To the contrary, having raised 3 children, I acutely feel the impact of an easily triggered amygdala. Whilst I believe that, yes - trauma is a choice, I've lived through parenting mistakes that have taken years to unwind, such that I dread to think what the effects of serious abuse and / or neglect would have. I also work with several adults who have clearly been impacted by abusive parents, resulting in the kinds of behaviours that are mocked as gamma on here.
The basic problem that most people are not getting is that Vox's SSH is not a self-improvement program. The gaps between these categories are too far apart. You are not, therefore, in a "few sit-ups away from total studdom" situation.
The problem that you are facing is not that you are just a gamma. The problem is that you are probably the lowest-status gamma among the group of gammas that exist in every social setting imaginable. If you need a self-improvement program, then you need to raise your status to at least the average level of the gammas around you. This is, invariably, a "small-S" status pursuit, adjusting yourself in how you look, talk, act, dress, your living, your money level, your home, car, girlfriend/wife, children, etc., until you've matched the people around you. Failing that, you should remove yourself from that social setting to avoid the pain of being unceremoniously removed at some later date.
The desire for a predictive model that can be used to shape children into functional, content adults drives the the "how did they become X" model-making.
The answer "they were born that way" is unsatisfying to the loving, conscientious parent.
One can see a hint of that in the "how to train a child out of from what could become a lifetime of unreflective gamma-tude" lines in the OP. What makes it, and sociology itself so frustrating, is that we can never get properly controlled experimental evidence from beings with free will. But I digress.
Nature vs nurture is not a binary. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. *And*, it's still going to be a willow, not an cherry-tree.
Personalities are very much hard wired, trauma and nurturing can adjust how someone develops. I'd imagine for certain people, primarily gammas and women, the excuse trauma shaped who they are fuels a victim narrative that absolves them of responsibility for their current behavior. The classic "Daddy issues" for women and 'See I'm not a Gamma! I was just abused! I'd be King-Alpha if only you would love meeee!' for gammas.
I grew up with a BPD mom NPD dad boomer parents. Say it with me, "Fuck boomers." All four of us leaned into our personalities as hardwired from birth in response to the dysfunction, for better or worse. Our parents dialed in the abuse to the point they had different parenting styles for us. The family roles and birth order were; Golden child-Gamma male, smothered-girl, scapegoat-girl (me), lost child-girl. The way we responded as teens and adults held a pattern back to early memory and stories from when we were toddlers.
The only boy is my Golden Child big brother, so as relates to the SSH he is the example. Unfortunately my brother has become peak gamma. A miserable wretch verbally disowned by our father "He's not MY son he's YOUR son." Again, "Fuck boomers." The three of them still live together.
From the testimonies I've heard with enough detail to solidly place them on the SSH, the way men react to trauma and abuse usually makes sense given their rank. Millions of men had mothers similar to mine with shitty dads to boot, yet they handled and came out of it completely different. So I don't tend to think trauma and abuse makes a mans rank or personality, but rather his rank and personality informs how he responds to trauma and abuse. On the sliding scale of how Gamma's respond to an emotionally incestuous borderline boomer mother, my brother made it a worst case scenario. A lot of them move out or date someone at least. Maybe get a job too.
So sorry Gammas, you are still not the Super Secret Special King if only you weren't such a broken bad-boy in need of Beauty to make the Gamma-Beast an Alpha-Prince. You made choices like we all did in the face of our circumstances. So here we are, now where to from here? That's all that matters.
"So I don't tend to think trauma and abuse makes a mans rank or personality, but rather his rank and personality informs how he responds to trauma and abuse."
Wait, are you just saying *behavior* is what SSH rank describes, rather than showing how clever you are by sharing a brilliant analysis of why (and the cure, natch!) like the "helpful" reader quoted by Vox 🤯
One has to wonder at the motivations of some of these try hard explanations.
Seriously.
Are they trying to claim that they'd be one of the other categories if they simply hadn't been abused? That it's not their fault they're the way they are?
