i said no such thing, i spoke of rebellion only because it is a common way people try to assert independence from the herd, and it doesn’t work for that purpose, since as you say:
moving on:
if we rebel (or, for that matter, willfully conform) then we ARE following our own impulses
our individual impulses, desires, and urges to create, do not prevent us from being part of the herd, anymore than they allow us to flap our arms and fly
you have seriously misunderstood my position - again, perhaps that’s my fault
you seem to think that having individual urges, interests, etc. runs contrary to being part of the herd - this is incorrect, and i never suggested any such thing.
if one is taught to eat three times a day and so does that, is one conforming? if so, is that type of conformity the opposite of rebelling? i don’t think so - i think you have set up a false dichotomy and put it in my mouth.
rebellion is an assertion of independence in it’s own way - but it does not equal freedom from herd influence, since as you correctly point out, it is still something defined by dominant norms. in any case, rebellion aside, one can think independently of the dominant norms and still be part of the herd - in fact, i am asserting just that. the herd is not simply the set of individuals that ascribe to a given set of prevailing norms - it is, as i said, the generalized mass of humanity, with all it’s conflicting ideas and mores and understandings - it is the collection of dynamics out of which prevailing norms, and alternatives to those norms, arise. membership in the herd precedes any act of conformity or rebellion.
again, i never claimed that our only options were rebellion against, or conformity to, prevailing norms. even someone who only eats once a day remains part of the herd, whether s/he eats once a day as an act of rebellion or because s/he is trying to satisfy some individual desire - one cannot decide how many times a day to eat independent of the herd dynamics and influence, but one needn’t be actively rebelling or conforming in making such a decision.
and i would agree, alpha males are not necessarily non-conformists
i hope it has gotten clearer because i think i realize the implications of my position quite well, and they do not match with the words you have put in my mouth
we are not discussing objective truths, we are discussing human social dynamics - i must assume i am correct about myself in what sense? - i am assuming only that there is a herd of the sort that Nietzscheans talk about, and that we are all part of it, Nietzscheans included.
one can conform without wanting to fit in, one can conform without realizing it at all - in fact, that would be the most common way of conforming.
how are they NOT part of the herd? our innate desires are biological, our knowledge is collective and our every act of rebellion, regardless of what it is based in or what it is aimed against, is BECAUSE we are part of the herd in the first place. the teenager who rebels against his or her parents is no less a child of those parents.
Then, it seems to me, you are using ‘herd’ in a way I have never come across before. Usually the term herd, when referring to people in these kinds of contexts, means precisely that people do what other people do, not because it fits their own urges, interests, but because they are afraid to be individuals. I think this is where we ended up talking at cross purposes.
The answer to the first question is: it depends. If you really feel the urge to eat six smaller meals each day, but you keep stifling this urge because you don’t want to be weird, yes, you are conforming and it is herd behavior and likely is not good for your particular body. Rebelling in this context would be deciding like a teenager might to eat two meals a day because you know if you don’t eat breakfast it will piss mom off. For me non-herd behavior would be to actually be open to what your body wants and needs and feels right. This would be neither conforming - doing something simply because that is the way it is done out of anxiety of doing something else - nor rebelling. Driving on the right side of the road is a different kind of case. Here doing what other people do and expect is simply good common sense. If you think the English are wrong and stupid for driving on the other side of the road - or Americans from the other side of this, then you are probably a conformist, and a kind of odd fundamentalist.
Some things simply do not matter much and doing them is not contorting yourself to fit the norm.
OK. Good, this seems to nail down where we missed each other, or I missed you. To me then the word ‘herd’ is being stretched beyond useful meaning. It seems like you are saying, you are still human, rather than you are still part of the herd.
