I'm a woman who faced such an individual and you have no idea how painful a loss it caused. He had lied about getting mandatory equipment and we were now in the middle of nowhere with no financial availability or access to this necessary equipment. If he had told me when we were in the city I would have been able to deal with the problem.
Thank you so much for your insightful essay. I met the young man's mother and knew the answer as to why he was such a person.
I watched the interaction of the mother with her husband and with the son and I knew why he was the way he was.
This is not me giving men an excuse, because past the age of 21 you as a man are fully responsible for the man that you will become. But, I hope dearly that women read this article because they have to stop raising gamma males and your advice needs to be implemented for both male and female children in the most important job of being a TRUE mother raising human beings of integrity.
Maybe the gamma should first make a descend, and become an omega; then work his way back to being a delta.
I like to suggest that the gamma is like the omega. Both have given up on themselves. The gamma represses it while the omega is hopelessly resigned to it. That explains why gammas are more interested in indulgence than any real self-improvement - despite their lofty self-image.
By bringing his disappointment in himself to the surface. The gamma can properly grieve. And break away from the incessant need to view the world, and its inhabitants as resources that could compensate for him not being the person he wish he is.
“I don’t know” and “I hadn’t thought of it that way” will take any and every young gamma very far in his journey to normalcy. Young women will see you as much more mature, and look upon you with some curiosity instead of disgust. I’ve seen this happen periodically over the many years at the HS.
The hidden beauty (and genius) of these posts is after a few hours, try as they may, the "confirmed" simply cannot resist the call of Lorelei. But this time they will surely fool everyone.
"....you will have to leave your Gamma friends and acquaintances behind." Huh? I was under the impression that gammas didn't have that many like-status friends, and would try to hang out with the kind of people they are trying to pass for, whenever practicable.
The tomboyish Julie Harris character in "Member of the Wedding" comes to mind. She was cold to a helpful elder's suggestion that she start a club of kids of her own stripe. She wanted to be in The Club, the neighborhood elite.
The gamma I have to deal with on a daily basis is so messed up he not only can’t say he doesn’t know, but changes the subject and tells you all that he knows about a parallel topic which has nothing to do with the question he is asked. It’s like he thinks he can use the Jedi mind trick on everyone. It’s completely annoying.
The best phrase that I know when dealing with higher-ups that have a question that I can’t answer is to say, “I don’t know, but I will find out and get back to you.” They might think you are stupid (who cares), but at least they know you have integrity.
As a child I had great difficulty admitting I was wrong. It wasn't until my 20's that I could admit it. It does get easier, just don't let people perceive it as a weakness
As a child, it’s hard to admit fault around people whose modus operandi is to use it against you. Unfortunately the habit of lying to avoid pain can stick with us well into adulthood.
It’s easy to equate telling the truth with pain when even the most trivial mistakes renders you drenched in palpable scorn by your parents. In that situation, to lie is to survive.
Thank God for this Substack. The content and comments have been invaluable for me in my character development. Particularly in regard to honesty and humility. I am looking forward to getting my hands on the book.
It's so bad, I'm to the point of questioning everything. I don't even know if we landed on the Moon. I'm not even a 100% sure we're on a globe. I even question... you know... 6 million.
So you consider the shape of the Antarctic to be a peripheral matter?
Even if it wasn't 6 million, it wasn't for lack of trying on Hitler's part. Even resources better used in the war effort were redirected. The historian John Lukacs theorized that Hitler may have known at some point he would lose the war and was determined to kill as many as possible.
For the shape question, consider that the evidence is primarily based on the word of governments who have an interest in the globe interpretation.
For the 6 million, there are scores of fabrications and hypotheses supporting that number, with loads of unanswered questions. They've theorized murder campaigns where millions were killed over the course of weeks, but they haven't produced evidence of the bodies. They've listed people multiple times as casualties of multiple camps, and some have been alive at the time.
I say all that to observe how little of what we "know" is knowable to us. We take a great deal on faith, and often from those we already know to be liars.
I’m curious- does this also relate to the inability to answer a question in a straightforward manner? It seems I cannot get a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the most innocuous question. He is a delta with some gamma tendencies and I am a very straightforward person.
Example: Blanket came out of the dryer, but sometimes they are not fully dry and I want to hang it up for a bit if it isn’t, which we often do.
Me: Is that blanket dry?
