Sonic# wrote:I don't think that the alpha/beta distinction is an efficient one for a few reasons.
Hahaha...
...I'm laughing because after reading all of what you wrote to me and rereading this line, it kind of feels like I'm talking to myself.
Nowadays, I usually use the word, "complete" because it's more logical and less utilitarian, but up until a couple years ago, I used to use the word "efficient" to describe what you're saying all the time.
There's a slight difference, I guess. Efficiency is more about being practical and using the resources you have whereas completeness is about accommodating all necessity-contingency relationships, but maybe that reflects how you intuit the condition as well.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt of meaning what you're saying here though I'll be openminded to believing that completeness more accurately describes it.
First, because it reappropriates terminology that is best applied to social animals, and less well to discursive and psychological social animals.
Well this is a rather interesting statement because it implies you believe society is defined by mere interaction rather than through mutual understanding of semantic value. For example, you probably view a "pack" of playful prairie dogs as a society.
For obvious reasons as it pertains to the social contract, I have to disagree here. What you're saying would imply that merely being born implies consent because someone formulated a relationship by interacting and bringing you into the world. Yes, this is practical, but it would excuse negligent parenting preparation. It would also allow greater society to get away with social alienation under the guise that children must tolerate negligent parenting which refuses to teach social values. This is highly dangerous because it means children will not necessarily grow up to learn the rule of law and how to be socially engaging.
As an alternative, it could also imply that children are entitled to institutionalized care such as in a school to learn according social values. However, this again is highly dangerous because it would expose children to social engineering. For example, right now, the government doesn't teach children 100% of the rule of law while children are in school, yet still, children are graduated into adulthood around the age that they're expected to graduate. How is this considerate of who children are?
As it pertains to rape, all of this is highly relevant. Without these social values, children won't learn how to be socially or sexually engaging, and that's what leads to confusion as previously described regarding rapists.
Second, because it constructs a binary that I find as restrictive as binaries like masculine/feminine. Putting it in terms of control wasn't a complete way of explaining it, you're right, but you're implying that one group has a greater potential for agency and the other group lacks it, though both can theoretically acquire prestige. That gives too much weight to agency and to a couple of presupposed affiliations with agency (like emotional gumption) when there's more to will and more to human interaction than opposed wills.
Um...
...I guess I'm going to open up a little here because the matter of agency was exactly what I was trying to say. It's also what I was talking about in the Nice person/Kind person thread.
Structure is important, don't get me wrong, but what are we supposed to say, that certain children are doomed? As a society, are we supposed to say it's tolerable to formulate a structure where some children fall through the cracks and don't learn according social values? Are we supposed to say that as a matter of practical imperfection, some children are going to have to grow up confused and be exposed to legal experimentalism?
I'm going to note here that this is why I really don't identify with progressivism. Progressivism focuses on economic inequality rather than social hierarchy. Eliminating the latter is the real key to establishing a cohesive society because the latter is what creates asymmetric information by which confusion takes place. The amount of income and wealth people have can vary infinitely as long as people understand each other.
(Again, this is the difference between efficiency and completeness. Perhaps the reason I'm assuming you really meant "complete" is because I'm hoping you're openminded to what I'm saying here.)
Obviously, asymmetric information (from not learning social values) creates confusion which can coincide with rape.
The third is that this binary encourages us to divide people into two groups of our own invention, those who possess emotional agency and those who are emotionally impotent.
Well I guess I might as well not lie.
This section actually had me at tears because emotional impotency was exactly what I was implying. Again, you'll probably pick up on this in the Nice person/Kind person thread. When (your segment of) society insists on you repressing your emotions because it doesn't like how you subliminate, impotency is rather inevitable. I think this is why I completely lack a sense of humor now, and it's lead to a rather vicious cycle of perpetual alienation.
As for alpha-beta being a binary, I haven't really thought of it that way. Alphahood is a scale in itself. Some people are more charged than others. In any particular situation, "the alpha" is whoever has the most of it. It also comes in styles where smaller quantities of alphahood can overcome others in a rock-paper-scissors sort of way (as your article illustrated), but that's another dimension. The point is some people are more charged, some people are less charged.
When you're not charged... it leads people to take you for granted because you don't act out or subliminate (in a compatible manner). The perpetual alienation leads to confusion.
I guess you can see where I'm going with all this.
Like your later distinction into dominant and submissive, these distinctions are ill-equipped to address individuals that do not clearly fall into either category, nor are they well-equipped to encounter phenomena that don't fall within the distinctions (rape, for instance, can occur in relationships that do not clearly distinguish a power dynamic, or people who do not clearly exhibit dominant/recessive behavior; again, the rapist is not reducible to a single type or motive, nor even to a single gender. Discussion within types is often useful, but there needs to be a clear justification for applying such discussion to rape in general, a motion that seems more difficult with a simple binary).
So I don't think that the alpha/beta binary is horrible, but I think it's prone to error because it's prone to being misunderstood and it also carries with it quite a few assumptions about human interaction that are unnecessarily restrictive in a discussion of rape culture.
I think the real issue with rape culture is it ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy where society alienates people into implosions or explosions, partially out of irresponsibility, partially out of liking drama. When people talk about rape culture, they're only addressing the explosive half of the situation, and they become wary of alienated victims who really don't pose a threat. This is what I was saying originally about monkey's hopes. Monkey only paid attention to what beliefs are and not how beliefs are formulated. There's a process behind the result which is being ignored.
The problem is social alienators don't want to fess up for their alienation which is damaging this process. Alienation does so by preventing the understanding of social values (behind the motive of social hierarchy), yet these people end up in positions of cultural influence, so they manifest an environment of political correctness which prevents their personalities from being blamed for what they're doing. I've actually come to this realization very explicitly when discussing with militant feminists and alpha males plenty of times for years now. They'll even admit that it's the victim's obligation to stop whining, accumulate power, and prove being deserving of dignity. Obviously, this doesn't do a lot of good. One, it demands that emotionally impotent people live their lives to others' standards. Two, it puts emotionally impotent people in an inclined position of defeat. Three, it exposes emotionally impotent people to legal experimentalism on both the suspect and victim side of the equation.
Again, this is why I have to disagree with your perspective on society. Society is built around values (not action), and those values are dispersed through discourse, discourse which doesn't always happen, yet people are still expected to behave.