I understand that we're in a victim mentality culture, but I get tired of all the attempts to take away one's own culpability. Own up to it where it's due. That's how one moves from Gamma to Delta. Or even becomes comfortable with where you are in the hierarchy, and truly begins to thrive; seeing all the possibilities for success that previously you were straining against - trying to get leadership instead of just get raises for being reliable and making oneself a necessary asset.
Or, in the case of Lambda, truly just having something to recover from. That might not be an experience, might be spiritual, or simply a defect of character. Who knows? But who knows where it might land you to fix it! This stuff is critical, and to just try and stuff a complex system of a human being and hierarchy into "muh, square hole" like it seems the original comment did...
Seems weird. More telling of the person and all the people that keep trying it than anything else.
An effort to identify what could be called "pathways to gamma" or other category is about How and also about What. Causes are a series of Whats in terms proximate. In a hierarchy of males, each person within a category of it by complying with or meeting the conditions of that category is successfully fulfilling his role.
Trying to read into it is kind of the thing we're trying not to do. Despite its gamma appearance, the writer doesn't seem to identify as gamma. So the causes of low SSH would be speculation to support the expansion of the theory as well as a 'we can fix them!' mentality.
I can't judge too harshly; before today I could have wrote something similar.
Possibly. I feel like there has to be a middle ground - otherwise there wouldn't be room for the advice. Maybe that's what you mean by the harshly. Just say, "please stop thinking to hard, and just correct the behavior."
I think it's just people trying to make sense of the concept. This guy probably thought about it for a very long time and felt confident that his understanding was correct. That post was him exhibiting his theory.
People who want to use the comments to process their thoughts and digest the idea should say so, rather than using an authoritative teaching voice.
At least, if you don't want to invite scathing critique from people who shred ideas all the time. Being wrong is the fastest way to get feedback on the Internet.
And yet, he didn't think about it long enough to realize that his theory couldn't possibly be correct because it didn't actually explain the behavior of most of the men to whom it supposedly applied.
I don't have any time or regard for that sort of retardery. If it takes two seconds and a partial read to conclusively falsify your precious theory, you should be embarrassed and you should refrain from any further efforts in that vein.
Possibly. I might be reading too much into it, just getting as tired as Vox seems to be over it - and I don't even have to deal with the emails he does.
Note on mauling gammas. Personal animus aside, higher status men slapping down low status poseurs is an integral part of organic society. Something lost in the feminized culture of superficial niceness that predominates today. Something to consider if it seems harsh. It’s a primal choice. They accept their social reality and hang around the desirable place, or most of the time get run off.
In the pre-internet world, there was more pressure to get it together. Now they can form digital pods of low-wattage losers to commiserate over the mean popular kids. A pocket circle of hell and cortisol, but addition by subtraction FTW here.
Vox Day has graciously created this open site for us to read, contemplate, grow intellectually and comment if the urge is there. This intellectual garden is for our education and benefit. He might get some insights from other’s experiences and POV. It’s not for one to come into his garden and trash it or tell him he is wrong. If one disagrees or fails to comprehend the point he is making there are adult ways to ask for clarification, not just throw some shit on the wall to see if it sticks like the mainstream media.
We get the benefit of his intellect, we are on his site, so respect that. His house his rules. Or as my Dad used to say; you eat my food and you live under my roof you will do as I say.
If the gamma tribe keeps flinging poo he may put it behind a paywall, something I would hate to see.
"but for the love of all that is Good and Beautiful and True, leave me out of it!"
Are you sure? I know this valued and respected reader blew it, but if you just read my impressive essay of hot takes and very important insights (shouldn't take more than a weekend) I'm sure we can make vast improvements to the SSH model. All I really ask in return is to expand the definition of Sigma so I can be one (Alternatively a new category (Tau seems about right) could be added for special cases like myself (gamma and omega don't quite fit, but I don't think I'm a delta, and I'm certainly not alpha or bravo)).
To be honest though, knowing my efforts to contribute would certainly be regarded as a nuisance is actually quite helpful.