D: *Feels blanket* Yes, it is dry.
Me: All the way dry?
D: 90%
Me: So, it’s not fully dry.
D: …..No. (said reluctantly, as if it’s a personal failing. )
This is a fairly frequent occurrence. It’s almost like he is trying to outsmart me/find my angle and I just want a straight answer. We otherwise have a good relationship.
This has nothing to do with SSH. You're just miscommunicating. You think "dry" is a binary. He sees it as a gradiant. So, you need to be communicating at the same level of granularity; neither of you are wrong, but since you're the one initiating the communication, the burden is on you.
If you had said "is that blanket completely bone-dry" he would have said no. The question you asked was too indistinct because you assumed that everyone, including your husband, shares your highly-specific binary definition.
The most innocuous question . . . s are often those where people get to trying to figure out any angle to the asking. Here, the questioner is confident that the first answer is false and the second answer is weaselly. Perhaps the questioner already knows having felt the blanket or from experience with the timing and temperature of the machine operation and has assessed it to be not dry rendering the first question like the second question superfluous or for some other purpose than to obtain information about the dryness or not. Often a questioning can be replaced with the likely request, instruction, or demand.
"D: …..No. (said reluctantly, as if it’s a personal failing. )"
You're also undermining his status by questioning and overriding his judgement that the blankets are dry.
Consider rephrasing it so that you fully respect his judgement that it is dry, while requesting that the blankets be dried all the way to 100% dry, pretty please *bat eyelashes*.
Thanks for that input. Honestly it never occurred to me that there could be different standards of dryness. I thought it was binary- dry: and needs to be folded up or not dry: need to be hung up. (Not being snarky.)
I will keep this in mind in further interactions of this sort. Also- if I batted my eyelashes, he would wonder who I was and what I did with his wife, haha.
Again, this is one example of many of these types of interactions. When I was thinking about this earlier I realized that I often have to explain why I am asking for information before he will answer in a straight manner. He’s an engineer and often ‘begins at the end’ and eventually makes it around to the beginning. I could definitely be more patient when listening.
If hes sn engineer you speak 180 degrees to each other. Hes always going to be trying to give you the information he thinks you want, which is probably not what you want.
As you noted already theres intent mismatch. You can try asking your intent instead of the normal question:
"You think they could dry more if we hang them?"
At least then hes going to answer in line with your goal of hanging if necessary. This is obviously a lot of work, so reducing asking questions about things you can check yourself would be easier.
It’s a shame Gammas haven’t figured out there’s a smoother way to go through life—I get it, though I’ve learned not to play rescue. I'm here benefiting from this information too. I used to drown in shame over every little social blunder, letting my imagination run wild. Then I stopped trusting my imagination and started reading the obvious—the writing on the wall, the lay of the land: body language, facial expressions, hearing what people are actually saying. Turns out, everything you need is right in front of you, clear as day, and you don’t need to be that smart to see it.
When I embraced honesty, I discovered people were far kinder than I’d imagined. If they weren’t? Not my people, and no skin off my back. Now, I cut straight to the chase with the truth—even when it’s tough—because regret comes from avoiding it, not from owning it. Fear and delusion? Never worked. The truth? Never failed.
Jumping into the comments here was nerve-wracking at first; I feared negative comments, or worse, criticism! But then I thought, why not see it as free feedback if I’ve earned it? Nasty ones I can ignore easy; this place, more than any other, knows where these individuals are coming from. It’s all about the angle you take: ego-bruisers often turn out to be blessings. Like Vox’s article on intelligence not being a big deal—wonderful news for those of us who aren’t quite as sharp as we’d like! There’s magic in making the most of whatever you’ve got. Embracing challenges and realizing spirit beats flesh can flip your world upside down in the best ways.
So when I see folks caught in their bubbles, I get it. I’m stepping out of mine after many winters of delusion, and the warmth is bliss. You can do it too—and I won’t help! You won’t need it once you learn to read the world right in front of you.
Vox, is there a level where one moves past the “being right/taking the beating” framework and into not even perceiving being wrong as a beating because every time you are wrong you are moving closer to the truth?
To say it another way, is it a status thing for someone to move from worrying about “am I right” to “what is correct?” Not taking it personally to have an error corrected?
Or is that a different character trait (maybe UHIQ, non-binary thinking, humility, or thirst for truth) and not status-related in men?
"Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you."
Learning a lesson easily through verbal communication should be considered a valuable thing. Learning it the hard way through pain and expensive losses costs a lot more.
Takes maturity to recognize that corrections are helpful, even if poorly communicated and mostly wrong. The small part that is correct may still be highly valuable.
Being right is important if you're alone. If you're charming enough to have friends, you're often wrong, but your friends correct and save you. To be wrong about things isn't dangerous. If your skill with people is strong, then you don't have to know it. There is no cause to worry or to be afraid about being wrong. Not with enough popularity. If you have friends, you know how or what they're bad at things. And that's your area of expertise, where you save them.
It’s always shocking (perhaps darkly amusing by now) how closely Ukraine and NATO confronting Russia parallels the Gamma vs Alpha model described in this article. Ukraine is the Gamma getting his face pounded in, and NATO the Gamma talking smack, appealing to the crowd, attacking with plausible deniability, but also repeatedly backing down whenever Russia warns of consequences.
I'm a woman who faced such an individual and you have no idea how painful a loss it caused. He had lied about getting mandatory equipment and we were now in the middle of nowhere with no financial availability or access to this necessary equipment. If he had told me when we were in the city I would have been able to deal with the problem.
Thank you so much for your insightful essay. I met the young man's mother and knew the answer as to why he was such a person.
I watched the interaction of the mother with her husband and with the son and I knew why he was the way he was.
This is not me giving men an excuse, because past the age of 21 you as a man are fully responsible for the man that you will become. But, I hope dearly that women read this article because they have to stop raising gamma males and your advice needs to be implemented for both male and female children in the most important job of being a TRUE mother raising human beings of integrity.
Maybe the gamma should first make a descend, and become an omega; then work his way back to being a delta.
I like to suggest that the gamma is like the omega. Both have given up on themselves. The gamma represses it while the omega is hopelessly resigned to it. That explains why gammas are more interested in indulgence than any real self-improvement - despite their lofty self-image.
By bringing his disappointment in himself to the surface. The gamma can properly grieve. And break away from the incessant need to view the world, and its inhabitants as resources that could compensate for him not being the person he wish he is.
If fiction is to have a Gamma protagonist then it must be in the vein of graduating Gamma.
I wonder what Harry Potter would have looked like if it is about Graduating Gamma rather than just being special for existing.
“I don’t know” and “I hadn’t thought of it that way” will take any and every young gamma very far in his journey to normalcy. Young women will see you as much more mature, and look upon you with some curiosity instead of disgust. I’ve seen this happen periodically over the many years at the HS.
I like the graduating gamma series. It's given me much greater insight into that mindset.
The hidden beauty (and genius) of these posts is after a few hours, try as they may, the "confirmed" simply cannot resist the call of Lorelei. But this time they will surely fool everyone.
"....you will have to leave your Gamma friends and acquaintances behind." Huh? I was under the impression that gammas didn't have that many like-status friends, and would try to hang out with the kind of people they are trying to pass for, whenever practicable.
The tomboyish Julie Harris character in "Member of the Wedding" comes to mind. She was cold to a helpful elder's suggestion that she start a club of kids of her own stripe. She wanted to be in The Club, the neighborhood elite.
The gamma I have to deal with on a daily basis is so messed up he not only can’t say he doesn’t know, but changes the subject and tells you all that he knows about a parallel topic which has nothing to do with the question he is asked. It’s like he thinks he can use the Jedi mind trick on everyone. It’s completely annoying.
The best phrase that I know when dealing with higher-ups that have a question that I can’t answer is to say, “I don’t know, but I will find out and get back to you.” They might think you are stupid (who cares), but at least they know you have integrity.
Gammas make terrifying witnesses for lawyers, because they will guess or fabricate answers when they should just say “I don’t know.”
You will actually get much more conversation with this. Practice making this sound natural:
I don’t know. What do you think?
And
I don’t know. Tell me about it.
It’s that simple, and women love it. They get to talk, which seems to be like crack to them. Don’t reply to what they say. Just ask another question.
When women start telling you that you are a good listener, you are getting out.
As Vox and experience has shown: STFU or answer I don’t know or I don’t remember.. Worked for Hillary.
Currently going through this step. Very difficult. Thank you for the instruction.