So being in the herd means being influenced by what other people do. By that definition I agree, we are then, in general, in the herd. Everyone is influenced to some degree by some other humans unless they are feral children. We cannot escape some influence, even if it becomes a trivial factor is certain or many decisions and attitudes. But on the eating issue and other specific issues one can reach decisions without regard for the rest of humanity. Without having a prime factor in our decisions being ‘I am scared not to conform’ or ‘not conforming is bad’. One can have the freedom and openness to base one’s decisions on oneself. Of course we see other people eat, we hear about it, we are still influenced, but the decision about what to do, I think, can be reached despite what become minor influences, which in this case are not reaching further than awareness of what other people do. Once one was, for example, comfortable not conforming with the norms.
To me once ‘herd’ is on the table, I take it to mean things like a person in the herd cannot make such decisions based on themselves.
You use the term differently and take any action or choice as being simply (even if a new and harmonious one to that individual) a choice by a member of the herd. A herd choice.
Every possible action reached via any possible process will be something someone in the herd has done.
I interpreted the word ‘herd’ the way it is used in these contexts. I did not put words in your mouth. (see below)
I don’t think they are using the term ‘herd’ like you do. At least some of them. I think some of them, at least, are using the term in the sense I am using it. I think they saw N as saying that portions of culture seek to drive a wedge between people and choices that would suit them better - the ideas in Christianity, for example around humility, sacrifice, keeping oneself small and meek. IOW they are not asserting that one becomes non-human or makes choices humans cannot make, but that within the set of choices, they are able to choose not out of fear of being bad or different or abnormal, but can choose or act more from their own urges as a full set - rather than simply the urge to be a part of what they mean by herd, to do what others do, etc.
I think that is a meaningful distinction and one that fits with the ‘herd’ metaphor. Humans are not herd animals - we can act in where I think the herd metaphor applies and act in ways (or really for reasons) where I think the herd metaphor does not apply.
Sure, though in a context where I am discussion conforming, rebelling and the possibility of something else, I use the term more restrictively.
Well, this is again confirmation of our split use of the term. For me we are not herd animals. I believe this refers to vegetarian non-primate quadruped mammals, usually grazers, that move in groups together - as part of a protective strategy - and have some degree of swarm behavior, physically present at nearly all times. Once that word is used for humans I assume it is a metaphor for ways we act like that - and generally in a pejorative sense - not because there is anything wrong with a herd animal being a herd animal, but for another species to act in this way all the time they are necessarily limiting or contorting themselves to fit a model against their best interests. When we are striving for not the best reasons to move and act like other humans. When our specie’s more complicated set of options are narrowed down to where the use of the ‘herd’ metaphor is applicable.
You seem to think this metaphor is applicable to every action or rather you seem to be using herd where I would use the term species or human.
No matter what a human does and regardless of the motivations they remain a part of the species. To use the word herd here seems odd to me. It is not literally true, since we are not herd animals. Metaphorically, especially given the way herd has been used in these kinds of discussions, it seems to raise connotations you don’t want. And call ‘putting words in your mouth’ when this happens.
I was not putting words in your mouth, but rather interpreting your posts as well as I could given the context and the general use of the metaphor ‘herd’ which is not the same as your use. I think if there had been some useful distinction or reason for using ‘herd’ in the way you do, I might also have at least understood you must mean something else. But as it is, I can see no reason for using the metaphor ‘herd’ the way you do. It seems a useless metaphor. Or thinking that we literally are herd animals.
In any case. Now we know where we missed each other. I am going to leave our discussion at that.
you’ll be so kind as to allow me a response, i hope
yeah, i tend to think the fear works the opposite way, it’s the individual who is afraid to be like others. since most people are actually quite alike, try as they may to construct an original identity for themselves. i am Mr. So-and-so from Wherever, wherever. i do this and i do that - seriously, to assume you are above that because you ascribe to an individualist mythos is just naive. when the Nietzscheans use herd they use it in a derogatory way - it oozes contempt, really - but what they fail to realize is that they are no different. that contempt is self-loathing wrapped in an anxious grab at a greatness they’ve only read about. some say Nietzsche is a great man, most live their lives without ever knowing the first thing about him, and their lives end up being much the same as the lives of those who do. greatness is in the eye of the beholder. membership in the herd is not. the Nietzscheans have it ass-backwards. so, i say if there is a herd, metaphorical or otherwise, we are all at the very least a product of it and a participant in it.
