There are some other problems with the Manosphere, exemplified by the saying, “The map is not the terrain.” The ideas in our heads are not reality, and the further from reality they are, the worse they work.
Some people use the word “model” instead of map. We have models in our head that most of us are continually refining to make them describe reality better. For example, when I was a kid I once jumped out of a swing wearing a life-vest. I figured it would cushion me when I hit the ground.
I did it exactly one time, because I got the breath knocked out of me. It was the first time it had ever happened and it was not pleasant. My model of reality changed immediately. It became a better model. Some people’s models don’t change, no matter how many times they fail to work.
The Manosphere uses terms such as Alpha, Beta, Sigma, Omega, etc. These words are inaccurate and as such are not very useful in describing reality. In fact, they overwhelming fail, since lots of guys are going to claim they’re either Alphas or Sigmas - and when they define themselves thus, they are neither. It’s just a way to try to raise their self-esteem by deluding themselves.
As an aside, the Bad Alpha has always been considered a cad (and why do we need new inaccurate words to replace older, much more accurate words?).
I use the example of Cal in the movie Titanic as a cad. Then there is Alfie in the film Alfie. The ones I’ve known have are cowards who have destroyed their lives and ended up alone. One of the reasons they end up alone is because they devote their lives to seducing women without getting emotionally involved.
The ancient Greeks, I’m sure along with every other culture in the world, noticed that people who devote their lives to physical pleasure become degraded.
Betas have always been considered wimps (another term is pussy-whipped). Omegas are complete losers and aren’t even in the game.
The words to describe these people have existed for a long time. For that matter, no man exhibits all the traits and so cannot be put in one category.
Do all men fit into the categories of cad, wimp and loser? Hardly. Sometimes a man is brave, sometimes he is cowardly, sometimes he is smart, sometimes he is stupid, sometimes he is right, sometimes he is wrong. You can’t put any man – or woman – into one category. Or even two.
People like simplicity because it makes them think they know what’s going on. Simple, inaccurate concepts are certainly easier to understand, but they creak and groan and sometimes blow up when applied to reality.
I recently read an article suggesting Betas created civilization. Again, this is an idea in someone’s head that doesn’t describe reality.
Other people suggested Alphas created civilization and Betas are just exploited followers. Sigh. This is so simple-minded it verges on dangerous.
Here’s who created civilization: men. In one way or another, almost all men. Specifically, white men created civilization, almost all technology and most of the better ideas.
White men of course are not perfect (I let no one off the hook). Mostly, this imperfection is the bizarre belief (to use Rudyard Kipling’s phrase) in the White Man’s Burden, which means caning the wogs (i.e. killing them) in a vain attempt to turn them into white people. This is a very strange and very dangerous idea which has never worked and never will work, for one thing because it shows zero respect for other people’s cultures. And it does nothing but piss them off and make them want to kill you.
When you ask, who created civilization, Alphas or Betas? those concepts fall apart.
Was Thomas Jefferson an Alpha? He showed a lot of traits of Aspergers, and he died millions of dollars in debt. Yet his ideas helped found a nation. What about Thomas Edison? His teachers told him he was addled and school was wasted on him.
Bill Gates, the epitome of a nerd? One who was for many years disheveled and smelled because he rarely took a shower? Yet he become one of the richest men in the world and was one of the main founders of the computer revolution.
As another aside, I know a woman who knew Gates. He was clearly interested in her, and she ran the other way. But shouldn’t she have thought, Oh golly, one of the richest men in the world! I’ll always be taken care of! And our children, too!
Yet she went the other way as fast as she could. So much for the gobbledygook of evolutionary psychology (psychology isn’t a science and evolutionary theory even less so).
Are politicians Alphas, with their ambition and desire for money and power? Politicians have never advanced civilization. They have overwhelmingly helped to destroy it. If they’re Alphas, God help all of us!
Let’s take George Bush for a good example. Bush never had a job in his life, is a brain-damaged ex-drunk, has been described as “incurious” and by his own admission “doesn’t do nuance.” He was a terrible president (even more stupid and vicious than his father), contrary to his delusions of his worshippers. Is he an Alpha? No, he’s a politician! That is, a destroyer.
Again, men created civilization. What traits did they have to create it? First and foremost, self-discipline. Self-discipline implies the ability to concentrate. Then there is creativity.
Who has an abundance of those four traits? Alphas? Betas? Sigmas? Omegas? (The hunchbacked scientist Charles Steinmetz was certainly an Omega, and he did a lot for society.) Again, the concepts fall completely apart.
People who use these Manosphere concepts of Alpha, Beta, etc. are using concepts that apply to some animals (say, dogs but not cats) and try to impose them on people. Yet they don’t understand the concepts even when applied to animals.
Wolves have an Alpha couple, which are the ones allowed to breed. Yet they can be overthrown by a couple lower in the pack, which then becomes the Alpha couple. If this applied to people, only Alphas would be allowed to have sex and the hundreds of millions of Betas in the world would be trying to kill them. Which they would do quite rapidly.
The Manosphere terms are close to nonsense.
We do have an animal nature. Civilization sits on top of it and tries to repress the worst parts (murder, theft, lying) and transform other parts to serve civilization. Unfortunately, civilization is a very thin skin on top of a lot of not-so-good animal nature, and that thin skin of civilization is easily damaged and sometimes even destroyed.
When people start babbling about Alphas, Betas, etc. and thinking these concepts about our animal natures are good things that will improve everyone’s lives and make society better – they’ll find out differently. Being in many ways a rage-filled reaction against feminism, these Manosphere terms will make civilization go backwards, not forward. Just as feminism made society go backwards.
That’s why, in the long run, these concepts will disappear.
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