Thursday 25 July 2013

Who Da Man? Alpha Beta Bollocks

Over in the Manosphere they talk a lot about Alphas, Betas, Sigmas and the like. Try this
as an example.

My first problem with the usual typologies is that it's all a little too much like High School: swaggering Alphas, detached Sigmas, wussy Deltas, mass-market Betas. These ideas are supposed to come from "science", but it all sounds like a systemisation of teenage, and perhaps academic, life to me. People are not bonobos: that's why people make documentary TV programmes about bonobos, not the other way around.

So, is there a hierarchy? Don't think too hard: it's a trick question. A hierarchy implies someone who's judging, and a Man's reply to that will be "who the fuck died and put you in charge?" Men recognise hierarchy in objective achievement - running faster, lifting heavier, earning more, cutting neater code, laying tile straighter and faster, whatever - but not in the estimate of manhood. You're either a Man or a Male: it's  binary. Of course it is: Men are binary. Women and diplomats go in for fifty shades of grey. 

So let's dump the high-school hierarchy. There. Doesn't that feel better? Now let's also dump the stereotypes and classifications, mostly because they aren't relevant to the problem. We don't need to know anything about that schlubby-looking suburban pram-pushing, cargo-shorts wearing Dad at the door of the restaurant, about to inflict two tired and disgruntled children and a woman who may very well soon be his ex-wife for all the pleasure she seems to take in their company. It doesn't matter how much he earns, where he volunteers, what education he had or what culture he consumes. His political views are irrelevant. He's a disgrace, from his choice of clothes, through his slack posture to his shrewish wife. That's all we need to know, and we can tell it pretty much at a glance. We're men, it's binary: you're a disgrace or not. More to the point, you're an exemplar or not.

Let's talk role-models. When I was an impressionable young man, we had real heroes: Simon Templar, John Steed, John Drake, James Bond, Napoleon Solo, Kojak, Harry O, plus any character played by John Wayne, Steve McQueen or Clint Eastwood. Not a married man among them, all dashing bachelors without visible personal lives, capable, independent, tough, smart, cool and usually with neat cars. Only the great George Clooney carries on this tradition, and a young man could do a lot worse than model himself on Clooney's characters  - even if they are more ambiguous than the earlier ones.

By contrast with these admirable figures, married men tended to turn up in comedies and soap operas, and if they were the lead characters in serious dramas, their home life was a sketch, usually featuring a supportive wife and two children on their way to school. If a male character had a detailed home life, it was the same disaster we recognise today. He was an emotional klutz and his more in-tune-with-the-important-things wife was always explaining said important-stuff to him. And of course, the domestic, Peyton Place-style drama, is predicated on on everyone behaving like personality-disordered cliches. One reason that the media seems full of negative portrayals of men is that there are far fewer heroes and those few are more complicated. The airtime has been taken by advertiser-friendly series designed to deliver a large, high-spending female audience. 

So Who Da Man? Once it was John Wayne. Feminists hated him exactly because he was such a clear role model. Steve McQueen was the coolest white man that ever lived, no doubt. Miles Davis was cool, but he's a bad role model - maybe Arthur Ashe is better. My personal heroes (Socrates, Groucho Marx, Paul Feyerabend, Craig Murray) are all men who one way or another gave bureaucratic authority the finger, and were good at what they did. 

We're looking for outward confidence, self-respect, the ability to gain trust from other people, manners, taste, discretion, the competent exercise of whatever the appropriate life-skills are for the time and place, and the ability to know who to trust. And yes, psychopaths score highly on all those things, so we need to add in the usual requirements of consideration, co-operation and contribution. Princes used to be punctual and polite and, oh yes, they killed you if you dissed them. Since killing people is frowned on, a modern-day Prince is still punctual and polite, but dumps those who diss him. Autonomy is the central criterion. If you are running around after your girlfriend, wife, daughter, mother, alcoholic brother, best mate, boss, supervisor, clients or whoever else, then you are below the Man-Line.

Sure. I know. This excludes men who are pillars of their community who have loving wives and adorable children. I have agonised about this for a long while. Now I'm sure. Married men can do many wonderful things, but forty per cent of them get divorced, which leads to daughters becoming strippers and sons flaking college. 3:2 against with a limited upside and a lose-everything downside is not a bet any sensible person would make. If it's a dumb thing for you to do in your professional life, it's a dumb thing for you to do in your personal life. A man knows that if it isn't business, it's R&R, and doesn't make dumb decisions in the first place.

Does anyone exemplify these virtues today? Aside from George Clooney? I'm going to guess that Roman Abramovich and Vladimir Putin are pretty much their own men, but theirs is a hard act to emulate. I don't know where a young man looks now for a decent role model.

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