Beta manhood?

Modern man is unquestionably and unashamedly told that in order to do well he must exemplify the characteristics of the beta male. The beta male is the nicest guy that anyone would ever want to meet, he is the bubble wrap man lacking in any sharp edges that might be perceived as overtly masculine.

The beta male makes the best husband and father as he is sensitive and discreetly feminine. He has no inclination for confrontation nor is he given to fits of thrill seeking for the sake of asserting his maleness qua maleness. The beta male is satisfied with the status quo and is politely content with his life of admixture. In the main, he  has the all the essential characteristics of part male and part female.The beta male will always see his female counterpart as the fairer sex. This means of course that his interactions with her will be tempered by  an exaltation of her sex as semper primus (“always first”).

i. Where does this begin?

 The operand social conditioning of young men and boys takes place soon after birth. Males are taught ab incunabulis  that females are much preferred owing to their genteel nature. One looks no further than the implicit matriarchy that infects a hospital maternity ward, to observe the truthfulness of this proposition.

Post-parity is the exemplification of female worship ad honorem of the fairer sex.  The prolixity of those authors that pen the words for cards exalting motherhood qua motherhood as the most honorable and noble of all female endeavors have smuggled in an implicit rejoinder to the alpha male and a far less subtle acknowledgement of the beta-male-as-mother-superior. 

This is because the beta male has the physical strength of the male sex minus the rough edges of patriarchal alpha-maleness. Boys trotting off to school are met by a company of female authority figures, whereby the male’s natural inclinations toward conflict and conquest are politely muted by a great cloud of witnesses telling him that the better angels of feminism can light his path to beta male-hood.

The proving grounds of alpha-maleness, the school playground, is no longer a source for testing the resolve of budding alphas. The presupposition that beta-is-better, is taken as a given. Thus, boys who would otherwise muster the courage to resolve conflict using nothing more than a fist, are now called upon to appeal to both their own feelings and those of their tormentor in order to resolve conflict.

The resultant confusion, leads to an identity crisis in boys. The natural inclination to fight against being tormented is held in a precarious tension with those who would instruct him to “talk” about how he feels rather than stand his ground for the sake of his dignity. The inoculation against a young man becoming an alpha male is completed at a very early age. His passivity is now part and parcel of his character, the stunting of his natural inclination replaced by a feminine quality; one that he finds self-reflexively repulsive and yet indispensable if he is to get on in the beta world he finds around him.

ii. A dichotomous relationship

Once the boy has grown into a well-adjusted beta male, he finds a strange dichotomy. First, he finds some men have overcome their inoculation. He finds that the world, much to his surprise, still contains alpha males. Despite all indices of their non-existence some men have overcome. They are distinctly different than the beta lemmings with whom he is acquainted.

These homosapien dinosaurs not only exist, but seem to thrive. At once, the thoroughly beta male is perplexed. His reaction to being short-changed is often visceral. He feels a certain relief that in fact alpha males get on in the world and at the same time a sense of mourning at the profundity of his loss, i.e. his manhood.

To further exacerbate his woe, he finds that women, those who have instructed him in the nascent art of beta-maleness are in fact repulsed by the man he has become. They are drawn to the alpha males in a way that belies the didactic of his youth. The feminine pole of his beta nature is resolved to shed tears over his foolishness in falling for the illusion.

The beta male, if he is to recover from this pernicious lie, must understand the world of the alpha. The alpha male is not merely an ignorant knuckle-dragging neanderthal that has slipped feminism’s velvet grasp owing to his lack of intellect. Rather, the alpha male is one who is like Nietzsche’s ubermensch.  He has overcome the morality of feminism with its insistence that real men act like women. The alpha male in contradistinction to both feminism and beta male-hood  is driven by his maleness qua maleness. His place in the world is secured by himself and for himself.

iii. The alpha male is self-contained, self-possessed, and selfish (in a positive sense)

In a very real sense, the alpha male is among the most selfish creatures that inhabits the world. He is driven by his own sense of belonging to the world and his desire to make a mark on the world as present-at-hand. In this way, his selfishness is not merely a function of self-concern but an acknowledgement of his role in leading the world by virtue of his own self-interested pursuits. The beta male on the other hand is engaged in a perpetual game of pleasing those around him. His own sense of self-interest is relegated to the interest of the “other”.

Thus, the alpha male leads by virtue of his selfishness. In this sense, his selfishness is not a character flaw but rather the exemplar of his character. The man that is resolute in his desire to pursue the good, not because he has a false sense of this being a good-for-the-other but because it is a good-for-him is a man in the truest sense of the word.

One might anticipate the rejoinder offered by feminists and beta males on this score. The former might argue that the beta, in his relentless pursuit of happiness for the other will in fact ingratiate himself with females. The latter, not yet willing to swallow this unhappy truth will simply dismiss the whole sordid affair as misogynistic ramblings. Fortunately for the alpha male neither argument obtains.

Both the psychology and subjective empirical experience demonstrate q.e.d. that females are neither drawn to, nor respect selfless beta males. All protestations to the contrary fall flat when beta loving females demonstrate a modicum of lucidity and transparency. The beta male confronted with this inconvenient truth suffers from cognitive dissonance, attempting in futility to deny what his own nature tells him.

iv. The Alpha male, the only real man you know

This is not to say that the alpha male is only concerned with himself. Rather, he knows intuitively that his self-interest spreads out like a blanket of blessing over those whom he leads by virtue of his alpha nature.

When the alpha male leads, he leads by way of his self-interested pursuits. However, the attendant benefits of his self-interest create fertile soil for those around him to be comforted, secured, and provided for because he is not a beta male. The beta male in his propensity to please others, is never quite pleased himself. He is a man that is perpetually passive-aggressive. The beta male will never view his own manhood in its proper context and is destined to suffer from a parade of horribles created by his inability to embrace his own alpha status.

The beta male in his frustration is apathetic, miserable, disinterested, and above all never happy with his life. He is perpetually broken by the world around him as he sees those who are pursuing their own self-interest and reaping the benefits while he suffers the fate of his beta-manhood. He is disrespected at his place of employment, ultimately unattractive to females, and neither a man nor a woman.