As stated in the previous post, anything worthwhile that is gained, costs something else in sacrifice.
As surmised in the popular Anime, "Full Metal Alchemist"
"Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange."
Such a concept is not new, and the modern world is full of axioms and sayings that simplify this, such as "Time is money" or "Respect is earned" or "no pain, no gain" and this is all very true, it is all very elemential, so much so that Sir Isaac Newton was able to apply the scientific method to it and surmise in his 3rd Law of motion:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Or even more eloquently, as put forth in the second Matrix film by the, Merovingian, as the concept or "law" of Causality.
Power comes at a cost, and there is no knowledge that is not power, thus, knowledge costs you something. By the very nature of interacting with the world around you, you are changed, you spend your time and energy and gain experience, knowledge, power, yet there is always a trade off.
If you touch the stove and get burned, you have learned something valuable, at the cost of some time and some pain.
When you travel to a new place, you learn how to get there, and what is there when you arrive, at the cost of time and some resources.
Should you attempt to learn a new skill or task, you gain knowledge and improve yourself, at the cost of energy and empty space between brain cells.
I realize that this is rather obvious and plain, yet it bears stating for the reminder of just how the universe is set up. There are no free lunches, everything costs something, and nothing costs the same.
With this established at the forefront of our awareness, then allow me to extrapolate a bit of the following:
All relationships are built upon two equal measures of both Time, and Effort.
Now this of course does not answer any of the vital components that make up the catalyst nor the context of the relationship, but I think that it is fair to say that it damn well matters just as much if not more, the amount of time and effort that goes into a relationship.
After all, a pair of people in love with one another, or people who are friends, or even at the very least like and respect one another, are going to spend a lot of time, making a concentrated effort to have a working relationship, in many ways as a bully works and makes a focused effort to spend the time to remind his victim of their place and status in the mind and eyes of said bully. Twisted, dysfunctional, harmful and above all wrong as that sort of relationship is, it is still a relationship, and thus built with time and effort on the part of one or both of the membership within.
Which begs the observation, that a low time/effort relationship is not going to last very long.
And I bet know what the more thoughtful of you readers are thinking; "Yeah, no kidding pal, everyone knows that." But do we really?
What is more, how does one measure the time and effort put into the relationship by the other person? And at what point does intent come into play? And then what of the actual results? What of the stated goals, if any?
In the aftermath of my divorce, and indeed the time leading up to it, I have contemplated, reviewed, thought upon, studied, and broken down the relationship to the best of my capacity, but there is no satisfactory conclusion beyond marking the places where I messed up, and didn't fix it, because I simply have not all of the vital data I need to accurately piece together a more whole and sturdy understanding of both parts of it. I cannot say anything with enough certainty to be accurate enough for my personal tastes.
And I must settle within myself, the fact that I may never get the answers and data I want or need to do so.
While this does give me pause, it does not however, change who I am, and how I react to it.
As I estimate all Sigma Males should or in fact do, I put the relationship into a category that seems most fitting, and then take in the now, and look to what shall follow, because looking back at the past is all well and good, to learn and instruct ourselves is vital to prevent us from repeating the same mistakes over and over.
It is a part of the drive to learn and grow, meshing with the part that is able to let things go when no more gain can be had from them.
But one must always be on the look out for when dwelling upon the past becomes dwelling within it, when the lesions become not instructive, but wasteful, agonizing over what might have been, or could have been, done, avoided, tried, or repeated, the emotive and intellectual malaise turning into something else, something dark and destructive, self-indulgent all consuming.
I should know, because I have fought myself back from the brink, clawed my way from the precipice of falling into such a emotionally short-circuited logic loop, more than once in my life, and more than once in the last 9 months. It is not an easy task, nor one for the weak of heart or mind. It takes something hard to define, made up of many smaller and easier to quantify parts, ideals and knowledge and honesty that all told, can be brutal, even more brutal than whatever the event that put you there in the first place was. It very much has something to do with smiling into the darkness, even as it smiles, or even laughs back at you.
This costs you something, something less measurable and dare I say even less tangible than time or money.
This cost you parts of yourself. Like a wild fire burning old dead brush and wood away so that the younger, living parts might have a chance. It is the heating and pounding of a lump of iron, adding carbon and other elements to refine and forge steel.
It is not fun, nor easy, and no wonder so few people really commit to it. It hurts, it's uncomfortable, it exhausts you, because it is costing you something.
