even pretending to venture anything like a final definition of "alpha", let alone represent the full weight of academic consensus on that question. Citing it for that purpose feels like drive-by quote mining.
Dugatkin, "Winner and Loser Effects and the Structure of Dominance Hierarchies" was an interesting read this morning. Thanks for the reference.
The main thing I take away from the paper is that (in computer simulations) bigger winner effects and bigger loser effects lead to strongly defined hierarchies. Fewer subjects have ambiguous positions.
I'm not sure the paper speaks much to which strategies (e.g. violence vs cooperation) are more common or effective.
Right, it seems to entirely abstract away the nature of the interactions themselves, and is modeling how changes to position in hierarchy unfold over time with repeated wins or losses. It's not speaking to the nature of the interaction itself, and so not really taking sides on whether it does or doesn't involve such things as force, toughness, etc.
Violence is an effective strategy. One of many. It's not stable but it has been used successfully in human history. The thing is you can't have a society that's constantly violent all the time forever and ever. Those tend to self select via natural selection.
You can have societies be temporarily violent like how Americans slaughtered and killed Native Americans and took over the continent. The formation of the USA comes from this type of effective violence. Who would be the alphas in this case? the native americans? Or the ones that invaded? I know I'm a bit on the nose here, but this is just reality.
Violence is like a key on a piano. You were born with it. You can choose not to play that note, but it is always there, it is never not there.
You can choose to play great melodies without the violence note. You can choose to play melodies with the violence note. You can be forced in a corner and have no option but to hammer the violence key until the strings scream.
> Official Dictionary Definitions Oxford English Dictionary (OED): Alpha (in social contexts): "A person who assumes a dominant role in a particular group, especially one who is respected or influential."
Do you have a link for this definition? I'm unable to find it or the one you attribute to Merriam-Webster on their websites.
(Their websites are shit. I'm curious about the dates around those definitions.)
I mean that's all true enough, but their point, at least narrowly read as a general observation about animals, stands. There are ample examples in nature of dominance hierarchies, even if wolves aren't one of them.
Of course, as you note, looking to these examples as a basis for a personal ethos for tough guy psychology is error riddled in so many ways you could write a book unpacking it all. (E.g. why choose other animals remote from the lineage of apes to which we belong, why for that matter not just study humans in the first place, why hitch any ethos to what happens in nature, why not look at what it says about people who seem to need to indulge in this search, etc.)
It's good to show that this argument fails on its own terms with its own chosen example, but getting into that kind of back and forth risks implicitly agreeing that it would be right to think that way, should such an example be found in nature. And those examples do exist in nature even if not necessarily with wolves.
But as you noted that doesn't have anything to do with better or worse, right or wrong, and is completely lacking in self-awareness about the actual psychological dynamics that causes people to need these kinds of narratives.
> first thing that comes to mind is lions and gorillas
Better ones are chickens and horses. (Females, I believe, in both cases.)
Gorillas have a variety of social structures, only one which involves the Silverback fighting for dominance [1]. With lions, meanwhile, the females eat first [2].
> are they not alphas? Don't we structure our teams according to leaders?
Leaders, yes. Hotheads, no. The “alpha” hypothesis states that the most aggressive rises to the top.
Of course. Nobody argued aggression isn’t effective. The argument is it isn’t the effective strategy, just one among many.
> See here on what an alpha is
You’re taking a definition that arose from animal observations and then filtered through anthropological and management academia. Colloquial, academic and industry definitions have diverged on this term; it’s probably being redefined in American English right now.
> Also for chickens, I've raised chickens
Chickens are the correct analogy. If you’re leading a team of people who remind you of chickens, leading with aggression works. (Not exaggerating. Some situations respond well to e.g. raising one’s voice or acting out frustration.)
As your sources show, that isn’t necessary for leadership.
>You’re taking a definition that arose from animal observations and then filtered through anthropological and management academia. Colloquial, academic and industry definitions have diverged on this term; it’s probably being redefined in American English right now.
I cited two dictionaries as well.
>Chickens are the correct analogy. If you’re leading a team of people who remind you of chickens, leading with aggression works. (Not exaggerating. Some situations respond well to e.g. raising one’s voice or acting out frustration.)
Analogies were never part of the equation. You know they weren't. You were talking about animals explicitly not animals as an analogy. I feel you're trolling.
