For the past few months I have been reading what is embarrassingly called the “Manosphere.” I understand what it is about – it is a reaction to 40 plus years of the evil of leftist/lesbian “feminism.” Since it is a reaction to the destructive influence of feminism there is of course some good to it. Unfortunately, there is a lot of bad to it, too.
One of the bads is the concept of “the Alpha.” The Alpha as such does not exist; it is a concept that refers to something that doesn’t exist in reality. (Those who continually babble about how they are Alphas, like the washed-up loser Ted Nugent, are anything but).
The reason the Alpha does not exist is the definition is too broad, and since the definition is too broad it doesn’t make much sense and therefore confuses people.
There are actually two Alphas: the bad one, and the good one.
The bad one has traditionally been called a cad. Strictly speaking, the cad is not a man, since his values are the opposite of what has traditionally defined a man. So then, a man would be the good Alpha.
My experience of bad “Alphas” is that they are immature, childish and cowardly. They have no loyalty and little discipline in important things. They are impulsive, self-centered, prone to drug addiction, and when they become middle-aged their lives are filled with regret over their ruined lives and lost opportunities for happiness.
I know one whom I have known since I was 21. He was never a friend, just an acquaintance. Even then I was getting huge red flags on him, even though I did not know what he was doing (I was informed about his behavior years later by a mutual friend).
He was a fairly good-looking guy who did truly vile things. He would target women who weren’t all the good-looking (and never very bright), tell them what he described as “what they wanted to hear,” lead them to think he was their boyfriend, then have sex with them for two weeks (while seeing other women) then dump them.
He did this approximately 100 times.
How did he end up? As a drug addict (and has ruined his teeth because of it), who is alone, and who has never had a serious relationship with a woman. He did say, finally, that “I got a taste of my own medicine.” He is also, not surprisingly, a coward (a coward is someone who is a blowhard and a bully who collapses when someone gets the best of them, which isn’t all that hard).
Cads can be quite popular with the more stupid and immature women who can’t see through them. (As an aside, men are far better judges of men’s characters than women are, and any woman with any sense will ask other men what they think of the “boyfriend” and if they don’t listen to their judgments they have no one to blame but themselves).
Cads are actually quite narcissistic, which means they can be charming and manipulative, but have nothing on the inside. They generally collapse in middle age. This has been seen by therapists so many times dozens of books have been written about it.
Artists (who as Ezra Pound noticed are the antennae of the human race) have noticed what happens to cads. The example I use is of Cal (played by Billy Zane) in the movie Titanic. Cal was a coward who happened to have looks and money.
But what happened when he lost his money during the Great Depression? He shot himself. This happened because he had nothing on the inside, again typical of narcissists. They’re like balloons, empty on the inside and easy to pop (I am reminded of that old saying: “All hat, no cattle”).
An earlier movie about a cad is the ‘60s movie Alfie, with Shelly Winters and Michael Caine. Caine is basically a gigolo, and when Winters dumps him she tells him, “You’re too old.” The shock on his face is priceless; he suddenly realizes what he is and where he’s heading.
Incidentally, the lyrics to the theme song run thus: “What’s it all about, Alfie? /Is is just for the moment we live?” That is how the impulsive cad lives his life and it’s why he sooner or later collapses and ends up alone and desolate, with no relationships, no meaning and no importance to his life.
The easiest way to get to a cad is to say, “You know what your problem is? You’re not a man. You’ve never grown up.” They’ll get upset and angry every time, which means you’ve hit a very sensitive nerve.
Cads think they can go on with their behavior for decades and nothing bad will happen to them. They almost always think, “Well, I can manipulate and lie to stupid women for years, but still get a good one.” It doesn’t happen. I’ve never seen it happen.
What is the opposite of a cad? A man who has loyalty and honor. He has self-control (meaning he is not impulsive except in certain select circumstances). He tries to be brave. He tries to not manipulate and lie.
These characteristics are generally considered to be the good military virtues (there are also the bad military qualities, which have now pretty much overwhelmed the American military). I am not defending the military; I’m just pointing out that, ideally, that what they embody have traditionally been the best masculine virtues.
For that matter, these ideal masculine virtues run back to at least the Greeks, who referred to them as Stoics. A Stoic, contrary to the common belief, is not someone who tries to have no feelings (a delusion also believed by those ignorant of Buddhism) but is someone who tries to achieve equanimity and peace amidst the turbulence in the world.
In other words, a Stoic has humility (meaning self-knowledge), self-control (is not impulsive) and tries to be a rock who lets the chaos and disorder of the world flow past him without disturbing him. In other words, he has mental, emotional and physical discipline.
For that matter, the above qualities were the ideal of the Victorians, which Neal Stephenson wrote about extensively in his novel, The Diamond Age. Those masculine virtues of self-control and selected venting of impulsiveness allows societies based on them to achieve great intellectual, moral and financial wealth.
By the way, the Victorians were a reaction to the preceding age, which was a degraded time that Dickens wrote about in his novels. That decadent pre-Victorian age is what we have now, which is why there is a reaction with the Manosphere, which in its good aspect is an attempt to roll back the society-destroying evil of “feminism” and re-impose morals on which society can thrive.
The fact that the common definition of “Alpha” includes both what a man should be to have a good life and should not be because it will destroy his life is why it makes little sense.