The Rise of Beta Male
Our culture celebrates heroes, and despises villains. But there is a third type of characters in our stories, myths and lores that is forgotten. Hence no one want to be them in real life. These are the men who don’t necessarily have a voice. Sometimes they do not even offer an opinion. They are the quintessential ‘beta males’.
Every now and then, we as a society experience certain upheavals that shake the normal. We get rid of monolithic images and icons, as these ripples become monumental movements. These movements are important and equivalent to the defining events of human evolution like discovery of fire, or invention of wheel (or mission to Mars for Space X fans). They are culturally relevant and push us forward as a society. For instances, awareness and actions against racial discrimination, acceptance of LGBTQ and other marginalised communities etc.
It’s time we reimagine the image of our male heroes too. We must accept and acknowledge that the idea of alpha male, as a leader, is an archaic and primal one. It’s a burden and a vestige thought that we carry in our genes. Just like the tail bone.
Dawn of The Planet of The Apes
Humans are almost monkeys. Sharing approximately 99% of our genomes with Chimps we should not boast about being very different from our hairy cousins. But there are instances where we can actually be more civil and prove that we are a bit more well-behaved than the beast (other than being able to sing at Karaoke and give more high fives due to faculty of language and bipedalism). One such area is letting go of “worship the alpha” sentiment. And we must pay attention to something more important here — The sense of entitlement of alpha male as a hero, might be leading to an unfortunate and uncontrollable hunger for power. This, in my view, could be root to evils like bullying, misogyny and violence.
Heroes Shape Our Individual Behaviour
The typical behaviour of men in modern culture is driven by the idea of power. As a male, I have looked for moments of glory, opportunity to take the centre stage, get noticed, get heard, have control, to lead the pack in some way that can make me feel like a ‘hero’ — in my own eyes. I’ve always craved for that driving seat (of a situation).
And this, I had always assumed to be an ideal behaviour which not only is expected, but celebrated in our culture. We expect people to behave like this in organisations, families and at parties. We cheer for the ones who raise their hands and volunteer for a magic tricks to get cut in half. The idea of this sort of heroism sprouts from our icons from movies, books and cartoons! Because we, traditionally have celebrated only one type of hero — the Alpha male.
What Has Changed?
In last few decades or so, the society has taken cognisance of the existence of a new type of leadership style. The one that does not necessarily reward ‘typical alpha-male qualities’. The one that doesn’t reward the Valour and Bravado but Pathos of its participants. Words like ‘compassion’, ‘emotional intelligence’, ‘Inclusion’ and similar non-aggressive qualifiers have become a part of the corporate vocabulary. The brand logos have become relaxed and playful, San-Serif typefaces are considered equally confident and we now have more dimensions of power and negotiations than ever before.
We see these changes in our heroes of new cinema and advertising too. They are not necessarily taming a wild stallion or fist-fighting the goons to help a certain damsel in distress (sometime they get beaten up too). For every ThumbsUp ad that urges you to ‘taste the thunder’, there is also a Sprite that’s calm and focused at being a ‘basic thirst quencher’.
Thankfully, there are some (men) who have taken the cue and understood that there is not a single type of hero. It was a myth that our heroes were made in the same alpha cast iron moulds. And in-turn had shaped our aspirations to be the one too.
As a modern society we must discourage and call out these tropes whenever we see it.
Our hero doesn’t need to wield power anymore. Should he yield more often than conquer? More than trying to sweep her off her feet, he must seek her consent. He needs to show some respect, in order to get some of it back. We need a new hero, specially when he bears the burden to represent male-hood (which is again a stereotype). But this time, I sincerely hope, it’s a beta male.