To add to Vox's comment about real contributions, many times I have no expertise or only cursory background for some of the topics Vox writes about. But because the concepts are sound and articulated well, I immediately recognize that they hold value as a contribution to its related discipline. In other words, just as Vox says, I don't have to have a background in it or knowledge of other contributions to recognize the inherent truth or logic of his specific contribution.
I do not understand this tendency toward intellectual lampreyism by some people. I don't read someone else's idea and immediately start thinking about how I can interject myself into what he's doing.
Compare the difference between Ian Fletcher's critique of free trade and mine. They are in complete harmony, but they have nothing to do with each other. You need know nothing of Fletcher's points to grasp mine, and vice-versa. That's what a genuine contribution to a subject looks like.
I remember a conversation with my mother about a conspiracy theory which demonstrated very clearly that most people prefer their own imaginations.
Me: what do you need to see or hear, what evidence do you need in order to consider that [conspiracy theory] may be true or have some truth to it?
My mom: oh hmm.....I guess I'd probably need to see X Y or Z before I'd consider it
Me: okay well here's X, here's Y, and here's Z. They're all right here.
Needless to say, her own standards weren't enough for her to consider something other than her preset preferred reality. That experience sticks in my mind now whenever other people or even I myself want to disregard what is observable right in front of us.
You can't argue people out of what they were never argued into. Until someone first recognizes that there's a problem with their world view, there is literally almost nothing you can say to change their mind.
For me, it was a previously rather engaging conversation around the observable decline of social stability and standards. I asked the simple question: "What have Conservatives conserved?"
Justification engines spun up, emotions got hot, and we had to pivot rapidly to something less interesting.
"Every parent who has raised more than one child in the same home, using the same methods and principles, is very well aware of how limited the effects of nurture are on the individual’s core being."
This. Before I had children, I too had largely thought that the boomer lie of nurture makes the person was mostly true. I can now confirm that even after nine years of my absence (not by choice) from my eldest daughter's life, while some damage was done, the core character survived with barely a scratch. Innate character is truly a God-given thing.
I have vastly more children than the average and have had to remind my wife that nature AND nurture have some yet to be understood interplay that is not something that can be manipulated with 100% accuracy.
The three primary types alpha, bravo, and delta, are not a superset they are just the bases the other categories get confused for. A sigma will be confused for an Alpha but rarely for a delta or bravo.
Gamma's will be confused for a delta as they both share the problem of "i know i am right" however gamma's take it to an extreme and women tend to weed out the gamma from delta quickly where as men don't get the creep factor and thus tolerate them longer.
Omegas are out entirely and lambdas are well lambdas.
Didn't read it that way. Have not run into enough gay men, nor are they within the original SSH scope.
It is reasonable to consider that, being still part of the category of "men", the gay-identified man could have been a different part of the hierarchy if he had not gotten stuck in that identity.
What is unreasonable is assuming that the consideration is relevant, or that the questions about how he got stuck or if and how to prevent same belong here.
They do not.
Parents could be interested in someone making that exploration, and including the SSH models in it.
Yeah, I noticed that too, another kick in the nuts. We practically worship women putting them on a pedestal, how the hell can we turn into Lambdas? I wonder if Rodney Dangerfield was a Delta? No respect.
Is this just a gamma yearning for hope they can be an alpha? If he just acknowledges his trauma, he can get back on the path to being the alpha we were all destined to be at birth?
To the contrary, having raised 3 children, I acutely feel the impact of an easily triggered amygdala. Whilst I believe that, yes - trauma is a choice, I've lived through parenting mistakes that have taken years to unwind, such that I dread to think what the effects of serious abuse and / or neglect would have. I also work with several adults who have clearly been impacted by abusive parents, resulting in the kinds of behaviours that are mocked as gamma on here.
The basic problem that most people are not getting is that Vox's SSH is not a self-improvement program. The gaps between these categories are too far apart. You are not, therefore, in a "few sit-ups away from total studdom" situation.
