The Alpha Male Monkey

[nemorathwald]

I mentioned this essay on The Sci Phi Show and said that I'd put it back at the top of the site when the episode aired so the listeners could see the illustration, so here it is.

Imagine if transportation was defined as a device that uses horses or sails-- automobile drivers would be accused of denying the existence of transportation.

We're genetically programmed to see an Alpha Male in our primate pack as the source of truth and moral law. This explains the difficulty I have in communicating alternative models of truth and moral law to bible believers. It's not that they reject the model I present, it's that they literally don't know what I'm saying. It's a mental block. We take away the concept of the Alpha Male Monkey in the sky, and they think we've declared truth and morality to be nonexistent, because to them, "right" is defined as: "whatever the Alpha Male Monkey says." By definition. The discussion goes like this:

---

Bible Believer: "So... where is the Alpha Male Monkey in your model? Is it you? Why should I have to do what you say?"

Me: "No no, there isn't one. Right and wrong are based on the suffering of the victim, not obedience to laws."

Bible Believer: "Um. So we're abolishing laws? There's no law against, for instance, rape?"

Me: "No, if somebody says 'don't rape me', it's wrong."

Bible Believer: "So, she's the Alpha Male Monkey?"

Me: "THERE IS NO ALPHA MALE MONKEY. Morality doesn't look like this:

It looks like this:

We're all equally at the top."

Bible Believer: "We're all Alpha Male Monkeys? I can't believe you're arrogant enough to think you have omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence."

Me: "We're all equally at the top, but the top is a lot lower than perfection. We don't need that; it still works just fine."

Bible Believer: "So what if it works? You don't have a replacement Alpha Male Monkey to obey, so why should I care? I define 'morality' as 'obedience' as you depicted in the first chart. Therefore you have no basis for morality."

Me: "But it works! If you want to be moral, just do unto others as you would have them do unto you!"

Bible Believer: "There you go trying to command me again. Who died and made you Alpha Male Monkey?"

Me: "I didn't command you. I said 'if' you want to be moral. I'm pointing out to you how to accomplish something you said you wanted to accomplish, and how to measure how whether you've acheived it. If you don't want to be moral, I'll let you deal with the problems that come along with that."

Bible Believer: "Hold on a minute... I'm trying to find a command from an Alpha Male Monkey in that... where was he again?"

Me: *facepalm*

---

As the old tract goes, "only two choices on the shelf: live for God or live for self." It literally doesn't occur to them to see beyond that fase dichotomy. Notice that I didn't get around to defending my model because I literally couldn't get across what it was. Hopefully the concept of an Alpha Male Monkey will help to explain this in the future.

Comments

[atropis.livejournal.com]

i can dig it. and will link it.

alphaville

[graywyvern.livejournal.com]

i have long thought the culprit to be the famous "Excluded Middle"; other logics (fuzzy, multivalent) help in the long run, but in the short i have a little mantra: ELSE ALSO.

m.

When everyone's an alpha male monkey...

[(Anonymous)]

When everyone thinks they're an alpha male monkey, very few of those dashed lines actually exist. Only the ones that each alpha male monkey wants to exist.

[phecda.livejournal.com]

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."
"Love is the law. Love under will."

That pretty much sums up your non-hierarchial model -- safe, sane and consensual. Otherwise, anything goes.

This model has been pushed for over 100 years now. The problem is that the hierarchial model depends on a pet-like infantalization. You rely on the alpha to make decisions for you, to define order, to make the world safe. If you don't mind the collar, it's not a bad life necessarily. But during the process of "socialization" you work with a pet to make it dependent on you, to establish dominance, to make constant handling and obediance the norm. And you have to do this from infancy, otherwise the "pet" remains or returns to a feral state.

Realize that not everyone wants to be the alpha. But even someone wired to be submissive will eventually reject an alpha that abuses the relationship.

Not quite right

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think you are really getting away from the Alpha Male Monkey model. Here's an alternate conversation that puts words in your mouth and might be true, or it might completely misrepresent you:

Bible Believer: "So... where is the Alpha Male Monkey in your model? Is it you? Why should I have to do what you say?"

Matt: "No no, there isn't one. Right and wrong are based on the suffering of the victim, not obedience to laws."

Bible Believer: "But that's just defining your moral laws as being equal to Utilitarianism. How do you know that's correct?"

Matt: "I believed the arguments of Utilitarian philosophers."

Bible Believer: "So they're the Alpha Male Monkeys?"

Matt: "No, I don't believe it because they said it. I believe it because I determined that it's true."

Bible Believer: "Then you are the Alpha Male Monkey. You are defining morality for all humans based on your intellectual powers. Why should I make you my Alpha Male Monkey?"

[tesral.livejournal.com]

     Dude, I don't just believe in the Bible, I've seen one.

