"Alpha" as Mentor, Model, Mirror

"The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor." - Vince Lombardi

When I was 17 years old a friend and I hitchhiked about 100 miles to a plot of land his parents owned in the woods. There was one of those pop-up trailers there, so we stayed in it a week or so.

Sometimes we went our separate ways. One time I was shooting baskets when a boy, about nine maybe, came over and wanted to shoot with me. After about half an hour I got bored enough to want to leave, but he protested - and he protested a lot - so I stayed another 20 minutes.

I was always stuck how vehemently he protested my attempt to leave. A little lonely, I suppose (we were in the middle of nowhere in the Ozarks), but I think there was more.

Why would a nine-year-old be so adamant about playing with a guy almost twice his age?

Years later I ran across three important ideas: mentor, model, mirror.

A mentor is a man who shows younger guys the ropes. A model is someone you model yourself after. And a mirror is someone in whom you can see yourself.

A mentor is self-explanatory and I don't have to say anything else about it. A model can be someone you consider a hero: a sports figure, or an actor, or a musician, or a writer. It's some who try you model yourself after so you can pick up their good traits.

Most people know what a mirror is, but they don't articulate it. A mirror is someone in whom you see yourself. If a person treats you with contempt and disdain, you see that. They are a distorted mirror in which you see yourself.

I have a large extended family. I was clearly the favorite of some of my relatives, and when I was a kid I picked up on how they treated me. For one thing, they thought I was hysterical. They were a mirror in which I saw myself as a funny kid who could make everyone laugh.

So what was I to that little boy?

I was all of them.

One thing I noticed about the Manosphere is that there is little talk about children. Except not to have any. And I've never heard any talk about models, mentors, and mirrors, although it's clear the "celebrities" of the Manosphere have set themselves up as models and sometimes mentors, and the Lost Boys look to them for advice. Unfortunately they give bad advice.

Let's take the concept of "Alpha." There are no Alphas. To be precise, there are two kinds, and they are the exact opposite of each other.

The first kind has always been known as a cad: womanizer, narcissist, insecure inside which he covers up with bluster (I always think of what Sam Spade said to Wilmer the Gunsel in The Maltese Falcon,: "The cheaper the hood the gaudier the patter"). I know this kind very well. Unless they change, they ruin their lives. They end up alone, with little to show for their lives. I have seen this several times, and history shows it to be true.

Yet some guys see people like Roissy and Roosh as models. I'll tell you this: both of them will sell out in a instant, and unless they change, both will end up lonely old men with nothing to show for it. They're cads.

Yet some consider them "Alphas." They're not, except for being the cad variety.

For that matter the concept of the Dark Triad is nonsense. Those who support it don't know what it is. Machiavellianism is a political philosophy. Some scholars, such as James Burnham in his book, The Machiavellians, claims it is a description of how politics works. Which is why politics is a cesspool.

Politics draws to it narcissists and sometimes psychopaths, which are the other two parts of the Dark Triad. There is nothing admirable about either of them. Both are interested only in power and incapable of love. The psychopaths are the worst: they have no conscience whatsoever, and the worst ones are the serial killers. The worst of the serial killers are necrophiliacs and cannibals. The notorious Ted Bundy, for one gruesome example, would torture women to death, dismember them and have sex with their body parts. Jeff Dahmer did the same thing.

Putting both narcissists and psychopaths in the Dark Triad again makes no sense. A narcissist and a psychopath are the same thing, except the psychopath is just an extreme form of a narcissist. All psychopaths are narcissists, but not all narcissists are psychopaths. You can't be both at the same time, unless you are a psychopath.

I will repeat that narcissists and psychopaths are incapable of love. They are only intoxicated by power - power and domination and control. As Carl Jung pointed out, you can have love or power, but you can't have both.

The second kind of Alpha is a chivalrous man. I don't mean "chivalrous" in the demeaning sense assigned to it by the more ignorant in the Mansosphere (they don't know what it is) but in the original sense of an armed man willing to do violence to defend what is right,i,e., willing to do violence to bad people. (Do you really think guys like Roissy and Roosh are brave men or do you think they would run at the first sign of trouble?)

A patriarch could be considered an Alpha. A man who takes care of and defends his family, who is brave and confident and competent. A man who is a model, a mirror and a mentor to the young, no matter who are they.

What would you rather be? A cad and a coward (all cads are cowards, just as all sluts are cowards) who lies to and tries to manipulate women so he can get laid with lots of different women. so they can bolster his fragile sense of self-esteem? Who shows a cluster of the Seven Deadly Sin of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony?

Or a brave man who defends what is right? Who believes in and show the Four Cardinal virtues of Justice, Prudence, Self-Control and Bravery? (By the way, the Four Cardinal virtues are related; you can't have one without having them all.) Who believes that he should unabashedly be a patriarch? That he should be competent and confident and not degrade himself altering his character and behavior to lay a lot of women (which is exactly what these PUA types are doing)?

I don't think it's a hard choice.

"I’ve never known a man worth his salt who, in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something good in men that really yearn for discipline." - Vince Lombardi