Good luck. I came across this quote, and thought it might snap everything into perspective and provide a lodestar:
"You wanted what you didn't deserve, rather than wanting to deserve having it... and this is where the incessant lies and deceit became embedded."
Good luck!
As a child I had great difficulty admitting I was wrong. It wasn't until my 20's that I could admit it. It does get easier, just don't let people perceive it as a weakness
As a child, it’s hard to admit fault around people whose modus operandi is to use it against you. Unfortunately the habit of lying to avoid pain can stick with us well into adulthood.
It’s easy to equate telling the truth with pain when even the most trivial mistakes renders you drenched in palpable scorn by your parents. In that situation, to lie is to survive.
Thank God for this Substack. The content and comments have been invaluable for me in my character development. Particularly in regard to honesty and humility. I am looking forward to getting my hands on the book.
It's so bad, I'm to the point of questioning everything. I don't even know if we landed on the Moon. I'm not even a 100% sure we're on a globe. I even question... you know... 6 million.
So you consider the shape of the Antarctic to be a peripheral matter?
Even if it wasn't 6 million, it wasn't for lack of trying on Hitler's part. Even resources better used in the war effort were redirected. The historian John Lukacs theorized that Hitler may have known at some point he would lose the war and was determined to kill as many as possible.
For the shape question, consider that the evidence is primarily based on the word of governments who have an interest in the globe interpretation.
For the 6 million, there are scores of fabrications and hypotheses supporting that number, with loads of unanswered questions. They've theorized murder campaigns where millions were killed over the course of weeks, but they haven't produced evidence of the bodies. They've listed people multiple times as casualties of multiple camps, and some have been alive at the time.
I say all that to observe how little of what we "know" is knowable to us. We take a great deal on faith, and often from those we already know to be liars.
I’m curious- does this also relate to the inability to answer a question in a straightforward manner? It seems I cannot get a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the most innocuous question. He is a delta with some gamma tendencies and I am a very straightforward person.
Example: Blanket came out of the dryer, but sometimes they are not fully dry and I want to hang it up for a bit if it isn’t, which we often do.
Me: Is that blanket dry?
D: *Feels blanket* Yes, it is dry.
Me: All the way dry?
D: 90%
Me: So, it’s not fully dry.
D: …..No. (said reluctantly, as if it’s a personal failing. )
This is a fairly frequent occurrence. It’s almost like he is trying to outsmart me/find my angle and I just want a straight answer. We otherwise have a good relationship.
This has nothing to do with SSH. You're just miscommunicating. You think "dry" is a binary. He sees it as a gradiant. So, you need to be communicating at the same level of granularity; neither of you are wrong, but since you're the one initiating the communication, the burden is on you.
If you had said "is that blanket completely bone-dry" he would have said no. The question you asked was too indistinct because you assumed that everyone, including your husband, shares your highly-specific binary definition.
The correct answer is it’s dry to me, you might feel otherwise.
Yes, he is trying to find your angle because he doesn't want to get in trouble.
A shit test lost, and a wife upset.
The most innocuous question . . . s are often those where people get to trying to figure out any angle to the asking. Here, the questioner is confident that the first answer is false and the second answer is weaselly. Perhaps the questioner already knows having felt the blanket or from experience with the timing and temperature of the machine operation and has assessed it to be not dry rendering the first question like the second question superfluous or for some other purpose than to obtain information about the dryness or not. Often a questioning can be replaced with the likely request, instruction, or demand.
To avoid future marital discord, just do the laundry.
"Me: So, it’s not fully dry."
"D: …..No. (said reluctantly, as if it’s a personal failing. )"
You're also undermining his status by questioning and overriding his judgement that the blankets are dry.
Consider rephrasing it so that you fully respect his judgement that it is dry, while requesting that the blankets be dried all the way to 100% dry, pretty please *bat eyelashes*.
Thanks for that input. Honestly it never occurred to me that there could be different standards of dryness. I thought it was binary- dry: and needs to be folded up or not dry: need to be hung up. (Not being snarky.)
I will keep this in mind in further interactions of this sort. Also- if I batted my eyelashes, he would wonder who I was and what I did with his wife, haha.
Again, this is one example of many of these types of interactions. When I was thinking about this earlier I realized that I often have to explain why I am asking for information before he will answer in a straight manner. He’s an engineer and often ‘begins at the end’ and eventually makes it around to the beginning. I could definitely be more patient when listening.
