why do betas even still exist?

thiasus · 2016-02-25T10:23:42+00:00

For most of human history, the average woman's choices were not even close to what they are today. With scarcity always a threat, war an endemic menace and pregnancy a much more dangerous affair than it is today, women needed a faithful mate to protect and assist them. And those mates made sure as best as they could that the children they were helping to raise were theirs.

It's only in the late 20th and early 21st centuries that women (in Western countries) have been socially and materially afforded the opportunity to fully enjoy hypergamy. It happened before, of course, but males placed a much larger premium on fidelity, and enforced it much more closely; hence the near-ubiquity of virginity requirements for brides in human cultures.

Phoenix_2015 · 2016-02-25T12:12:02+00:00

People make way too much of the alpha-beta classifications. Alpha and Beta aren't permanent states. It's all relative to how you measure up to the rest in your tribe. I understand that people talk about it cause it's a useful tool for understanding social dynamics but after a certain point I think it handicaps people.

I remember a conversation with the most alpha dude I've ever known and he told me "I don't even think about it. If you walk into a room and wonder who the alpha is it's not you."

I like it as a conceptual tool but after a certain point I think you need to forget about it.

oldredder · 2016-02-26T04:57:56+00:00

society is built off betas. The only kind of society that can't be is a machine-driven society where a person is self-deciding and machines fill in the rest.

More than 80% of the DNA out there can produce only betas.

with too many alphas no stable society can exist because the primary drive of the alpha is to kill or enslave other alphas to control resources.

BudapestPUA · 2016-02-25T10:06:43+00:00

Ask the bees.

RedApathy · 2016-02-25T16:36:08+00:00

Simply put, it's still a "successful" mating strategy.

DemonConsulting · 2016-02-25T11:25:21+00:00

1.) Society today is different from 50 or 100 years ago and vastly different from all the time before the industrial revolution. Resources were far more important back then and I mean for bare survival. Manual labor was necessary for survival and a woman couldn't really survive on her own, let alone raise children (child mortality was already extremely high for the common folk, people were near starvation regularly if a harvest wasn't great). So even if the most "alpha" guy might be physically attractive, the pressure to find a provider was far greater - a male who couldn't provide for the family of helped keep the woman and children alive wouldn't pass his genes on, no matter how many girls he got pregnant - the women would die in child birth or be unable to raise the children so all his heirs would die before they reach maturity.

Also society had very strict rules regarding marriage and monogamy, many based on religion. Everyone was expected to get married so both men and women were given little choice - the women even less so since they had less rights and also couldn't really survive on their own - manual labor was most of it, mostly farming and during times when women couldn't even own or inherit property, there was no other way than finding a provider and hoping he wouldn't abuse and kill her. Sure the normal woman might get to choose between the blacksmith and the farmer but ultimately she was still expected to marry young, the pool of guys were the ones local in her village, no one got to cheat or they were publicly shamed or worse , the father had a final say in it, etc.

2.)Genes alone don't make you "alpha" - it takes upbringing as well, maybe mainly so. You can teach a boy to be a man, even if he will never be a natural chad but no chad ever develops on his own, even if it comes easier to him than most boys.

If a woman got pregnant from an alpha but the kid was raised by a beta or her alone (not uncommon these days and alphas in the past didn't really want to settle either), the child won't learn how to behave with women, will be taught whatever values the people raising it have, won't learn game, might not learn social skills if it's constantly pacified with video games cause it's easier than putting in the work to raise it ... so the kid can very well end up as a socially awkward loner - good genes might give him conventionally good looks and potentially a temperament to be extroverted and have high testosterone. But if none of these traits were actively encouraged, he wasn't taught how to behave, how to groom, his temper to be wild or more "masculine" was even repressed during childhood, then the inherited alpha-traits won't actually show in his behavior as an adult.

/E: 3.) We're all technically genetically "better" than any beta 1000 generations ago but since they don't live anymore the competition is still leveled so a present beta might be seen as a" genetical alpha" in comparison to his 110's great-grandfather but that has little meaning if he competes with other men today, who happen to be a little bit better .

Title	why do betas even still exist?
Author	st-pitr
Upvotes	0
Comments	13
Date	February 25, 2016 10:02 AM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askTRP
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/asktrp/comments/47i7g3/why_do_betas_even_still_exist/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askTRP/why-do-betas-even-still-exist.161250 https://theredarchive.com/post/161250

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