From the original article on October 21, 2008. Author: Chateau Heartiste.
Reader Joe T. wrote the following comment to my post Screening Girls:
[...]Real alphas, as I’ve said, are not promiscuous in the solitary, alley-cat way. They are self-declared “empire builders” and creating a personal family empire (including marriage and kids) is as natural to them as breathing.
There are many betas who build bigger family “empires” than the typical alpha. See: Idiocracy. The desire for a family is not necessarily a defining trait of alphaness. If it were, there would be hundreds of my sprogs running around. But alphas who aren’t interested in raising bratty little kids who suck all the fun out of life can now have their cake and eat it, too, thanks to contraceptives and abortion.
I think everyone needs to go and re-read my post Defining the Alpha Male. It should clarify the common misperceptions I read over and over from my detractors. In short, the alpha male is best defined by how many hot women want to fuck him. Whatever else a man does with his life is irrelevant to establishing his alphaness. If he leads a small nation but women find him repulsive, well, no dice; he ain’t an alpha. Of course, there is a lot of overlap between the subset of men who can lead other men and the subset of men who could bed a lot of women, owing to the fact that women regard dominance displays by men over other men as one signal of male mate value. But leading other men is not a necessary prerequisite for effectively bedding women. It is just one tactic among many.
Reader PatrickH wrote this comment in response to Joe T. above:
Your alpha, the “empire builder”, has more in common with my manly type, though he’s obviously more ruthless. Most of my remarks wouldn’t apply to that kind of alpha.
I think your point is a shrewd one, however. Real alphas would never shy away from marriage and family simply because the deck is stacked against them by the law, for example. They wouldn’t fear that at all. They would never worry about being cuckolded, wouldn’t fear having another man’s child sprung on them. None of that is alpha...in <i>your</i> sense of the word.
In mine...yes, all of that is “alpha”. Just remember the scare quotes. The “alpha” of this place is a parody, a mimicry of the true leader, the truly excellent man.
“Empire builders” are, in our present-day collectivistically-cushioned, corporately-cordoned and contraceptively-contoured reality, more often than not beta male providers who are second and third choices of the women who settled for them. Many of these “empire builders” get cheated on.
PatrickH’s other points miss the mark. “Real” alphas are motivated by self-interest, not fear, when coming to the logical conclusion that marriage is a raw deal for them. Hint: It’s not the cuckoldry, it’s the divorce theft and enforced monogamy. Is it fearlessness to place a target on your chest and step directly in the path of the bullet, or is it stupidity? Rhetorical.
All “true” leaders started the same way as everyone else — they mimicked (i.e. learned from) their mentors and their personal experiences. Do not make the mistake of letting your envy blur your thinking; the womanizer who chooses to avoid marriage and the “excellent man” are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are more often than most people would admit to themselves, the same man.
Joe T. wrote again:
The term “alpha” came from naturalists and zoologists who studied the behavior of wild animals in nature.
All the animal alpha males that have been studied were truly dominant, and all put reproductive success — having a lot of offspring — first and foremost.
He doesn’t and therefore he’s not really an alpha in the strict, commonly-used scientific and sociological definition of that term.
Actually, the instincts that guide animals put mating success, not reproductive success, first and foremost. Animals are not aware that their fucking leads to offspring, nor are the alpha male animals aware that their violent victories over rivals will grant them access to more females. They just do what their genes tell them to do. Biologists use number of offspring as one measure of an animal’s alphaness, although number of copulations would work just as well.
Strictly speaking, a man who fucks tons of women while using condoms is thwarting his genetic programming, not his alpha designation.
True alphas don’t use game, they just do what comes naturally as an alpha.
This has to be the most dearly held misconception about alpha males. “Naturals” DO use game and have used it from an early age; they just aren’t as self-aware as men who learn game later in life. The only difference between naturals and “non-naturals” is when their journeys began. Opening your eyes to the true animalistic nature of women is best done at an early age, when such knowledge is strongly imprinted in the growing mind. Learning game later in life, when your adult mind is fully formed and burdened with good and bad experiences, will inevitably throw into stark relief a cognitive dissonance that must be overcome before the late learner can begin to use his newfound skills in a more natural manner.
Being alpha isn’t inherently different for humans just because we have the ability to control the outcome of the sex act and thwart reproduction. Even an alpha human male would naturally, intuitively give a high priority to mating with lots of women to produce lots of offspring.
Correction: He would intuitively give a high priority to mating with lots of women because it feels so fucking good.
Since he isn’t naturally drawn to the family empire lifestyle, he cannot be a true alpha.
Kurt Cobain had one child and killed himself. If you want to argue he wasn’t an alpha by your “empire building” definition, you had better be ready to explain away the throngs of young female fans willing to jump his cock at the first opportunity.
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