     I think you are unduly pinning this phenomenon on Christians myself. It is shot through every fabric of human life. Religious, liberal, atheist, it doesn't matter what the belief system, the majority of people are looking for the AMM. The idea of a peer review moral system is alien to most Humans, and central to the idea of libertarian thought. The fact that some of us think that way proves that humanity can think that way. The sea change in thinking that way will not come easy, and existing and would be Alpha Male Monkeys are going to fight it to the last.

     The truth is that most people do not seek a leader, they crave a leader. The worse the situation the lower the standards for a leader are. We can see how low the current standards are right now.

     The issue is control. The would be AMMs want to control. The tool is fear. They will use anything to instill enough fear to get you to let them control. God will send you to Hell, The terrorists will get you. They want to teach your children dangerous things. The facts and truth do not matter. Who gets hurt does not matter. Kill all the small brown people you want, riot and kill the non-responsible over stupid things like cartoons as long as Mr. Alpha Male Monkey is in charge.

     The problem is that most people will geek to this every time. It works and it works will as any casual look at history will show.

[(Anonymous)]

I can't pretend to the erudition of yourself or your commenters....

But I'd like to say that I greatly enjoyed your discussion with Jason on the Sci Phi Show. You put into succinct words a number of concepts I've been wrestling with recently.

Paul S. Jenkins

The Rev Up Review [a podcast] http://www.revupreview.co.uk
The Plitone Revisionist [a podcast novel] http://www.paulsjenkins.net
Who says I shouldn't do this? [a blog] http://www.witteringon.co.uk
Notes from an Evil Burnee [another blog] http://www.evilburnee.co.uk

false dichotomy

[(Anonymous)]

Brilliant post! I share your frustration.

Oddly enough, the universality of the Golden Rule is actually a good demonstration of that false dichotomy. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" appears again and again in moral and religious teachings. So rather than emanating uniquely from any of the hundreds of "true religions" this lesson really comes out of human experience itself; no god required.

Yeah, I know. I can't get that horse to drink either.

-Dan Pipe
http://rocketforger.blogspot.com/

[rbradakis.livejournal.com]

I've been sitting on this reply for days, since I've not figured out how to put my thoughts into words. (Also, the wrist tendonitis and brace make typing a drag.)

In a nutshell, I agree. And I've spent many years of my life on a similar path of "religious" discovery. At one point, I spent a pleasant evening with a Hindu family explaining why I thought that religion was training wheels for individual morality.

What I'm currently having difficulty with is explaining this to children who are surrounded by the moderately informed Christian, Buddhist, and other religious people. Because, there IS an Alpha Male Monkey in the family, and it's me. And then it's hard to not accept some 'training wheels' for these children, especially when they're already visibly there, due to the other people around them in their lives.

Ah, but we try. Not "Jesus said don't hurt your sister", but "it's wrong to hurt other people - would you want people hurting you?" - to use the most simple and easy example.

Back to my point - I really enjoyed the diagram as well as your sharing your frustration (and an example right in the comments!) with people failing to grasp what you're saying.

[http://users.livejournal.com/jer_/]

I have finally figured out what bothers me about this model, because I love the concept, but every time I look at it, I get a gut feeling that something isn't right... it over-simplifies human interaction. I'll explain:

In the microcosm you created above, each person has a particular thing they WANT and a particular thing they DON'T. It just so happens, as you go around the circle, that they mesh up quite nicely, but in reality, they don't. A few examples...

I swear as a manner of course, and I feel that giving the word Fuck such power as it has is detremental to language in general. Further, I hate the idea of censoring myself. Person A, with whom I deal on a regular basis.. say the spouse of a close friend... abhors bad language. In that case, I have to make one of a series of choices that will be distasteful to one or the other of us. One of us is going to be forced to go against their "morality". Either I am going to self censor, she is going to hear bad language, or I am going to avoid her, which is really just an alternate form of self censorship.

or

Hypothetically, I have a spouse or girlfriend with whom I participate in a strongly S&M based relationship. We are involved in this to such a degree that, in public, I might spank her for being 'bad' or speak to her in terms that others would find derogatory. Feminists would foam at the mouth, gentle souls would blanche. Now, at a public party, there are some people there whose personal morals don't allow them to see such treatment of women go unchecked. The significant other is willingly involved in the situation.

Which party's morals should get ignored? Who chooses? Why?

Even something as simple as the exchange of social capital alters the involvement, because part of "how we want to be treated" is to not be punished for acting within our moral guidelines. If it is perfectly acceptable, within my moral guidelines, to have sexual relationships with men... why is it acceptable to be ostracised by another for that? Conversely, if it is within someone's moral guidelines to have sexual relationships with *boys*, why isn't it acceptable to ostracise them for that?

I would have to impose my morality on another in order to achieve my desired objective using social capital.

I'm not saying that there is an alpha-male-monkey. What I am saying is that the no-central-morality model that you describe above is too simple to work almost any of the time in groups larger than about 5 likeminded individuals. Hell, it barely works in three person polyamorous relationships.

Занятный блог

[ruttgerwoqe.livejournal.com]

Прочитал, конечно, далеко от моей темы. (http://7wp.ru/)