The problem that you are facing is not that you are just a gamma. The problem is that you are probably the lowest-status gamma among the group of gammas that exist in every social setting imaginable. If you need a self-improvement program, then you need to raise your status to at least the average level of the gammas around you. This is, invariably, a "small-S" status pursuit, adjusting yourself in how you look, talk, act, dress, your living, your money level, your home, car, girlfriend/wife, children, etc., until you've matched the people around you. Failing that, you should remove yourself from that social setting to avoid the pain of being unceremoniously removed at some later date.
Source? That’s shorthand for the Gamma’s declaration that he will not accept any information that contradicts his own imagination.
What about when the internet adversary in question is himself quoting sources and facts at you? He still a gamma?
SSH is a tool to help understand and manage men.
It is simple to understand.
Navel gazing and sophistry just turns it into a colossal waste of time.
The desire for a predictive model that can be used to shape children into functional, content adults drives the the "how did they become X" model-making.
The answer "they were born that way" is unsatisfying to the loving, conscientious parent.
One can see a hint of that in the "how to train a child out of from what could become a lifetime of unreflective gamma-tude" lines in the OP. What makes it, and sociology itself so frustrating, is that we can never get properly controlled experimental evidence from beings with free will. But I digress.
Nature vs nurture is not a binary. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. *And*, it's still going to be a willow, not an cherry-tree.
Personalities are very much hard wired, trauma and nurturing can adjust how someone develops. I'd imagine for certain people, primarily gammas and women, the excuse trauma shaped who they are fuels a victim narrative that absolves them of responsibility for their current behavior. The classic "Daddy issues" for women and 'See I'm not a Gamma! I was just abused! I'd be King-Alpha if only you would love meeee!' for gammas.
I grew up with a BPD mom NPD dad boomer parents. Say it with me, "Fuck boomers." All four of us leaned into our personalities as hardwired from birth in response to the dysfunction, for better or worse. Our parents dialed in the abuse to the point they had different parenting styles for us. The family roles and birth order were; Golden child-Gamma male, smothered-girl, scapegoat-girl (me), lost child-girl. The way we responded as teens and adults held a pattern back to early memory and stories from when we were toddlers.
The only boy is my Golden Child big brother, so as relates to the SSH he is the example. Unfortunately my brother has become peak gamma. A miserable wretch verbally disowned by our father "He's not MY son he's YOUR son." Again, "Fuck boomers." The three of them still live together.
From the testimonies I've heard with enough detail to solidly place them on the SSH, the way men react to trauma and abuse usually makes sense given their rank. Millions of men had mothers similar to mine with shitty dads to boot, yet they handled and came out of it completely different. So I don't tend to think trauma and abuse makes a mans rank or personality, but rather his rank and personality informs how he responds to trauma and abuse. On the sliding scale of how Gamma's respond to an emotionally incestuous borderline boomer mother, my brother made it a worst case scenario. A lot of them move out or date someone at least. Maybe get a job too.
So sorry Gammas, you are still not the Super Secret Special King if only you weren't such a broken bad-boy in need of Beauty to make the Gamma-Beast an Alpha-Prince. You made choices like we all did in the face of our circumstances. So here we are, now where to from here? That's all that matters.
"So I don't tend to think trauma and abuse makes a mans rank or personality, but rather his rank and personality informs how he responds to trauma and abuse."
Wait, are you just saying *behavior* is what SSH rank describes, rather than showing how clever you are by sharing a brilliant analysis of why (and the cure, natch!) like the "helpful" reader quoted by Vox 🤯
The cognitive dissonance when trying to follow the train of thought is palpable.
One has to wonder at the motivations of some of these try hard explanations.
Seriously.
Are they trying to claim that they'd be one of the other categories if they simply hadn't been abused? That it's not their fault they're the way they are?
I understand that we're in a victim mentality culture, but I get tired of all the attempts to take away one's own culpability. Own up to it where it's due. That's how one moves from Gamma to Delta. Or even becomes comfortable with where you are in the hierarchy, and truly begins to thrive; seeing all the possibilities for success that previously you were straining against - trying to get leadership instead of just get raises for being reliable and making oneself a necessary asset.