you think the herd only includes those who contort themselves to fit the norm? i think it’s a much bigger pool than that. you are assuming there is some preexisting structure to contort in the first place, to me it’s just so many contingent preferences and beliefs - nothing set in stone - no authentic way of being or of thinking. just a patchwork of ideas picked up along the way and stitched together to form an individual intellectual identity.
well, putting it that way would to me be like saying that’s still the color red, rather than that’s still part of the uv spectrum - yeah, the one implies the other, but they are distinct definitions: seperate meanings and seperate ways of understanding. i find each useful in its own way.
also where we disagree is that i think our choices are basically predetermined, and so you can’t choose your way out of the herd
no humans are not literally herd animals. but they are social ones. VERY social ones. the herd metaphor can be used any number of ways - and i am aware that Nietzscheans are using it differently than i am - however i think it’s ignorant and silly to use it as a derogatory description of the mass of people that don’t spend all their time striving for some fantasy version of intellectual authenticity, and so i am trying to make the point using the metaphor in a way in which it is actually applicable.
perhaps it can be difficult to distinguish the nuances in meaning between “human species” and “herd” here, but i’m not sure why - it is simply describing the same thing from different angles.
Do you mean you left to go back to being alpha in the only groups where you were able to establish such a rank? By this I mean were you never able to become alpha of this place? (Or were you? - perhaps other members can testify). Otherwise, doesn’t sound very alpha to me… except in only very limited pockets of society - not that impressive really.
I’d have thought an alpha male would be alpha in all situations, no? Though perhaps there’s something really special about the group situation(s) wherein you are alpha? Do tell - establish your dominance!
No, look: I mean “spiritual” very simply and literally. The Jews’ reversal of their enemies’ values was not so much a case of the former’s values becoming actually the reverse of the latter’s (which would make the revaluation neither a revenge nor spiritual: not spiritual, because values are a thing of the heart, not of the mind; and not a revenge, because it would not be premeditated, indeed, not meditated at all). It was rather a case of the former turning the latter’s values around in their minds, as a means to overpower the latter—by presenting themselves as superior after all.
All alpha males were once not alpha males - it’s a position that has to be won by whatever means (not necessarily some kind of physical duel obviously). I regretted not being alpha male, it sucked. I think there are many, at least on this forum, who claim they do not regret not achieving such a role - but that’s all one can really say to oneself when in such a situation. I think there is at least something underneath that knows this is just denial. Of course there’s worse things than making virtues out of an inability to win getting your way, but there is plenty to resent about not being able to win such a privilege.
You see it time and time again when males rage at other males who make them feel uncomfortable, and they make a vice out of the way in which they are caused to feel uncomfortable, and present their alternative way as virtuous - allowing them to justify their resentment/regret. Like-minded males in this respect band together and you get “alternative” trends etc…
Apparently being schizotypal is all you need to be a shaman. The evolutionary advantage is that you exploit deception to pass copies of your genes onto the next generation. You have a well respected rank and can bypass much command, and steal breeding rights - so on the whole it’s a pretty good compromise for a non-alpha and not too far from it, but still beneath it.
You don’t need to be isolated to be a shaman, though some are/were. You also have to have specific kinds of behavior, not simply what an outsider to the culture would call odd, but which is not considered odd in that culture.
I don’t know that shamans get more chances to procreate or how it affects their chances at all.
Or, really, share command. And many tribal cultures, say a good number of Native American ones, have a much more fluid sense of command. Compared to Europeans they were much less hierarchical, more individualist and skeptical of ‘command’. You had to keep earning it, it was fluid and context dependent and it generally had much more limited scope.
