If you want a dating world where men are considered respectable then good men need to take the lead.
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One of the great things about publishing your work is you get to be wrong. You put your opinion out there, thousands of people read it and then dozens, sometimes hundreds, pull it apart. You get to toy with ideas and see how other people react and connect with your ideas. It’s an incredible way of learning, albeit a sometimes painful way of learning. This is going to be one of those articles.
I have been playing around with this idea that good men have let the not-so-good men win. That we have let them become the alphas, we haven’t challenged them or their behavior, we have handed them the keys to the dating kingdom and now we sit back and bitch about the sad state of affairs. We can’t even blame women for this turn of events (women aren’t off the hook, they just have different set of issues). Women like who they like, they are attracted to the traits they find attractive. You can rail against that, you can use it to your advantage or you can eschew women altogether, but the only people who can change what women find attractive are women. They keep telling us what they want and when they go and look for it, well they find mostly douche-bags and players. Those guys who were real alpha good guys, they were snapped up so fast what’s left in the dating pool leaves a lot to be desired.
If the alpha is having a bad hair day, well you can bet the beta is right there challenging him, trying to kick his ass.
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In the animal kingdom we all sort of know what the alpha is. He is the top dog, king of the jungle, no one messes with him, right? Wrong. He is the top dog but mess with him the other males most certainly do. The beta is actually the second top dog, gamma is the third, delta the fourth and so on down the list. Yet the relationship between rungs on the social hierarchies is fluid. The beta, he’s the guy challenging the alpha every damn chance he gets. The gamma, well he is doing the same to the beta and so on. If the alpha is having a bad hair day, well you can bet the beta is right there challenging him, trying to kick his ass. There is no mercy in the animal kingdom, if the alpha is not doing his job, protecting the pack, securing food, keeping everyone in check and so on, then the females will shun him and the beta is right there to ensure a bad alpha gets replaced. There is no such thing as a poor performing alpha in the animal kingdom, he fulfills his duties or, if he doesn’t, either the pack dies or he gets replaced. The alpha is responsible for the pack and the pack is responsible for the alpha.
We are people though, we like taking a good system and complicating it. Somehow in the last 20 to 40 years we have moved from a system, sort of like the animal kingdom has, to a system where pickup artists, players, and douche-bags are now celebrated. We all in some ways want to be successful with women, and the pickup artists, well they visibly succeed, at least in the short term. Assertiveness, decisiveness, and responsibility, traits women find attractive, somehow became confused with arrogance, selfishness, and game playing. We have thousands upon thousands of books out there on how to win women over, how to make her beg with desire, and to let your inner alpha roar. Yet the purpose of the alpha was left out, the alpha is the guy who gets the girls BECAUSE he looks after the safety and vitality of the family. We now have countless number of douche-bags with all the skills of alphas without burdening themselves with the corresponding responsibility. Rightly women are now confused as hell, pissed off and wondering where in the hell the hell the good men went.
Now this is the only thing I am going to mention on women. At some point, if you want men to marry you, or your daughters, you are going to have to not only listen, but actively care about what the men in your life want. That’s your partner, your sons and your friends. There is a whole world out there of male needs, wants, and desires that has been thrown to the wayside. Contrary to what you see in the media men are not stupid, they have fathers, brothers, and friends who have gone through divorce, who have been dragged though family courts, who have lost their children, who pay backbreaking amounts of alimony and child support for kids they never get to see, whose opinions on whether they can reproduce form no factor in today’s conversations. Women you are not off the hook, if you want marriage and kids, the needs, wants, and desires of men are AS important as yours. When men feel they are getting a raw deal they will stop participating, in fact with MGTOW men already are, and if nothing changes more and more men will join the MGTOW movement. One only needs to look at Japan to see what this may mean.
The skills an alpha has, well the betas possess them too
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Now nice men, good men, betas. Yes you. There is nothing wrong with betas in the animal kingdom, they serve a very vital need. A beta male lion not only backs up the alpha when the pride is threatened, he’s also there to provide an abundance of food and resources on which the pride can survive. A lone alpha lion would struggle to take down a zebra out of a herd but the betas are there as valued team mates, partners. The skills an alpha has, well the betas possess them too, just not quite as much. Assertiveness, decisiveness, responsibility don’t fall by the wayside because they are betas. Nice guys, I think you have forgotten this aspect, you aren’t the alpha and I get that, but that doesn’t mean you should give up trying. You generally have the responsibility traits down pat, but assertiveness and decisiveness you need to work on and practice. As I said earlier, the hierarchy isn’t fixed, there is no reason you can’t move up the social ladder.