Or, in the case of Lambda, truly just having something to recover from. That might not be an experience, might be spiritual, or simply a defect of character. Who knows? But who knows where it might land you to fix it! This stuff is critical, and to just try and stuff a complex system of a human being and hierarchy into "muh, square hole" like it seems the original comment did...
Seems weird. More telling of the person and all the people that keep trying it than anything else.
"I understand that we're in a victim mentality culture, but I get tired of all the attempts to *take away one's own culpability*. "
Perhaps many of them are a proud "ally of feminism" eventually taking it too far and acting streotypically feminine?
An effort to identify what could be called "pathways to gamma" or other category is about How and also about What. Causes are a series of Whats in terms proximate. In a hierarchy of males, each person within a category of it by complying with or meeting the conditions of that category is successfully fulfilling his role.
Trying to read into it is kind of the thing we're trying not to do. Despite its gamma appearance, the writer doesn't seem to identify as gamma. So the causes of low SSH would be speculation to support the expansion of the theory as well as a 'we can fix them!' mentality.
I can't judge too harshly; before today I could have wrote something similar.
Possibly. I feel like there has to be a middle ground - otherwise there wouldn't be room for the advice. Maybe that's what you mean by the harshly. Just say, "please stop thinking to hard, and just correct the behavior."
I think it's just people trying to make sense of the concept. This guy probably thought about it for a very long time and felt confident that his understanding was correct. That post was him exhibiting his theory.
People who want to use the comments to process their thoughts and digest the idea should say so, rather than using an authoritative teaching voice.
At least, if you don't want to invite scathing critique from people who shred ideas all the time. Being wrong is the fastest way to get feedback on the Internet.
And yet, he didn't think about it long enough to realize that his theory couldn't possibly be correct because it didn't actually explain the behavior of most of the men to whom it supposedly applied.
I don't have any time or regard for that sort of retardery. If it takes two seconds and a partial read to conclusively falsify your precious theory, you should be embarrassed and you should refrain from any further efforts in that vein.
I agree. From the first line it sounded ridiculous.
Possibly. I might be reading too much into it, just getting as tired as Vox seems to be over it - and I don't even have to deal with the emails he does.
Note on mauling gammas. Personal animus aside, higher status men slapping down low status poseurs is an integral part of organic society. Something lost in the feminized culture of superficial niceness that predominates today. Something to consider if it seems harsh. It’s a primal choice. They accept their social reality and hang around the desirable place, or most of the time get run off.
In the pre-internet world, there was more pressure to get it together. Now they can form digital pods of low-wattage losers to commiserate over the mean popular kids. A pocket circle of hell and cortisol, but addition by subtraction FTW here.
It’s an important part of being a man. Us gals appreciate it greatly.
You can tell a lot about female quality by the response to male status.
Vox Day has graciously created this open site for us to read, contemplate, grow intellectually and comment if the urge is there. This intellectual garden is for our education and benefit. He might get some insights from other’s experiences and POV. It’s not for one to come into his garden and trash it or tell him he is wrong. If one disagrees or fails to comprehend the point he is making there are adult ways to ask for clarification, not just throw some shit on the wall to see if it sticks like the mainstream media.
We get the benefit of his intellect, we are on his site, so respect that. His house his rules. Or as my Dad used to say; you eat my food and you live under my roof you will do as I say.
If the gamma tribe keeps flinging poo he may put it behind a paywall, something I would hate to see.
"but for the love of all that is Good and Beautiful and True, leave me out of it!"
Are you sure? I know this valued and respected reader blew it, but if you just read my impressive essay of hot takes and very important insights (shouldn't take more than a weekend) I'm sure we can make vast improvements to the SSH model. All I really ask in return is to expand the definition of Sigma so I can be one (Alternatively a new category (Tau seems about right) could be added for special cases like myself (gamma and omega don't quite fit, but I don't think I'm a delta, and I'm certainly not alpha or bravo)).
To be honest though, knowing my efforts to contribute would certainly be regarded as a nuisance is actually quite helpful.