As far as I can tell from shamans I know they have more alphas then the average, both those in cultures that have had continuous shamanic traditions and those in cultures - say, Euroamerican - where they had to enter shamanism first as an interest.
I disagree here about it being deception, but that’s another thread.
You might be either born with the genes that eventually cause you to become an alpha within the right environment, or not - yes.
But even if your gene-environment interaction affords you a tendency toward being an alpha, you still have to win it. That is to say, it doesn’t just fall on your lap from doing nothing - though it is not to say that you need to win some intergalactic superbattle either. You have to assert yourself in some way, and this is going to come easier to some than others. In a nice non-confrontational Western social group it probably seems like very little is being done at all when the right person earns his alpha role within a group. Something is being done, though it may not be particularly conscious. And it will always be by someone with the right genes for the environment. But it will not happen from birth, and it may not continue beyond the first social group you find yourself in.
In short, it’s really not as simple as you’re perhaps implying. What the hell’s a Meta? Are you beyond male?
There are Alphas within a specific group. Then there are Alphas in the general sense.
So for example I’m kind of a stoic person in most scenarios, but since I played basketball in college, if I’m playing basketball, I will take over and be the Alpha personality if the people I’m playing with are not as good as I am, and that is usually the case.
The general Alpha would be the guy who is there playing with me, and while he is not the winner of the competition, he seems himself that way. Everything he does is to that effect. A true Alpha is simply always thinking that way, no matter that they are doing. They might not prove themselves to be the most superior in a specific setting, but they are proving themselves as superior in some way. "Oh I didn’t win, but I’m rich - and that is the true competition, isn’t it ladies?’ etc.
There are 3 classifications:
Alpha
Beta
Meta
Alpha is superior. Beta is weak. Meta is superior at being outside of those 2 categories. Meta is like Abed from Community. The Meta is important because an Alpha can’t be good at being a Meta, or, de-facto, they’re not being Alpha.
Is that your own classification? I can’t seem to easily find it anywhere else…
In the traditional classification, the alpha is currently dominant, betas are strong pending potentials, lower ranks can be labelled by going further into the Greek alphabet, and sometimes the lowest ranks are just called Omegas. Nowhere are there any Metas.
I can understand why you’d desire a term for a seeming outsider, but in the traditional classification these types are usually just some lower rank or other. In answer to this:
The thread is about alphas in the general sense.
So it’s not group specific as humans seem to often move much more freely between social groups. And in the general sense - in wider society - unless you’re literally self-sufficient and apart from all other humans at all times with no exchanges with them whatsoever, you are somewhere between alpha and omega and nothing besides.
What I’ve been investigating is whether, for all those who are sometimes “alpha”, are any of these people pretty much alpha be default - anywhere they go? And if so, are they philosophers? - with their alpha personality imprinted upon their philosophies?
Most seem to see themselves as either sometimes alphas or never alphas. Often the “sometimes alphas” will come out with some alternative classification like “lone wolf” or your “meta” - which just seems like a consolation for not being alpha in general, but at least being strong. I’d class all these as betas and below.
I perhaps don’t rule out betas in my search, especially since there do not seem to be any default alphas here - and if there are they seem to be particularly stunted philosophically. So perhaps it ought to be the “most alpha” philosophers who exist who I am looking for - these “betas and below” who are mostly denying having any rank at all…
…the point of all this being that I want to find somebody who is set apart from the lower rank masses, possessing exceptional creativity, but somebody who is able to successfully introduce their ideas within society through their natural dominance and clout.
Since this is turning into a somewhat difficult task, I have considered that alphas perhaps turn their dominance away from introspection and outwards toward people, and philosophers are unable to do so, so they turn their dominance inward to their thoughts - meaning the “alpha philosopher” would be an oxymoron.