I'm not a fan of it, and I do not suggest it as a casual thing. But I understand what is at the end of such a process, and if nothing else, while I might not exactly be patient enough for it, I can damn well stubborn my way through it until the end, because I know the prize to be had, if I just stick to it, and besides, at least when I am actively participating I have some measure of control over the end result, and I'm not just letting myself be manipulated by exploiters who tell me they are here to help, even as they bend me and tear down all that I have become or want.
That is a whole other subject, the manipulators, the meddlers. People so unhappy with themselves they must project or inflict their misery upon others. And maybe they think they are helping, in the ways they think they once wanted help. Or maybe, they just want to watch the world burn, people first...
Either way, it costs us something, to either be active, or passive.
More often than not, being passive, costs more than just ourselves something, but someone else as well. Many times, it costs them something more.
But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.
To build upon my previous entry, I myself do not subscribe to the popular culture definitions of people, terms and assumptions such labels spawn. Rather, I seek to either find and understand the correct definitions, or barring reasonably logical, proper or concise explanations, I then seek to build or assemble my own for the sake of personal clarity. Once internalized I then seek to share my understanding and theories with others who may be willing to accept my efforts.
As such, I will here and now explain my chosen moniker for this blog.
In the wildly inconsistent definitions of male personalities and the both the alleged power hierarchy, and the actual more dynamic hierarchy that emerges, the Sigma is the one that has been most recently defined, and in my personal observations and opinion, the best defined, even if most widely published definitions are somewhat limited in their scope. Which is something I find to be rather ironic, given the potentially limitless and fluid nature of the Sigma Male, as I understand and lay claim to it.
In simple terms (that I will later expand upon) the Sigma Male is at his core, consistent (as most males tend to be in varying degrees) steadfast, yet highly adaptable, insightful and possibly above all the most dangerous to an established order that demands rigidity.
The reason for this is that he is to a great extent, all things to all people. He can lead and manage like an Alpha or Beta, he can serve like a Gama or Zeta, he can rebel and destroy like a Delta or Alpha or Beta, and he can do so either by mimicry, broad based knowledge, or actual mutability.
His greatest strength lays within both his ability to adapt, and to not let things effect him too deeply or barring that, linger over him for too long, while still remaining utterly true and resolved within himself. How rare a man is truly that now and days?
Wherein the Alpha simply tanks damage, and the Beta takes it and adjusts or compensates for it, and the others are forever altered by it, the Sigma may, in his own way, ignore or refuse it. Much in the same way a fictional character may use the "toon force" and simply refuses damage, the Sigma stretches and bends, molding himself in such a way to rebuff incoming damage, or reflect attacks or takes them for his own and uses them as a tool of convenience to achieve his goal. To the frustration and confounding of his adversaries, and the confounding females everywhere.
Now by no means am I hinting at the summation that men fall into a single definition, this is both foolishly ignorant and limiting, yet by it's very definement, the Sigma is the closest label to being a "one size fits all" moniker for most, if only because even Alphas can be cowards, Deltas creative, Betas leaders, and so on and so forth. As many a student of both History and Psychology has no doubt noted both aloud and in writing, people are rather complicated, messy and strange.
People are as a rule, much more than would be obvious on first or second glance or meeting, and while we as humans are composed of basic and straightforward parts, foundationally at least, we are also composed in ever changing and evolving ways, intricate and layered, some parts unyielding, others elastic or fluid, some permanent, others temporary, as is befitting our evolutionary history and the fundamental neurological architecture that is the basis of our innermost physical being. It is this which may somehow, subconsciously affect the long held notion that males embody the highest ideal of of the near limitless potential of humanity, for both good and ill.
Certainly, history is bursting at the seams with examples of both shades of that seemingly ever expanding gradient, and it is with rare and rather noteworthy (not in actual reality) exception we find the majority such persons are male. Females while equally limitless and grand as well, for some reasons seem far less predisposed to the far reaching and wide ranging "it" that compels males to do what they do at the levels and to the extent that they do.
This of course only underscores, for myself at least, that ever present question that has in some way or another defined human existence, the question embossed upon our very souls; why?
Why do some people example such extreme behaviours?
What is it that leads to such wonderful acts of kindness, of trust, of charity and of love between some people, contrasted with such incomprehensibly brutal acts of aggression, hate, anger, betrayal, exploitation and apathy?
And why do so many others example such mild variations of mediocrity found in between?