To add to Vox's comment about real contributions, many times I have no expertise or only cursory background for some of the topics Vox writes about. But because the concepts are sound and articulated well, I immediately recognize that they hold value as a contribution to its related discipline. In other words, just as Vox says, I don't have to have a background in it or knowledge of other contributions to recognize the inherent truth or logic of his specific contribution.
Contribute to what? To whom?
I do not understand this tendency toward intellectual lampreyism by some people. I don't read someone else's idea and immediately start thinking about how I can interject myself into what he's doing.
Compare the difference between Ian Fletcher's critique of free trade and mine. They are in complete harmony, but they have nothing to do with each other. You need know nothing of Fletcher's points to grasp mine, and vice-versa. That's what a genuine contribution to a subject looks like.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
I remember a conversation with my mother about a conspiracy theory which demonstrated very clearly that most people prefer their own imaginations.
Me: what do you need to see or hear, what evidence do you need in order to consider that [conspiracy theory] may be true or have some truth to it?
My mom: oh hmm.....I guess I'd probably need to see X Y or Z before I'd consider it
Me: okay well here's X, here's Y, and here's Z. They're all right here.
Needless to say, her own standards weren't enough for her to consider something other than her preset preferred reality. That experience sticks in my mind now whenever other people or even I myself want to disregard what is observable right in front of us.
You can't argue people out of what they were never argued into. Until someone first recognizes that there's a problem with their world view, there is literally almost nothing you can say to change their mind.
For me, it was a previously rather engaging conversation around the observable decline of social stability and standards. I asked the simple question: "What have Conservatives conserved?"
Justification engines spun up, emotions got hot, and we had to pivot rapidly to something less interesting.
We are watch8ng that very cobversation play out 8n the blow up between Little Benny and Tucker.
"Every parent who has raised more than one child in the same home, using the same methods and principles, is very well aware of how limited the effects of nurture are on the individual’s core being."
This. Before I had children, I too had largely thought that the boomer lie of nurture makes the person was mostly true. I can now confirm that even after nine years of my absence (not by choice) from my eldest daughter's life, while some damage was done, the core character survived with barely a scratch. Innate character is truly a God-given thing.
I have vastly more children than the average and have had to remind my wife that nature AND nurture have some yet to be understood interplay that is not something that can be manipulated with 100% accuracy.
"Gammas, Omegas, and Lambdas are suboptimal Alphas, Bravos, and Deltas.."
Good Lord man.
If he'd gone with "Gammas are Deltas, but twisted up inside," I'd be half inclined to listen.
The three primary types alpha, bravo, and delta, are not a superset they are just the bases the other categories get confused for. A sigma will be confused for an Alpha but rarely for a delta or bravo.
Gamma's will be confused for a delta as they both share the problem of "i know i am right" however gamma's take it to an extreme and women tend to weed out the gamma from delta quickly where as men don't get the creep factor and thus tolerate them longer.
Omegas are out entirely and lambdas are well lambdas.
Are we supposed to understand that sentence in parallel?
Bad news, Deltas. If you become suboptimal you might end up Lambda
Didn't read it that way. Have not run into enough gay men, nor are they within the original SSH scope.
It is reasonable to consider that, being still part of the category of "men", the gay-identified man could have been a different part of the hierarchy if he had not gotten stuck in that identity.
What is unreasonable is assuming that the consideration is relevant, or that the questions about how he got stuck or if and how to prevent same belong here.
They do not.
Parents could be interested in someone making that exploration, and including the SSH models in it.
Just not here.
Yeah, I noticed that too, another kick in the nuts. We practically worship women putting them on a pedestal, how the hell can we turn into Lambdas? I wonder if Rodney Dangerfield was a Delta? No respect.
Good news for Gammas, if they're suboptimal they WIN!
Am I the only one that stopped reading the quoted drivel after the first paragraph? What a huge amount of effort, wasted.
I am rather certain I read it several times, but I don't think I got any more out of it than you.
Save yourself next time! Just skip down to Vox's bit.
I stopped about there too.
Is this just a gamma yearning for hope they can be an alpha? If he just acknowledges his trauma, he can get back on the path to being the alpha we were all destined to be at birth?