I think Gobbo’s Meta is a good concept. To my mind, it describes a person who may be dominant but chooses not to assert that dominance over other people except in specific circumstance. An alpha, by definition, asserts that dominance, else they wouldn’t be considered an alpha. What of someone who is most decidedly not Beta, but chooses not to dominate things/people around them, nor allow themselves to be dominated by a dick-swinging Alpha? I see no consolation in being a Meta, I see an authentic individual.
This goes for all the genuine philosophers, for instance Homer, Plato, Bacon, and Nietzsche. I mention only the utterers of a “Word of an Aeon”, to speak with Crowley, as these are probably the ones you’d consider most alpha. They’re not really more alpha than the others, though. For what epitomises a genuine philosopher’s “alphaness” is that he does what needs to be done for the sake of the “further development” (see below) of man—regardless of whether that be “assertion” or “compliance”:
[size=95]The essential characteristic of the Grade [of Magus] is that its possessor utters a Creative Magical Word, which transforms the planet on which he lives […]. This can take place only at an “Equinox of the Gods” at the end of an “Aeon”; that is, when the secret formula which expresses the Law of its action becomes outworn and useless to its further development.
(Thus “Suckling” is the formula of an infant: when teeth appear it marks a new “Aeon”, whose “Word” is “Eating”).
A Magus can therefore only appear as such to the world at intervals of some centuries […].
This does not mean that only one man can attain this Grade in any one Aeon, so far as the Order is concerned. A man can make personal progress equivalent to that of a “Word of an Aeon”; but he will identify himself with the current word, and exert his will to establish it, lest he conflict with the work of the Magus [e.g., Bacon] who uttered the Word of the Aeon in which He [e.g., Descartes] is living.
[Crowley, “One Star in Sight”.]
The philosopher as we understand him, we free spirits—, [is] the man of the most comprehensive responsibility, who has the conscience for the collective development of man[.]
[Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, section 61.]
The most spiritual human beings, as the strongest, […] rule not because they want to but because they are, they are not free to be second.
[Nietzsche, The Antichrist, section 57.][/size]
I’m fairly amazed at the depth of this thread and the general interest on the subject as it is still going. Me, I don’t put much weight on the subject.
Thanks for the contribution, it’s not like you have to care. I’m wondering why you said this at all though - perhaps you think you’re above all this dominance stuff and that this says nothing about your dominance relative to others, I dunno.
BS, you either assert what you want, which is going to affect others whether you like it or not - sometimes requiring them to put what they want on hold, or divert what they want elsewhere - or you are one of the ones who has to put what they want on hold or divert it elsewhere.
If everyone was assertive, wishes wouldn’t all be miraculously compatible with one another. If nobody was, our species would just die out. Gobbo’s “meta” or your “authentic individual” is just another guy who has had to learn to withhold what they want around more domineering individuals, or “dick swinging alphas”. What’s so wrong with dick swinging? - are you too refined and deep to push harder to get what you want, even if it means asserting yourself to a significant extent? The two aren’t incompatible - the dick swinging can help act as a tool to turn more attention to your own depth and refinement… though often in practice it is just vulgar and shallow - I’ll grant you that.
I do see a semblance between what you quoted and genuine philosophers, that is of course the intention. I don’t know about Homer and Bacon, Plato would probably have been fairly alpha because of his social rank - being used to command and growing into it amongst others who had likewise grown into such a role. Nietzsche though? - he was a sickly weed, and though I regard him as the utmost genius, that’s simply not enough on its own to indicate alphaness. His social discretion was admirable, but I think his works will forever be reserved for the few - as was his intention, obviously because he was searching for others in his own image.
In conversation this all holds up quite well, but take it outside. I’m not trying to say that dick-swinging isn’t necessary sometimes, but I don’t believe it’s in the best interest of our species for people to be cut-throat. I think it’s wise to consider that there are going to be occasions in life in which a person needs to push their own agenda, but there are also going to be times when it’s best to follow someone else’s lead, and that consistently acting on one of those extremes is probably unwise.
