I think societal rise and decline is directly related to how rewarding it is to be an alpha. I assume the general proportion of ranks is the same at all times, barring outlier events, but the different stages of society progressively make it less worth it to be an alpha while simultaneously giving that reward to lower and lower ranks.
Let's use my imaginary scenario of a village near a population of wild bulls. In the early stages being an alpha is extremely rewarding: if you can get a squad together to hunt bulls you are basically king and can get unlimited women, respect, say in how the village is structured, etc. This continues as the alphas are further rewarded for making things easier for their underlings who get killed by bulls and can't hunt as well, because alphas have high empathy, so the alphas (and possibly sigmas) lead a charge to capture bulls for domestication. The alpha is so rewarded that he can singlehandedly shape the entire culture around his actions, in this case perhaps leading to a Mongol style herding society.
Once this structure is made it is far less rewarding to be an alpha. Being Chief Bullrunner's grandson you can't win an entire culture and unlimited respect and women by being good at hunting bulls or figuring out bull domestication. You can get a large amount of it through hereditary or merit based rank, sure, but it's less god-like than before. You also have to deal with Bravos in charge by natural succession, as with Steve Jobs->Tim Cook. Bravos, being very good at policing, inadvertently police ascendant alphas away from the biggest reward structures that have been built. The instinct that protected their alpha from rival alphas now suppresses all alphas who would rightfully take the throne. To be an alpha here is to fight a bravo with all the power of his previous alpha, not an easy thing.
The next stage of society is gaming the system and getting around these Bravos. This dynamic shows up in lots of stories where the kingdom steward both maintains and stagnates society. The good outcome is he gives way to the boy with Excalibur or something, the bad outcome is that he is ousted by a gamma advisor or destroyed by his own woman who acts up now that there is no real alpha. The latter is far more likely than the former. Gammas are quite the gamemasters so they can run circles around Bravos once the absolute corrective hand of the alpha is missing.
Now the society is run by gammas and women. This is the decline, force and eventual looting stage of society. It is still not terribly rewarding to be an alpha here but pockets are showing up in the black markets and other fringes.
Once society stops providing core functions and is unable to restrict the alphas from getting high rewards, the alphas resurge. Perhaps not from the same society, which I treat as a single massive hierarchy, but once it's reasonable for an alpha to win total respect in an environment they start the seed of the process all over again.
Very speculative, certainly, but I feel persuasive.
Plato thought the decline over time was inevitable due to decline in morals and wisdom. Interesting to match his 5-regime cycle model with this.
Plato’s “solution” was “checks and balances”, but I don’t think he was much more sanguine than Franklin about its effectiveness ( “You have a republic, if you can keep it.”)
Another thing that really helps soften the ground for gammas in leadership is alpha-alpha issues. Alphas aren't that shy when excluding other alphas. Pretty often some alpha finds himself as the last man standing, and is in turn excluded by the low status men and women he surrounded himself, thinking he's solidifying his position.
Indeed, Boudica, the much ballyhooed in recent years queen of the the Iceni, (a minor Britannic tribe who lived in lands around the modern city of Norfolk), got her tribe completely wiped out for leading an extremely under-manned uprising against the Roman Army.
Not that they didn't have good reason to revolt against the Romans -- but there was zero strategic planning, starting with basic material strength: how many soldiers do they have, and how many can we raise?
The company I work for is kinda like that. The guy who created it was a pioneer in plastics manufacturing total legend. I honestly thmk his son was an Omega he always looked homeless and just very strange but definitely very smart. He actually ran the company pretty well. Now since he's dead at 80 years old it's pretty much all run by his daughters and his sisters daughters. In my opinion they're way better than gammas. Every time a gamma strives to be a supervisor he doesn't last long. Bravos are cherished and are great to work with. Hopefully some alpha swings in to save the day but that'll probably have to happen if they sell the place.
Are young alphas developmentally affected by the great quantities of estrogen in our water supply? Could they be affected by early childhood vaccinations? What about ADHD medication - could young alphas be some of those most likely to be put on Ritalin, to make them compliant in the classroom?
I’d hypothesize the presence of everything you just mentioned are possible variables that might reduce the quantity of high-status men in a society. If the young proto-Alpha is raised drinking estrogen-filled water and is injected with medicine that inhibits his testosterone production, that may inhibit his sexual aggressiveness and then possibly his SSH status.
But of course, that’s on a case-by-case basis. One redeeming quality of the Alpha is that he doesn’t go down without a fight.
I think survivorship bias colors the problem here:
All kinds of men head up teams. Only the Alpha-led ones can consistently win and expand, thus producing empires and civilizations.