As to why you nice guys have let the douche-bags win. It is your responsibility to hold the alpha’s accountable for their role, if not you should be replacing them as alpha’s. Women want alpha’s or at least they find those traits attractive,yet they encounter arrogance, selfishness, and game playing and these traits are masked to look like the assertiveness, decisiveness, and responsibility long enough to throw them off. The thing here though is the betas, the guys who should be almost alpha’s, are nowhere around to show women the difference. You gave up at some point and just wanted to be good and responsible, but you fail to assert your behavior as a standard others should meet. When women look around they can’t see any examples of good guys standing up and saying, “This is the behavior a good responsible person has, see I lead by example,” so they just see the douche-bags in the center and the unassertive guys sitting around the outside of the room taking up little space. With no one to outclass douche-bags with real substance the douche-bags in the center with their learnt alpha skills become the most attractive people in the room.
Nice guys, stop letting the douche-bags win. Start learning real assertiveness, learn it off women if need be, I am. Start learning to make decisions, not selfish ones, but decisions that include the wants and needs of others, but make sure decisions still get made. If you have friends who are douche-bags, make it clear to them that you find dump and pump as socially unacceptable as smoking. Lead by example and be a nice guy and a leader. There are millions of women out there desperate to find that almost alpha beta. They are as confused as hell because the things they like, the things they keep telling us they desire in a man, well the only people displaying those traits are the very people that keep hurting them.
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*A minstrel was a medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories of distant places or of existing or imaginary historical events. Although minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. The Modern Minstrel observes the world around him and shares it with us as lyrical story. This series was inspired by Luke Davis, whose eye for story and ear for lyrical prose are featured here.
Photo: Flickr/Steve Slater
Photo: Flickr/Matthias Bachmann
Also by Luke Davis
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MGTOW is ‘nice’ – it is an opt out – walk away. I don’t like to play nice. I like to burn, disrupt and destroy things as I can. I knew that marriage was a rigged game at the age of 5; and I vowed never to do it. I knew I never wanted kids – so I got a vasectomy the month I turned 18. I will not contribute to the Divorce mill and the pandering Social Justice Tribe that is prevalent in today’s society like stained sweats on a fatty in a Handi-cart at Wally World that can’t… Read more »
So betas “let” the D-bags win. That construction implies strongly that there is something the betas had been doing that they quit doing. In other words, in some past, possibly not far past, betas weren’t letting D-bags win. The writer tells us about assertiveness and confidence and decisiveness, which are useful with or without regard to women. His view is that betas gave up these qualities for some reason and to such a degree that fakes—PUA—now win the fair maiden who, it appears, is too dim to tell the difference. I was born in 1945 so I suppose I lived… Read more »
Irish
I know something about alphas. Every guy I grew up with was one. We competed over evrything: jobs, money, education, how much you could life, ho big your house was, etc. We don’t hang out any more because it’s hard to be in constant competition. It wears on you. If I wear my taekwondo jacket, I can dominate a room. I’ll have eyes on me for sure. Some people would be nervous. Some women might be interested. Others might be scared. Guess what, both will probably talk to you for different reasons. That’s the first thing to point out. Being… Read more »
Alpha’s get the sex, beta’s get to provide the resources/money for the alpha’s offspring? There is no way I would ever want anything like that in a relationship. If she wasn’t interested in men like me when she was younger, she’s probably not that great of a woman anyway. I’ve always liked the same nice, decent, kind, attractive-to-me women.
Men in general provide far more resources than they need which go on to be consumed by families and the rest of society, this includes alphas as well as betas. Even with all the gains in equality this is still largely true today in western culture. I must admit I was thinking along the same lines as you Archy, about being liked for who am I am, but when I thought about it learning a new skills like being far more assertive, more decisive, well they are actually skills I need for myself anyway and I should have learnt them… Read more »
I like your article, and I think you make some good points, but you need to improve your comprehension of biology if you keep using animals as references in your arguments. For example, male lions do not hunt – that is the responsibility of the lionesses. However, male lions do defend the females (and their young) from other male lions, and are very unsuccessful unless the male lions are in groups, so you may find a better metaphor there. Also, I feel it is worth mentioning that in a wolf pack the alpha female is dominant in relation to the… Read more »
Thanks Grace, good to know.
When I was writing it I was tossing up going with wolves or lions. I guess I made the wrong choice 🙁