Quote Originally Posted by Ironside View Post
I'll give you a hint. 2 alpha males functionally working together is luck, 3 is a miracle, 4 is literal proof of divine intervation. What you describe is perfectly normal for a cooperating group. Most has to be ok with submitting most of the time. The currently popular confidence boosting is causing fragile boasters, that can't handle problems well.
I don't really buy into the whole alpha/beta male thing. It has some truth but the way it categorizes people is misleading. Really it is just about being strong-willed, and some of the most strong-willed people I've met are women and children, and often for reasons that do not fit in with the wider alpha male notion (eg if they show autistic-like behaviours, or they are introverted and just like doing their own thing, etc).

In some ways I would be classified as alpha male, in that I tend to go against the grain, will stand up to anybody over just about anything, would fight everybody on the few occasions when I used to get drunk, etc. And yet in other ways I would not be classified as alpha male. For example I prefer to be on casually good terms with people rather than trying to exert power over them, I don't go out of my way to be the head guy in the group, etc.

People are more complicated than these notions of being alpha or beta, our social intricacies are incomparable to other pack animals.