[quote]Animal Within wrote:
[quote]HoustonGuy wrote:
Technically our govt serves the people not the other way around so your first point is moot.
As you mentioned, in business or any job, you do have structure with alpha/beta mentality. You feel like it’s forced on you which tells me you fill a beta role or less, which explains why you would use false logic to denounce the existence of alpha males in human social structure.
Using your work example, I can promise you that in a free market business owners and corporate executives do not feel “forced” to accept their role. Know why? They created the roles people fill below them, enticed people to sell their labor as employees and created the structure their employees are subjected too.
Go to work and challenge the rules. Challenge your boss directly too. You will leave without a job. His boss may fire him for his inability to control employees and so on, who ever is at the top of that chain of command is the alpha and this is simply fact.
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The fact that the government serves the people and not the other way round does not make my point moot. It is in an alphas interest to serve his pack. He does however do this in order to benefit himself. This is the same in politics The Political party will appear to be serving their people in order to best benefit themselves. Consider the banking crash where some of the Goldman Sachs bankers responsible for the crash were given places in the government.
Again in the work example consider this: I go to work and I am inferior within the workplace to my boss. However we then happen to be within a club and in this situation I am his superior. You did address this in your post:
[quote]HoustonGuy wrote:
I think the real confusion today is that each human is involved in multiple “packs”, even on a daily basis. You serve various roles depending on who you are with which muddies the alpha/beta water.
Look at a specific “pack” (business, team, social organization…) and you will see dominant and subservient members, no question.
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An Alpha is and always will be an Alpha in the animal kingdom unless challenged and banished by a rival (consider wolf packs).
You can argue that because we are intelligent beings that this allows us to interchange who is Alpha based on the social situation and circumstance. This however raises the question that being alpha can have a lot less to do with attitude and social dominance than it does hard work and success in a given field.
I myself would reason that we have evolved beyond the alpha and beta and have a much more complex form of Social heirachy.
The people who perceive Alphas and Betas will always themselves be at a disadvantage to those who don’t. This is because they live their lives or part of their lives according to the actions of primitive unintelligent animals. If a human wastes 0.5% of his or her lifetime reflecting on how alpha he/she is is that time not better spent on a more human pursuit such as education.
How about the men be men and we leave this alpha/beta bullshit to the dogs?
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People become alpha or beta due to inborn traits, action and mental/physical/intellectual prowress compared to those around them. The cream of the cop will always rise to the top and as intelligent humans leverage influence, control and prominence to control “weaker” players.
The “cream” are the alpha in which ever pack they happen to dominate. There isn’t much introspection or self identification titles involved, only natural competition and dominance.