Those are point-in-time snapshots. The Wikipedia article expands on the term's etymology [1].
(If you can provide links to those definitions I'll help look up when they were adopted. I couldn't find the definition you quoted on Webster's website [2], for example.)
> Analogies were never part of the equation
The term is an analogy. That's the point. There was a term in animal ethology that was popularised to the point it entered mainstream use. Synonymising alpha to leadership, moreover, is even more recent and mostly occuring in American English (and now, with partisan flair).
The thing is that when someone has to work hard to seem Alpha they are instead revealing their insecurity--the need to compensate to hide vulnerability.
Some people play into that game, others see through it.
Alphas are just leaders. Whether they have vulnerabilities is orthogonal to the fact that they control and lead the pack. Whether it’s through force or pay.
Do you have a good boss that you like who’s a good person? He’s an alpha. You’re a beta if you’re under him. Do you have a boss who’s an ass hole who got pegged and raped by his uncle when he was a kid and now he’s taking all that pent up humiliation on you? Yeah he has a big vulnerability. But. He. Is. Still. An. Alpha.
It’s not a game. Games are for friend groups and kids. I’m talking about the economic engine that builds civilization itself. That engine is made up of a hierarchy of alphas and betas.
(Dominance-related) insecurity is being pathologically averse to being seen as weak, which leads to preferring dominance as form over dominance as function. If the meek hippie gets everything he wants from his wife, his neighbors, his peers, etc., and the physically impressive traditional man is ignored and rejected, then the hippie is more dominant (i.e., leading and getting what he wants) than the traditional man (even if he is abusing his wife the whole time she laughs at him).
The actually effective strategies are available to the insecure but shunned and rejected because they cannot be tolerated, creating a self-imposed impotence.
The word alpha, in almost every context I've observed, is used exclusively to refer to such dominance as form, especially in substitution for dominance as function. i.e., it is applied almost exclusively to people who are definitionally not dominant.
The only exception I have encountered is women-focused kink literature which, being fantasy, maintains that dominance as form is dominance as function so as to make sexual fantasies seem more real.
In short: you are describing a kink, not real life. Though I consider that you might be joking too; I really can't tell.
Literally you can go to the dictionary yourself and look up the definition to see how baseless your argument is.
I don't know why you people are just pulling this bs out of thin air. It can't be just BS is several people are coming from your angle despite extraordinary evidence to the contrary. Maybe it's just shared victimhood. Were you bullied by these types of people before?
I call it a kink because I attract women with the kink.
I'm referring to pragmatics not semantics; the use of dictionary definitions is a category error.
No, I was not bullied. People like I describe would posture, I would raise my eyebrow and wait, and then they would treat me nice and pretend it didn't happen. Dominance as form outside the bedroom is remarkably ineffective. That's why I call it dominance as form.
"When a diplomat says yes, he means ‘perhaps’;
When he says perhaps, he means ‘no’;
When he says no, he is not a diplomat. —Voltaire (Quoted, in Spanish, in Escandell 1993.)
These lines — also attributed to H. L. Mencken and Carl Jung — may or may not be fair to diplomats, but are surely correct in reminding us that more is involved in what one communicates than what one literally says; more is involved in what one means than the standard, conventional meaning of the words one uses. The words ‘yes,’ ‘perhaps,’ and ‘no’ each has a perfectly identifiable meaning, known by every speaker of English (including not very competent ones). However, as those lines illustrate, it is possible for different speakers in different circumstances to mean different things using those words. How is this possible? What’s the relationship among the meaning of words, what speakers mean when uttering those words, the particular circumstances of their utterance, their intentions, their actions, and what they manage to communicate? These are some of the questions that pragmatics tries to answer; the sort of questions that, roughly speaking, serve to characterize the field of pragmatics."[1]
If you redefine alpha to just mean "leader", then the claim that CEOs are alphas is obviously true, but also meaningless.
But the theory TFA is about was not just that wolf packs had a leader. It made a bunch of other claims, as TFA describes, and those other parts (that you're excluding) are what's considered debunked.
There's no redefinition here. When we refer to animals in every context, alphas are leaders. There's no "redefinition" going on here at all. What's going on is you're not able to see how alphas apply to human society. You're not able to jump the intellectual gap to identify, "hey if packs of animals have alphas, what's the human equivalent?"
I attempted to jump that gap for you, but you're not able to see it.