Once the expansion phase is over, the Alpha skills of inspiration is less necessary nor competitive. For most businesses, for example, a relentless focus on cost-reduction and efficiency is more important. That discipline is more the forte of Bravos and high Deltas. So of course the ones headed up by B/D will continue the consolidation phase.
And then the rules of bureaucracy heralds the beginning of the end.
At each transition point, dynasties and empires may falter. For example, several Chinese dynasties and kingdoms, such as the Sui dynasty, were very short-lived because they did not survive the transition from expansion to consolidation. Some others over-reach during expansion and die off. So survivorship explains much of what we observe.
General Motors went from being the largest, richest corporation on the planet, to bankruptcy in less than 30 years, by focusing on cost-reduction above all else. At one point, they even had a damned ACCOUNTANT* as the CEO.
And General Motors II is on track to do the same thing.
* An accountant is a scorekeeper. No successful team EVER lets the scorekeeper make decisions about anything.
The advantage of SSH is that it suits itself to smaller-scale examination than society-wide models. Corporations aren't the same, but they can serve as study subjects the same way trait geneticists study fruit flies. They come with helpful external metrics, and maxims of management like Parkinson's 3rd Law offer starting points. There might even be motivated funding for research. Theories that survive win the resources of society-scale investigation.
My personal suspicion is that (SSH + succession dynamics) are a big part of the issue, and so is the competition's change-in-kind once elite overproduction gets going.
Where are all the alphas? One answer (I'm sure there are others) is modern sportsball. There is no ancient equivalent in terms of money/prestige/scope. Just as the innate natural tribalism/regionalism of the masses has been rechanneled into cheering for their favorite sportsball team, the alphas (and others) who in the past might have been revolutionary leaders, or tribal leaders/lieutenants, have been enticed into sportsball by the huge money/status involved. And thus kept placated. So everyone's attention is diverted, and the regime is free from all these potential troublemakers who are now otherwise occupied. You could debate how much of that was by design and how much was emergent.
Related: We have the Lauren Jobs/Mackenzie Bezos/Melinda Gates/Reid Hoffman/George Soros bloc throwing money at every degenerate rainbow cause they can find in the phone book, but nobody doing the equivalent for the DR. In part, I believe, because the people who could have, or would have, are instead throwing that money into buying a better sportsball team for their alma mater.
As to why there are so many gammas in positions of power and influence: could it be that, as institutions become entrenched and bureaucratized, they become all about consensus-based leadership? Alphas are brash, abrasive, and want to be the final authority, whereas the more feminine gamma is seen as the "safe pick" to lead the legacy institution.
My personal little pet-theory is that civilizational collapse is precipitated (when not by conquest) by the double-edged sword of female agency and their co-opting of the labor of lower status males. When women gain power or leverage in society, they will convince the lower-status ("blue pilled") men to white-knight for them and help them to subvert the normal male status heirarchy they call this "the patriarchy" now).
This bogs down the gears of society and is a constantly reinforcing feedback loop.
It might be bullshit. Take it for what you paid for it
When you move away from a God intended hierarchy is also when things start to shake. But is probably one of the most fundamental question, who should lead?
From what I can observe, Gammas are generally the only ones interested in political maneuvering and taking leadership other than Alphas. Deltas generally aren't interested other than the "if I was in charge, then we grunts would be treated better" navel gazing, Bravos prefer the Alpha be in charge, Omegas definitely don't do it, and Sigmas only do it out of necessity to achieve their own goals.
Gammas purposefully develop the skills and use the Alphas' strengths and weaknesses against them, and since there are so many more Gammas than Alphas, leadership unfortunately tends towards Gamma.
"We need to make Money great again. Make money real, backed by real stuff, real assets like Gold."
"Backing money with real stuff" is finance. What you are asking for is exactly how the Alphas get pushed out.
Money is the process where the social connections an Alpha creates and maintains is substituted with dollars. Initially the money adds reach and scale; but ultimately the money takes over when Alpha moves on or retires.
I think societal rise and decline is directly related to how rewarding it is to be an alpha. I assume the general proportion of ranks is the same at all times, barring outlier events, but the different stages of society progressively make it less worth it to be an alpha while simultaneously giving that reward to lower and lower ranks.
Let's use my imaginary scenario of a village near a population of wild bulls. In the early stages being an alpha is extremely rewarding: if you can get a squad together to hunt bulls you are basically king and can get unlimited women, respect, say in how the village is structured, etc. This continues as the alphas are further rewarded for making things easier for their underlings who get killed by bulls and can't hunt as well, because alphas have high empathy, so the alphas (and possibly sigmas) lead a charge to capture bulls for domestication. The alpha is so rewarded that he can singlehandedly shape the entire culture around his actions, in this case perhaps leading to a Mongol style herding society.
