Rise of the beta: why men today are so feminine

I'm Dr Orion Teraban and this is Psychax better living through psychology and the topic of today's short talk is rise of the beta. So folks online talk a lot about high value men alpha men who can compete successfully both in life and in the sexual marketplace. We know that all things being equal, women tend to mate and date hypergamously.

That is they tend to mate and date up status hierarchies. By the same token, we know how difficult it is to ascend those same hierarchies, which implies that those at the top must be more competent, more diligent, more intelligent, more ruthless, etc. , than those at the bottom.

However, all this kind of begs a question. Namely, if alpha men are supposed to be at the top of social status hierarchies, then why is it that so many of our corporate leaders and cultural icons and elected politicians are such weak dorks? Like, why don't we see alpha Chads running the world?

While we've seen a shift toward traditional masculinity as a positive in the most recent election cycle, why is it that so many leaders around the world seem to be beta males? Like that shouldn't be possible, right? In fact, on the surface, it seems to be a flaw in our model.

Shouldn't the guys at the top, no matter how they present themselves, be the alphas by definition? What is going on? It's a very interesting question.

In today's episode, I'm going to offer a possible explanation for this phenomenon. To begin with, it's important to understand that the current situation is not the end state. This is not how things are supposed to look at the end of the game.

What we're currently experiencing is an intermediary stage in a social movement that may or may not reach its conclusion depending on current and future events. Beta males in positions of power is not the desired end goal. It is merely a necessary step in the direction of that goal.

The best analogy I've been able to come up with to explain what is going on comes from the TV show Survivor. Now, I'm not a Survivor super fan, but I'm familiar with the premise and I find the program absolutely fascinating from a social psychology perspective. Winning the game depends on correctly adapting a fluctuating system of strategies in a constantly changing social millu.

It's not enough to be the smartest or the strongest or even the most well-liked. It's real politic with real people. They've produced nearly 50 seasons of the show already.

So even if you've never seen it, you're likely familiar with the premise. In any case, in one of its nearly 50 seasons, Survivor conducted a gender-based experiment and pitted men against women. Though the team started out in equal numbers, only women made it to the end game.

All the men had been eliminated. And this outcome is particularly surprising given how the game began. At the beginning of the competition when the men and women were segregated, the women didn't win a single contest.

Actually, no. It's it's not fair to say they didn't win. They didn't even come close to winning.

It was a bloodbath. The men were destroying the women on every single challenge the game presented. Not only that, but the villages, like the way the two teams were living, were completely different.

The men had formed a cooperative system. They constructed shelters, marshaled fire, and were eating game. They were living fairly comfortably given the rather primitive environment they found themselves in.

On the other hand, the women were basically huddling under rocks, wet and cold. They didn't have the skills or the systems to construct even a tenth of the men's infrastructure. And of course, the better the relative conditions, the easier it was for the men to maintain their competitive advantage.

So given all this, how did the men go from being absolutely dominant to being voted out of the game? How did the women pull off this coup? It's an interesting question.

Pause the episode now and see if you can figure it out. All right, so this is basically how it went down. It soon became obvious to the women that they were not going to be able to win in a head-to-head competition against the men.

And every time the women lost, another one of their numbers was voted out of the game. They understood that their days were numbered and that they would have to try to undermine the men in some other way. So what the women did was so dissension among the men.

The women observed that as powerful and skillful as the men were, this power and skill was not distributed evenly across the group. A pecking order had organically emerged, and the most competent and accomplished had risen to the top. These men, whom we could call the alphas, were responsible for a disproportionate majority of the team's success.

Now, awareness of this fact was not lost on the men. However, it didn't really seem to bother any of them. They were teammates and aligned toward a common goal.

It was okay that some men were higher status than others because there was still a place for every man in the economy of that society. It was kind of like a high functioning sports team. The whole team could acknowledge their best players as their captains and yet not impede their ability to work together successfully.

In fact, this kind of hierarchy probably makes a team success more likely as the team has functionally endowed certain individuals with executive functioning which can expedite decision-m and cooperation. That said, the women were able to create dissension in the ranks by sewing doubt among the lower status men. They found some pretext or other toer the lower status men and basically said, "Look, we get it.

You won. We're screwed and our time here is limited. We're not going to win.

But before you start celebrating, you've got to consider as soon as we're gone, who do you think is going to be next? Huh? H you think you're going to beat out those alphas?

As soon as we're gone, you're next on the chopping block. We can't beat those guys, but let's be honest, neither can you. So, let's form an alliance against the alphas for our own mutual self-preservation.

Now, on some level, this was a rational argument. However, the women also spiced this offer with a couple of emotional tidbits. First, they played on the beta male's pity by damsling.

They made an uncommon show of their misery and helplessness in order to evoke a helping response from these men, which they eventually succeeded in doing. Before too long, these betas were sharing food and fire with the women, their competition. So, by plucking on male heartstrings, the women were able to create a fifth column inside of the men's village in order to secure instrumental support, something that the alphas would be less likely to do.

Second, the women lightly flirted with the betas and suggested the possibility of relationship further down the road. Like once the alphas had been removed, the women indicated that they would be able to move into the village to take their place. And wouldn't that be more pleasant company than a bunch of sweaty dudes?

So through a combination of fear, pity, and desire, the women were able to persuade a group of lower status males to betray their higher status teammates. Initially through clandestine sabotage and bad faith, and eventually through open revolt. However, by this time, the women and the betas together comprised a majority block which was able to get rid of the threatening higher status men.