>But the theory TFA is about was not just that wolf packs had a leader. It made a bunch of other claims, as TFA describes, and those other parts (that you're excluding) are what's considered debunked.
And he applies that to humans without considering alphas in other animal hierarchies. He implies that the entire theoretical concept of alphas comes ONLY from wolves and once he debunks wolves (with no citations) he debunks the entire concept of what an alpha is. Riiggght.
> There's no redefinition here. When we refer to animals in every context, alphas are leaders.
Yes, there is a redefinition. The context of Alpha Wolf was based on the notion of a dominance hierarchy, which does occur when unrelated wolves are put together in a confined space. In the wild though, they function more like a family, with no acts of dominance. The breeding pair still lead the pack, but not through dominance.
> What's going on is you're not able to see how alphas apply to human society. You're not able to jump the intellectual gap to identify, "hey if packs of animals have alphas, what's the human equivalent?"
I literally just pointed out that if you are defining alpha to mean "leader" then it's meaningless to then claim that leaders are alphas. That was the comment.
> Could you elaborate what is the meaning of “alpha”?
There isn't a fixed definition [1]. Most definitions reference dominance, e.g. Merriam-Webster [2]. (Annoyingly, dominance also has different meanings in anthropology, animal ethology, sociology and common use.)
But due to the term being relatively new, adopted from animal ethology, co-tiopted by the memeverse and now being politically charged, you're basically walking into semantic ground zero by using the term.
Have you actually read the article? He does give a citation to the same author who initially coined the term alpha wolf.
And redefining alpha to just mean leader is a redefinition, as written in the article the term originates from the alpha wolf who achieved dominance through overtly aggressive behaviour (which does not match with how wolves behave in the wild).
It's ironic that you bring up CEOs etc as proof that there's alphas, when the whole premise of the article is that recent structuring of human society is based on an this wrong view that the aggressive dominance is "natural" and what is required for leaders
No they are not. There are plenty of leaders who are not alphas and they lead organizations that achieve good things.
Alphas are generally just assholes who want to be leaders. They usually lead self selected friends who crave their validation and people with healthy boundaries just nope out of those systems.
The only colloquial usage I've seen is that it is someone who has the ability to demand that others perform a public display of obedience to them. Like every time I've seen somebody unironically refer to themself as an "alpha," it's always had that underlying connotation of "Respect Me!" And every time I've seen someone mocking somebody else for being an "alpha," it's because, well, that respect was clearly undeserved.
> Like every time I've seen somebody unironically refer to themself as an "your leader," it's always had that underlying connotation of "Respect Me!" And every time I've seen someone mocking somebody else for being an "my leader," it's because, well, that respect was clearly undeserved.
I think same sentiment persists when alpha->”your leader” replacement is made.
Right but the term here is used to categorize human/animal hierarchies/behavior in an objective context. No one is here projecting their alphaness onto others. Clearly.
The article isn't wrong about captivity/freedom, although alphas are certainly thing.
Hierarchies are naturally born out of confrontations and how they're settled, and captivity (ie scarcity) breeds confrontations. If two separate entities have opposing wants which cannot be satisfied simultaneously (ie are mutually exclusive), how do you determine who get's what they want? Well, naturally some kind of fight happens. Which either involves displays of intimidation, threats, arguments, or acts of violence (ie aggression).
Naturally, living organisms value life and consider risks which threaten their livelihood, and so, these situations are always an assessment of wants, such as "is my want for the last piece of food, greater than my want to avoid fighting my opponent?" Or, "Am I willing to risk dying for this? Do I need this food, do I need to fight this opponent or can I get food elsewhere before dying of starvation?".
As so, animals typically use violence as a last resort for settling disputes, unless the risks are so low as to be play (ie you're certain to win). It should therefore not be surprising that captive animals (or animals backed into a corner) feel obligated to fight, as they have few alternatives to avoid confrontation. Whereas, non-captive animals, by being more free, are better able to avoid a direct confrontation, and therefore exhibit less acts of aggression.
An alpha, just happens to be those who win disputes repeatedly, and opponents or potential opponents have learned to be intimidated by them, and so cede disputes to them when they arise without fighting. A hierarchy is thus naturally formed from repeated disputes.
when companies are big enough (to where CEO actually has meaning), shareholder rights kick in, and there are many additional legal requirements; none of those require a CEO
If CEOs are the alphas, then why are some of them so submissive recently to a certain someone? The alpha male mythos tells me that these men have huge amounts of agency and power and yet...they make a big show of turning themselves into lapdogs? The Internet says thats not alpha behavior!
