Alpha Male Myth

I tried to write about this awhile back, and just found an intellectual ally

In a recent piece, I was making the point that there are no Alpha males or Beta males in my conception of society. To me, alpha, beta, theta and delta are brain waves that we can measure, with the alpha waves functioning for relaxation and drowsy creativity. Beta waves are about being focused, alert, and in problem solving mode. Nowhere have I seen this better illustrated than in the village of Pitsidia, on the isle of Crete. The men were obviously alphas. One rode his burro along the sea cliffs every morning, his shotgun lazily nestled in the crook of an arm, in the drowsy Mediterranean sunshine, alpha as a throw pillow. In the cafe the men gathered to talk about politics, while there was a woman or two demonstrating beta wave states, required for actually doing the work.

The alpha male is a beta male whose imagination gets the better of him. The beta males are forced to rise up together to eliminate a beta whose imagination got the better of him. One of my favorite depictions of this was from a dream Joseph Henderson told me, from pre-war Germany. All the men gathered in a great hall were transfixed on a female figure, on stage, but she was not a real woman, with a female body. There was no such woman in the hall. There was only this representation of a woman made from geometric shapes, a patterned, masculine version of a woman. She had a yellow flower (the sun) in a pot on her head, which showed she was carrying the energy of the Self. All the men moved in concert with her, in thrall. The dream shifted to England, and the hedgerows. As Joseph looked he saw that there were men in the hedgerows, at first camouflaged by the earth. They were armed and ready to come out when they had to repel invaders.

There is a reason the top down, self-consciously masculine man resists the feminine as inferior, and as a threat. He thinks it makes him more masculine. Unfortunately, what we resist does not get weaker, it gets stronger in compensation.

“The Alpha Dog is doing interiors?”

“Don’t crack a smile. He’s got a hair trigger.”