This quandary, I think, transcends mere concepts of civility and savagery. If only because with the concept of Sentience, the concept of morality and ethics will eventually follow, if only due to the realization and reasoning of self-interest, and comunal impact, born out by the capacity to postulate and estimate or at the very least, imagine a possible future outcome.
We are able to quantify the trade off of sacrificing the now, of trading against today, for the benefit of tomorrow, of providing some lessening of the struggle for tomorrow. We do in fact, daily bargain with God, or at least maybe his creation, and for good or ill, right or wrong, males bargain directly, almost totally by default, and females bargain by proxy, as if by force of genetic habit, and their default advocate, is simply put, males.
This goes far beyond the simple stashing away of resources during times of plenty for times of lean. It instead speaks of a deliberate effort to wrangle nature into a more favorable state, within it's own rules of course, as all living things are subject to the inescapable promise of the cycle of life and death.
This all culminates into a matrix of input and output which is driven by the engine of causality, that deep dark question of why, battling the instinctive impulses, the reactions born of pleasure, and pain.
It is why the duality of humanity is not in fact that of good and evil, old, deep and necessary monikers born of a need to reinforce and define ourselves, but rather of darkness and light, or more to the point, instinct and reason, emotion and logic.
It is this, at it's core, that has been defined by almost the totality of human existence, and it is this, that is under attack by a dark, dishonest and illogical ideology which seeks to, almost literally, dehumanize us all in that most insidious of ways, not directly and up front with brute force, but subversively, by way of undermining our hard won and long established methods of reasoning.
In a way, by proxy.
More on that, at a later time.
Understanding this distinction is (or should be) paramount, for when we can accept the differing of perspectives, we can better understand them, and this most effectively comes, in my own observations at least, by way of understanding the why behind such distinctions, just as much as the how.
Only then can we properly frame for ourselves, the definitions needed to build a more rounded and higher functioning understanding and perspective of self, and by extension, a more advanced worldview.
However, as I have learned, and as I will soon share with you in the coming posts, nothing lasting may be gained without first giving up something of approximate value.
Candidly speaking, this all comes at a cost.
Somehow, everything costs someone, something, every single time.
It is by this metric, that we must first define, and then redefine things so that we might understand what and how they are, and just how little we can actually do to change them, without first altering ourselves in some way.
Words are just sounds, they are nothing without having a purpose, without having meaning attached to them, they are like so much ambient noise, from the sound of rain falling on pavement, to the wind passing through the leaves of trees, they are intangible and without substance when removed from the association of an aspect of reality being linked to them, by way of an intellect drawing such a connection between the representations (either written or spoken) and the thing itself.
A flower is a flower, a cat is a cat, red is red, cold is cold (or rather the lack of heat) and A is A.
It is by this measure that we can say; "Words have power." so long as we can agree what these words are, and what they mean.
Labels, are words used to facilitate the short-cut prone human mind, in summarizing a thing for the sake of saving time and internal processing power for other more imperative things, and it is by this that, I would contest, all bias, prejudice and bigotry is born, as an outgrowth of the "fight/freeze/flight" mechanisms built into the human brain, as manifest in the "other equals danger" or "Us vs. Them" reaction.
Understanding the above is necessary to understanding what I now parse out below.
Pop-culture labels are bullshit. They are lacking in nuance, accuracy, comprehensive understanding and truth.
Alpha, Beta, Gama, Delta, Sigma, Zeta, Omega. These, the English transliterations of Greek letters, used to label (poorly I would contest) a sort of half-assed hierarchy of personality types, behavioural patterns and even social-status markers have been misused, abused, and dare I say even slandered and manipulated into a sort of emotive, physiological bludgeon against people at large, and more pointedly, against Male's en mass, over the last 25 or more years, and none more so than men in the last 10.
The most clear cut case in point, is the consistent portrayal of there only being 2 to 4 actual personality types or levels of status for men at large in both Western Society, and history on the whole, and the nearly binary juxtaposition of "Alpha v Beta" and all of the false limits that entails.
Wherein Alpha males are painted broadly as either abusive, tone deaf, machismo riddled abusers, or as the mythological unyielding servants, placing all others before themselves to the point of death, and Beta males are framed as either less than the Alphas by way of simpering and cowardly manipulation, or steady reliable worker drones unwilling to rock the boat.
Both suppositions, in both the extremes, and the framing, are by and large, wrong.
