dagblog - Comments for "The Fall of the Alpha Male"

There exists another less

Saladin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:57:24 +0000

In reply to The Fall of the Alpha Male

There exists another less romantic but equally vapid interpretation that is perhaps even better supported empirical evidence.

It's a striking parallel that the timeline of the rise of women directly corresponds with the dramatic growth in inequity. The 35 year period has seen the rise of the super-rich masters of the universe with the decline of working families real income. In fact it is doubtful that there has ever been such a disconnect between the riches and power of the Alpha men, the CEO's and Wall Street financiers that run our world, and everybody else. Some might argue that women--being more docile by nature--are being promoted to replace Men--who tend to be prideful and more inclined to protest--thus providing our Alpha capitalists with a more malleable workforce. In this interpretation is it really a good thing that those Rust Belt men are learning to adapt and become, for a lack of a better term, pussies.

I present this merely to play devil's advocate. I would think that you could point to the experience of enlightened Scandinavian countries to bolster your argument. However the experiences of the rest of the world would seem to support this less optimistic view.

The book sounds interesting.

Elusive Trope — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:22:16 +0000

In reply to I'm reminded of a book called

The book sounds interesting. It is a bit perplexing to me that we could be consider social creatures, yet our response had to be either fight or flight.

They recently traced our lineage back to a small band of people along the coast of southern Africa. Our line almost died out during a massive drought that made most of Africa inhospitable. During those tough times, I imagine it was the tending instinct, to use that term, which allowed these people to survive as they scratched out a life in a new environment for them. It was their adaptability to the situation at hand, working together, that allowed them to survive long enough for the environmental conditions to improve and they could begin their migration north.

I'm reminded of a book called

erica20 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:04:23 +0000

In reply to The Fall of the Alpha Male

I'm reminded of a book called "The Tending Instinct" which came out a few years ago and tried to say that the Fight/Flight description of human instinct was actually a male description of the situation and totally left out a third instinct which was to take care of things and wait for better times. I believe the author's theory came in for some withering criticism.

But I've always kept that book in mind, and thought that in better times, it might be perceived as having more value....