And once all the alphas were gone, guess what happened? The remaining women broke their alliance with the betas and voted every single one of them out of the game. After all, they were no longer useful.

So the outcome the betas feared, the outcome that motivated them to betray their teammates was precisely the outcome that came to pass as a result of their betrayal. And that's how the women were able to beat out the men and win the game. They could not succeed in direct competition.

They were only able to survive by turning the lower status men against the higher status men through the manipulation of fear, pity, and desire. Pretty clever, huh? If you're interested in taking your understanding to the next level, I would encourage you to check out the Captain's Quarters, my membersonly self-improvement community.

Your monthly membership will get you access to a cadre of like-minded supportive individuals, bimonthly group consultation sessions hosted by yours truly, and exclusive content that you won't find anywhere else. Click the link in the description for more information. Hope to see you aboard.

So, this is my best explanation as to why there are so many beta males in positions of power and authority today. It's a stage in the process. For the last few decades, we've collectively been voting the alpha males out.

And this has really only been possible because women have been able to forge an alliance with lower status men. And like the TV show, this has largely been done through the manipulation of emotion, especially through the concepts of maleness and masculinity. Across the same timeline, all of the traits associated with traditional masculinity, the toughness, the strength, the stoicism, etc.

have been rebranded as toxic. Impressionable young people who are typically still sorting out who they are and who rely heavily on external approval to navigate this process have been raised with a notion of what makes a man good that has almost entirely been constructed by women. You can see this most clearly in the shaming language that women employ.

A real man is always defined via v his relationship with women, never to himself. And this in turn has created generations of weak, misguided men who have gotten this way by trying to rise to the conception of manhood that has been formulated by women. And it is likely that this conception that women and and let me ask you a question.

Is it likely that this conception that women have created is exclusively or even primarily in the best interests of the men involved? Just put the shoe on the other foot. Ask women whether they believe that traditional models of femininity, which were largely defined by men, exclusively or even primarily serve the best interests of women.

How do you think they would respond? But we're to believe that women are so altruistically blind to self that the definitions of masculinity and of ideal male behavior that they promote have nothing to do with their own agendas. In any case, women have succeeded in seducing a subset of men into betraying their brothers.

That is to align with their conceptualization that traditional masculinity against which they might not be able to successfully compete is toxic and misogynistic. in exchange for female approval. A need that is so deeply instilled in so many men that in many cases it is indistinguishable from their own self-worth.

This alignment not only produces fewer alpha males with each subsequent generation, but it also creates a powerful voting block capable of removing the remaining alphas from positions of authority using ideologically backed policy initiatives as well. And why is this occurring? Because just like on survivor, the modern woman is in competition with the modern man.

Gone are the days of complimentarity in which men and women functionally move in separate orbits. The modern woman is in her masculine and she has chosen or has been forced or has been incentivized depending on your perspective to enter into historically male social domains and carve out a space there. They want money and power and status and recognition.

And to get those things, they have to beat out the men who also want those things. The issue is that just like on Survivor, the alpha males are extremely difficult to beat in direct competition. Like even the other men couldn't beat them.

So these men have to be removed from the game if women have a chance of occupying the highest positions of power and authority. And the play for the last several decades has been to make all the traits and attributes associated with these alpha men morally reprehensible. Morally reprehensible.

This has been done by controlling the narrative of what makes for a real man or a good man and increasingly through moralization masked as medicalized language. Only the most strong willed and disagreeable of men are able to resist this, especially if it is fed to them from the time they are young boys as yet incapable of critical thought. In their zeal to prove that they are not like the other guys and to secure a female approval that has become indistinguishable from their own self-worth, women and lower status men have teamed up to rid the world of alpha males and all they represent.

And that is where we find ourselves today. The process has begun, but it hasn't yet been completed. Whether or not the intended outcome is obtained largely depends on whether or not these lower status men wake up.

Play the tape forward, guys. Once all the alphas are out, what's going to happen next? Those betas are going to be the next to go.

It's just like on the show. These men are only useful to women until the alphas are eliminated. Women can and do out compete beta males all the time.

They are not an obstacle to their victory. These men will have served their purpose. And like the nice guy providers that end up divorced when their wives no longer need anything from them, they will be sumearily dismissed once they have outlived their usefulness.

Make no mistake, women are in direct competition with men. And if you can't win through direct confrontation, then you have to resort to guerilla tactics. That is reasonable.

After all, all's fair in love and war. Now, whether women will actually be better off if they're the ones occupying the positions of power and authority is an open question. As you'll recall on Survivor, their village wasn't functioning particularly well, and I don't think it ever did.

Even after they moved into the vacancies created by the eliminated alphas, they lacked the skills and the systems to maintain the community they had inherited. However, this was kind of a moot point as the game ended once they had won. They had no reason to think past the point of securing the highest position.

On the other hand, this is not how the real world works. The game does not end once someone is invested with power and authority. In point of fact, it only just begins.

And in my opinion, it's in everyone's, men and women's, everyone's best interests, if the most competent and capable people, whoever they turn out to be, are the ones running the show. When this occurs, things tend to work, and there tends to be a place for everyone. It's not a perfect system.

Nothing is, but it certainly beats the alternatives. What do you think? Does this fit with your own experience?

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