Author David Mech is credited with introducing the idea of alphas and betas when he attempted to describe behavior observed in captive wolves, when he wrote his observations in his 1970 book "The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species" but has since, recanted his stance after observing wolf packs in the wild, and saw a much less violent and more fluid and adaptive hierarchy at work, juxtaposed to the contained, ridgid and volatile dynamic he had watched in play with packs forced together in captivity.
However, the inadequate terms and faulty ideals are still yet a fixture within common and popular thought and nomenclature, and are now socially wielded as the aforementioned physiological weapon against people, with a hard slant towards men as is demanded by the anti-testosterone "woke" social justice warrior populated 4th wave feminist agenda that now infects western culture.
In matters of social development and equality, the focus has been hijacked from legitimate equality of legal status and opportunity and is now being driven hard into the dehumanizing, Marxist perfected ideological notion of equality of outcome, which can only be achieved by punishing and robbing some for the benefit of others, to the detriment of all.
But now, the push has recently shifted towards a scatter brained and demonizing position of focus not upon the people, but the labels, the human predilection for laziness and shortcuts, has been exploited by they who would manipulate their fellow humans, away from the seemingly constant push for more and greater equity, ever expanding fairness, into a vindictive, and dehumanizing drive towards revenge for historical sins, social slights and debts impossible to repay as the debtors now by and large, have long since either died, paid their tab, or been pushed out of social acceptance to the point of reaching the death throes of amusing and voluminous obscurity and wide spread disdain, as it should always be.
Someplace along the way, during the struggles to be more inclusive, fair and open to all identities, the thought that everyone could or should be able to take part in the system, refining and upgrading an imperfect template that had once oppressed, exploited, or excluded so many started to be adapted, slowly but surely, so that all could profit, and that ideally, none would be victimised (or that such victimization might be reduced and/or mitigated), naive or foolhardy as it might have been, the effort was consistently made, even with clear push back and resistance, or more likely, due to such social reticence.
But this was neither good enough for the easily led masses, nor desirable for the powers that be that seem to manipulate them.
The drive towards insanity and abuse started, subtle at first. An impossible promise here, an unnecessary interference there, a wildly exaggerated or half spoken truth everywhere else, the exploitation of human nature was both focused, and broad based, and it all started with the casual discounting of the vital essence and necessity of men, namely, fathers, then was quickly followed by the false "empowerment" of women, namely young women, both mothers, and aspiring achievers.
Brilliantly, basic human empathy and the almost universal longing for equality and fairness was taken, and twisted, little by little, year after year, decade after decade, school after school, state after state, city after city, home after home, family after family.
What started as assistance for the struggling, and equality of treatment, turned into a never ending PR campaign, leveraging the path from true civilized justice, into fickle and inconsistent social justice.
What started as "equal voice" turned into "authority without responsibility" and what had began as "equal treatment" and "fair pay" turned into "oppression" and "disparity" even as the actual social ills, and institutional problems slowly progressed towards something better, the hand of change, pushed harder and faster, twisted and misguided into a force for oppression.
I do not seek here to explain the who or the why, for such answers are far beyond complex and involved, more so than I am currently able or willing to attempt to condense into a concise and straight forward and above all coherent explanation.
What I seek here, is to explain the what and how, and more to the point, the effects and results of this, while also attempting to better redefine and explain the more nuanced details of fallout we are currently living with and serve a warning to the impending consequences that are, at this stage I and many others now conclude, are inevitable barring any massive and fundamental shift of the social momentum, or the higher powers that be winding up another fastball of a reset, for which we are quickly coming past due for.
Eternal optimist I may yet still be, I offer no such hope of change lightly, and I oblige myself not to suggest anything wide spread or on a scale as such to effect of any such change in and of myself. I am well aware of my limited reach, yet for who and for what I CAN reach, I do so reach, for the sake of my own sanity, both morally and practically, upon principal and by personal volition.
What follows is just one man of many, shouting into the void, staring into the darkness, fortified and ready for it to inevitably stare back.
What follows are the stories told by my scars, lessons learned, both the hard way and by observation of others, and reasonings driven by ethical, pragmatic logic, ever eternal hope, and finally at last, good old fashion contrary human defiance sparked by that flickering seed of the divine.
In summation; Fuck. And all of the diversity of the word that I have yet to imply or spell out. Yet.
Buckle up people, I'm gonna grab another gear and floor it...