Once this structure is made it is far less rewarding to be an alpha. Being Chief Bullrunner's grandson you can't win an entire culture and unlimited respect and women by being good at hunting bulls or figuring out bull domestication. You can get a large amount of it through hereditary or merit based rank, sure, but it's less god-like than before. You also have to deal with Bravos in charge by natural succession, as with Steve Jobs->Tim Cook. Bravos, being very good at policing, inadvertently police ascendant alphas away from the biggest reward structures that have been built. The instinct that protected their alpha from rival alphas now suppresses all alphas who would rightfully take the throne. To be an alpha here is to fight a bravo with all the power of his previous alpha, not an easy thing.
The next stage of society is gaming the system and getting around these Bravos. This dynamic shows up in lots of stories where the kingdom steward both maintains and stagnates society. The good outcome is he gives way to the boy with Excalibur or something, the bad outcome is that he is ousted by a gamma advisor or destroyed by his own woman who acts up now that there is no real alpha. The latter is far more likely than the former. Gammas are quite the gamemasters so they can run circles around Bravos once the absolute corrective hand of the alpha is missing.
Now the society is run by gammas and women. This is the decline, force and eventual looting stage of society. It is still not terribly rewarding to be an alpha here but pockets are showing up in the black markets and other fringes.
Once society stops providing core functions and is unable to restrict the alphas from getting high rewards, the alphas resurge. Perhaps not from the same society, which I treat as a single massive hierarchy, but once it's reasonable for an alpha to win total respect in an environment they start the seed of the process all over again.
Very speculative, certainly, but I feel persuasive.
Plato thought the decline over time was inevitable due to decline in morals and wisdom. Interesting to match his 5-regime cycle model with this.
Plato’s “solution” was “checks and balances”, but I don’t think he was much more sanguine than Franklin about its effectiveness ( “You have a republic, if you can keep it.”)
Turchin is here on Substack. Why don’t you ask him to take a look at your work?
He's focused on economics, not social and cultural aspects.
Another thing that really helps soften the ground for gammas in leadership is alpha-alpha issues. Alphas aren't that shy when excluding other alphas. Pretty often some alpha finds himself as the last man standing, and is in turn excluded by the low status men and women he surrounded himself, thinking he's solidifying his position.
A bright red flag is women in leadership. If you’ve got women leading the country, or close to it, you might be in the stage of societal collapse.
Indeed, Boudica, the much ballyhooed in recent years queen of the the Iceni, (a minor Britannic tribe who lived in lands around the modern city of Norfolk), got her tribe completely wiped out for leading an extremely under-manned uprising against the Roman Army.
Not that they didn't have good reason to revolt against the Romans -- but there was zero strategic planning, starting with basic material strength: how many soldiers do they have, and how many can we raise?
The company I work for is kinda like that. The guy who created it was a pioneer in plastics manufacturing total legend. I honestly thmk his son was an Omega he always looked homeless and just very strange but definitely very smart. He actually ran the company pretty well. Now since he's dead at 80 years old it's pretty much all run by his daughters and his sisters daughters. In my opinion they're way better than gammas. Every time a gamma strives to be a supervisor he doesn't last long. Bravos are cherished and are great to work with. Hopefully some alpha swings in to save the day but that'll probably have to happen if they sell the place.
Women are probably at least good as placeholders.
Gammas seem to be the left-hand of the bell curve in terms of extremes of being socially corrosive.
Are young alphas developmentally affected by the great quantities of estrogen in our water supply? Could they be affected by early childhood vaccinations? What about ADHD medication - could young alphas be some of those most likely to be put on Ritalin, to make them compliant in the classroom?
I’d hypothesize the presence of everything you just mentioned are possible variables that might reduce the quantity of high-status men in a society. If the young proto-Alpha is raised drinking estrogen-filled water and is injected with medicine that inhibits his testosterone production, that may inhibit his sexual aggressiveness and then possibly his SSH status.
But of course, that’s on a case-by-case basis. One redeeming quality of the Alpha is that he doesn’t go down without a fight.
True. Although all those attacks are asymmetrical attacks. Which doesn't quite register for Behavioral Alphas.
I think survivorship bias colors the problem here:
All kinds of men head up teams. Only the Alpha-led ones can consistently win and expand, thus producing empires and civilizations.
Once the expansion phase is over, the Alpha skills of inspiration is less necessary nor competitive. For most businesses, for example, a relentless focus on cost-reduction and efficiency is more important. That discipline is more the forte of Bravos and high Deltas. So of course the ones headed up by B/D will continue the consolidation phase.