If hes sn engineer you speak 180 degrees to each other. Hes always going to be trying to give you the information he thinks you want, which is probably not what you want.
As you noted already theres intent mismatch. You can try asking your intent instead of the normal question:
"You think they could dry more if we hang them?"
At least then hes going to answer in line with your goal of hanging if necessary. This is obviously a lot of work, so reducing asking questions about things you can check yourself would be easier.
It’s like the old is a meal salty enough. A man never tires off of woman batting her eyelashes at him. Nature at its best. Use it.
In your example, he gave you a straight answer that the blankets are dry.
You rejected the straight answer based on your standard of dryness. He was not evasive but you didn't accept his answer as an answer.
Example: I'm intently watching a movie or doing something requiring intense concentration (e.g. performing lifesaving brain surgery on a baby).
Wife: *Walks in* Blah, blah blah blah, blah blah, blah.
Me thinking: (What the hell is that annoying buzzing noise? I can't concentrate. Maybe if I just say "yes" it will stop).
Me: Yes.
Wife: BLAH BLAH, BLAH BLAH BLAH, BLAH!
That may have more to do with different standards than gammatude. As in, it's "dry enough" as far as he's concerned.
That's likely what explains the tone, as well. He's not defeated because he was caught, but because he used the wrong standard for his answer.
It’s a shame Gammas haven’t figured out there’s a smoother way to go through life—I get it, though I’ve learned not to play rescue. I'm here benefiting from this information too. I used to drown in shame over every little social blunder, letting my imagination run wild. Then I stopped trusting my imagination and started reading the obvious—the writing on the wall, the lay of the land: body language, facial expressions, hearing what people are actually saying. Turns out, everything you need is right in front of you, clear as day, and you don’t need to be that smart to see it.
When I embraced honesty, I discovered people were far kinder than I’d imagined. If they weren’t? Not my people, and no skin off my back. Now, I cut straight to the chase with the truth—even when it’s tough—because regret comes from avoiding it, not from owning it. Fear and delusion? Never worked. The truth? Never failed.
Jumping into the comments here was nerve-wracking at first; I feared negative comments, or worse, criticism! But then I thought, why not see it as free feedback if I’ve earned it? Nasty ones I can ignore easy; this place, more than any other, knows where these individuals are coming from. It’s all about the angle you take: ego-bruisers often turn out to be blessings. Like Vox’s article on intelligence not being a big deal—wonderful news for those of us who aren’t quite as sharp as we’d like! There’s magic in making the most of whatever you’ve got. Embracing challenges and realizing spirit beats flesh can flip your world upside down in the best ways.
So when I see folks caught in their bubbles, I get it. I’m stepping out of mine after many winters of delusion, and the warmth is bliss. You can do it too—and I won’t help! You won’t need it once you learn to read the world right in front of you.
Vox, is there a level where one moves past the “being right/taking the beating” framework and into not even perceiving being wrong as a beating because every time you are wrong you are moving closer to the truth?
To say it another way, is it a status thing for someone to move from worrying about “am I right” to “what is correct?” Not taking it personally to have an error corrected?
Or is that a different character trait (maybe UHIQ, non-binary thinking, humility, or thirst for truth) and not status-related in men?
Yes.
"Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you."
Learning a lesson easily through verbal communication should be considered a valuable thing. Learning it the hard way through pain and expensive losses costs a lot more.
Takes maturity to recognize that corrections are helpful, even if poorly communicated and mostly wrong. The small part that is correct may still be highly valuable.
Being right is important if you're alone. If you're charming enough to have friends, you're often wrong, but your friends correct and save you. To be wrong about things isn't dangerous. If your skill with people is strong, then you don't have to know it. There is no cause to worry or to be afraid about being wrong. Not with enough popularity. If you have friends, you know how or what they're bad at things. And that's your area of expertise, where you save them.
It’s always shocking (perhaps darkly amusing by now) how closely Ukraine and NATO confronting Russia parallels the Gamma vs Alpha model described in this article. Ukraine is the Gamma getting his face pounded in, and NATO the Gamma talking smack, appealing to the crowd, attacking with plausible deniability, but also repeatedly backing down whenever Russia warns of consequences.
Look at the entire elite class, almost all Gamma with a smattering of Alpha
All Lambda, with a smattering of Gamma.
Vox, do you know if Delta Man is still doing well?
He's doing very well.