It's almost as if reality is more nuanced than what 4Chan taught us: CEOs have people they need to answer to, people they're scared of, and that's part of what it means to be a human.
That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.
That’s equivalent to the male on the couch watching TV with a shotgun on his lap defending his territory and the females going hunting (aka kitchen) to make the husband a sandwich.
Joking aside the males are the leaders. How do I know? They kill the kids on arrival and the females can’t do fuck shit.
> That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.*
That's a myth.
Male lions do hunt. When hunting alone and not as "heavy support" for the females, they use different strategies than the females, and do it in a different environment. I read an article from a researcher about that in particular, can't remember any context to find it quickly though.
There are many (scientific and casual) articles like that though:
I would argue that the wealthy which hold loans based on stock collateral are holding debt and not credit. US banking laws are just hiding the fact. So a number of rich people you define as alpha are not really alpha because of debt vs credit imbalance.
This means the person spending money while going through Disney World are alpha.
Bro I define an alpha as someone who leads and controls others. Someone people follow whether by will or by force or because they are paid a salary.
You’re just being pedantic. I don’t need to explain to you why people intrinsically know Elon musk is an alpha and the person going to Disney world is a beta.
To me the Alpha Mentality is just stupidity in another Yes-Man form.
Seems you hold the alpha mentality deeply and respect those you seem as alpha. By your own logic, cult leaders are alpha and should be respected.
Respect can only be earned, continuously reinforced, and lost in a single moment. Respect cannot be demanded or forcefully requested.
Watch the first episode of "Band of Brothers". Who would you want as a leader, the alpha, one with power, Captain Herbert Sobel or 2nd Lutenaint Richard Winters, the one without power?
Sure HNers hate Elon for various reasons. But overall some random dude who goes to disney world versus A billionaire who caught a rocket and makes stupid tweets online.... Let's be real here about what "society" defines as alpha, not some HNers backwater opinion.
ANd even that HNer knows his contrary opinion is backwater. Trump and Elon get a lot of hate, but they are leaders on the apex of the human status hierarchy.
When I think of “leaders of the human status hierarchy”, I do not think of a man who spends his entire day online trolling people, regardless of whether he is worth billions or not. Similarly, I don’t picture a guy that wears lifts because he is ashamed of his height, or who paints his face orange, to be that “apex” either.
For some public companies retail share holders also have to be groveled to.
I don't have an overall point here other than that power isn't as simple as some people want it to be. You command a ship until there's a mutiny. There are hierarchies, but that's only one way of slicing things. It's more about a set of several feedback loops that nobody explicitly understands.
Of course it’s not simple. But alphas and betas are intrinsic to society and that’s my point.
You will see that society converges towards alphas. There have been attempts to make everything egalitarian but it doesn’t last and alphas pop up everywhere. Heck you can’t even make a purely voting society where society votes on everything. Instead everyone votes for an alpha. Aka trump.
I don’t like your tone. When you say not everyone behaves like Americans you sound like you’re implying superiority as if Americans don’t behave well and I have to conform to your version of good behavior. Change your tone or I won’t continue with you.
For a good primer on hierarchy dynamics in human systems, I recommend Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan.
In what Logan calls stage 3 leadership, organizations cluster around individual “rockstar” people - and this is the vast majority of human organizations.. they estimate 80%.
In Stage 4, it’s all rockstar people organized around values vs. a person.
You certainly still have people who have authority through competency, but people aren’t granted authority based purely on “position”.
Stage 4 culture are the best in the world, and learning how to build them is a worthwhile skill.
bunch of submissive in the sheets CEOs? as long as we're operating on feelings and emotions here
the whole thing is dimwitted bullshit psychological theory
This goes along with an imagined mockumentary, narrated by a David Attenborough figure, ex: "In the living room, a confrontation is brewing. The Big Boss has informed the bottom-tier Henchmen Homies that it is time for lights-out, but they are not ready to leave the television and they resent the privileges of the older Made Man, who is permitted to remain. This is a problem for the Big Boss, since directly punishing them might undermine his claim to control the group as a whole. Fortunately for him, his Enforcer is arriving from the kitchen, attracted by the noise..."