And then the rules of bureaucracy heralds the beginning of the end.
At each transition point, dynasties and empires may falter. For example, several Chinese dynasties and kingdoms, such as the Sui dynasty, were very short-lived because they did not survive the transition from expansion to consolidation. Some others over-reach during expansion and die off. So survivorship explains much of what we observe.
General Motors went from being the largest, richest corporation on the planet, to bankruptcy in less than 30 years, by focusing on cost-reduction above all else. At one point, they even had a damned ACCOUNTANT* as the CEO.
And General Motors II is on track to do the same thing.
* An accountant is a scorekeeper. No successful team EVER lets the scorekeeper make decisions about anything.
I cover this exact topic in this essay:
https://open.substack.com/pub/uraniumgriffin/p/worst-boyfriend-ever-alpha-male-responsibility?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer
The advantage of SSH is that it suits itself to smaller-scale examination than society-wide models. Corporations aren't the same, but they can serve as study subjects the same way trait geneticists study fruit flies. They come with helpful external metrics, and maxims of management like Parkinson's 3rd Law offer starting points. There might even be motivated funding for research. Theories that survive win the resources of society-scale investigation.
My personal suspicion is that (SSH + succession dynamics) are a big part of the issue, and so is the competition's change-in-kind once elite overproduction gets going.
Where are all the alphas? One answer (I'm sure there are others) is modern sportsball. There is no ancient equivalent in terms of money/prestige/scope. Just as the innate natural tribalism/regionalism of the masses has been rechanneled into cheering for their favorite sportsball team, the alphas (and others) who in the past might have been revolutionary leaders, or tribal leaders/lieutenants, have been enticed into sportsball by the huge money/status involved. And thus kept placated. So everyone's attention is diverted, and the regime is free from all these potential troublemakers who are now otherwise occupied. You could debate how much of that was by design and how much was emergent.
Related: We have the Lauren Jobs/Mackenzie Bezos/Melinda Gates/Reid Hoffman/George Soros bloc throwing money at every degenerate rainbow cause they can find in the phone book, but nobody doing the equivalent for the DR. In part, I believe, because the people who could have, or would have, are instead throwing that money into buying a better sportsball team for their alma mater.
As to why there are so many gammas in positions of power and influence: could it be that, as institutions become entrenched and bureaucratized, they become all about consensus-based leadership? Alphas are brash, abrasive, and want to be the final authority, whereas the more feminine gamma is seen as the "safe pick" to lead the legacy institution.
When most of management is men, there's no such insistence on consensus and rule-by-the-hen-house.
My personal little pet-theory is that civilizational collapse is precipitated (when not by conquest) by the double-edged sword of female agency and their co-opting of the labor of lower status males. When women gain power or leverage in society, they will convince the lower-status ("blue pilled") men to white-knight for them and help them to subvert the normal male status heirarchy they call this "the patriarchy" now).
This bogs down the gears of society and is a constantly reinforcing feedback loop.
It might be bullshit. Take it for what you paid for it
When you move away from a God intended hierarchy is also when things start to shake. But is probably one of the most fundamental question, who should lead?
From what I can observe, Gammas are generally the only ones interested in political maneuvering and taking leadership other than Alphas. Deltas generally aren't interested other than the "if I was in charge, then we grunts would be treated better" navel gazing, Bravos prefer the Alpha be in charge, Omegas definitely don't do it, and Sigmas only do it out of necessity to achieve their own goals.
Gammas purposefully develop the skills and use the Alphas' strengths and weaknesses against them, and since there are so many more Gammas than Alphas, leadership unfortunately tends towards Gamma.
And notice what Congress and the state legislatures are primarily composed of.
You hit the nail. Also In addition to their numbers and them being interested in power, gammas are good at subversion.
If there is any man responsible for poisoning the Alpha it is likely Gammas.
I think a society based on industry favor the Alpha. A society based on services and finance is the ideal for the gammas.
We need to make Money great again. Make money real, backed by real stuff, real assets like Gold.
Funny money and bizarre financial instruments favor the passive agressive, the lazy pseudo-intelectual, the cunning, not the industrious.
We need more Henry Fords and less Bill Ackman.
More Watsons and Less Sam Altmans.
"We need to make Money great again. Make money real, backed by real stuff, real assets like Gold."
"Backing money with real stuff" is finance. What you are asking for is exactly how the Alphas get pushed out.
Money is the process where the social connections an Alpha creates and maintains is substituted with dollars. Initially the money adds reach and scale; but ultimately the money takes over when Alpha moves on or retires.