There was a recent thread where the topic of what alpha truly means came up, and there was quite a bit of disagreement. Many guys here fell into the trap of believing that alpha was the same as what they believed to be righteous. Righteous qualities = alpha. Alpha = role model. Somebody to look up to.

I want to quickly touch on the topic and dispel that rumor, because it's dead wrong and steers people in the wrong direction. Further, understanding what alpha means will help stop people from using alpha in place of role model or their belief of an optimal strategy.

I see people regularly use alpha to indicate that they believe there is one true alpha and one true path. This is wrong. As Rollo would point out, alpha is a mindset. The direction they can take may differ greatly and may put different alphas in mutually exclusive groups. Nevertheless they would all qualify as alpha.

From Rollo's article on Alpha:

There’s a tendency to approach every “Alpha” argument from what a guy thinks is righteousness; ergo, his personal definition of Alpha is what appeals best to his sense of virtue. He earned his Alpha cred, played by the rules, and by God people (women) should respect that. However, the sad truth is that prisons are full of Alpha males who simply channeled their drive toward destructive and anti-social endeavors. There are plenty of examples of indifferent Asshole Alphas who you wouldn’t say are upstanding moral leaders at all, yet women will literally kill each other (or themselves) in order to bang them because they exude a natural Alpha-ness. Just as Corey does here. There are Alpha drug dealing gang leaders, and there are Alpha husbands, fathers and leaders of industry. It’s all in the application. Genghis Khan was Alpha as fuck, and a leader-of-men, but probably would be on most people’s douchebag list for that era. Here’s an illustration:

http://rationalmale.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/venn-diagram.jpeg?w=300&h=282

Read the whole article here.