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[ Note: if you think you know all of what's going into this, you're probably wrong. If you think you know some of what's going into this, you're probably right. ]
[ Note #2: This may not make much sense; part of the writing it is trying to work things out. I did some working-out talking to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teinedreugan and later brooksmoses last night, but a lot of it's still under my tongue. ]
[ Note #3: I should add a wolf silhouette to my hawk icon. ]
[ Note #4: I wish I could pull the people out of my head so I could talk with them. I can try to pull the threads out and get individual voices, but I'm not especially confident of my ability to do so or not second-guess myself. It's like just trying to listen to the oboe.
What I want to to lately is talk to Stormwolf, because I'm pretty sure she's part of what's driving a lot of my thinking lately. I don't know if Stormy's level of broad influence is because she's the one that's most instinct-driven, the most primal, or because she's somehow more central than some of the others of me; I get curious about that too sometimes, but that's a tangent.
I want to talk to Stormy and figure out what it is that she's reacting to. Unfortunately, she's not exactly the most verbal aspect I've got, so getting her out of my head where I could talk to her might not help, but anyway. ]
[ from Men At Arms, by Terry Pratchett; quotation courtesyoneironaut because I can't find my copy arrrrrgh. ]
The individual I'm happiest being in the pack is the beta.
One of the things that this means is that I'm picky about my alphas. If I'm going to consider myself responsible for seeing things through for the alpha, I want an alpha I can trust. If there isn't an alpha I can trust, I'll dig in my heels; if there's no alpha at all, eventually I'm likely to get frustrated and say, "Fuck it. I'll be the goddamn alpha. I hate being the alpha, but someone's got to do it."
I figured out why I hate being the alpha, I think, or at least part of it; being the alpha translates to me as going at it alone. It's not just the question of whether my ideas are enough better than other people's that I feel justified in implementing them -- and I rarely feel that, because I'm so twitchy-hypersensitive about territory. It's . . .
. . . damnit, Stormy, can't you learn any English? . . .
The risk of turning to someone for assistance is a risk of face; the alpha needs to be face-careful. I'm already in a lot of ways too face-careful, too much concerned about visibility of weaknesses. The role of the alpha is a role that has to be especially careful of showing the undersides of things; putting me in a place where my status explicitly needs underbelly-awareness is a good way of getting me to melt down internally in hyper-self-consciousness.
Now we're getting into mythology, the king's health and fertility is the nation's health and fertility; the alpha's face is the pack's health. A weak alpha indicates a weak pack, because if there were a better alpha than that someone would have done something about it already. Hum. Interesting thought that.
The other thing is . . . I'm not good with compromises. I'm not good at organisation. I want a problem I can hit; being a person who's officially delegated to hit problems is right my speed. As the alpha I need to in part restrain my urge to hit problems, take them on my own, and unilaterally say, "Fuck it" and go do things; my judgements are affecting everyone, and so I have to consider everyone, not just myself. (Which is odd set against the feeling that not being the alpha means not being alone; I hate it when things translate into English in ways that look mutually contradictory. It all makes sense in our head. :/ )
Which leaves me with the question of "What indicates a weak alpha?" And here's where I want to get Stormy out of my head because she just bares her teeth at examples of same and leaves the rest of us trying to figure out what the problem is.
This is what I've come up with so far, trying to get Stormy into English.
- Excessive display of dominance. A strong alpha doesn't need to overtly strut very often, because that's the alpha; the need to put on displays of potency reads to me as insecurity, and insecurity is showing underbelly. Teeth. (teinedreugan tells me that this carries over into the BDSM literature/community he's familiar with; the real dominants don't pull the Master DomlyDom shit.)
- Lack of recognition of territory signals. This gets everyone teeth, but is particularly egregious in an alpha. A tendency to overstep a legitimate claim indicates some combination of lack of respect for others, inability to recognise others' territorial claims, an overly rapacious tendency (Keeper, never eat anything larger than your head), or a desire to exert dominance in general (see point 1, add an eyeroll).
- Insufficient confidence. Dithering, pleading for support or sycophantism, inability to recognise when a decision needs to be made and implemented rather than consensus sought. This needs to be balanced with recognition of territory.
- Basic lack of ability. Ineptitude is bad alphaing all round. ;)
- Inconsistency. Back to dithering, somewhat, but also not making it possible to trust whether or not the alpha's decisions will hold from moment to moment.
- Rigidity. But some of the alpha's decisions won't work, so the alpha should know when to back out and reconsider. Another matter of balance.
- Capriciousness.
- Vacillation and doormatitude. Probably tied to insufficient confidence.
- Organisational skills, facilitation of compromise and togetherness.
Basically, these read to me in a lot of ways as making an ostentatious public display of weakness; this is unacceptable to me in an alpha. It reflects badly upon me as a member of the pack, it creates weakness by inviting public damage to the pack. My native response to this sort of thing as a beta type is to want to depart the pack or throw in my support behind a competent alpha.
I can see the beta role as kingmaker, but . . . from my point of view, that's a position of last resort. (Clearly, my beta personality is Seelie.) Kingmaking runs the risk of breaking the pack, creating dissention. But bad alphaing also can break packs -- schisming them in inept leadership, or provoking fights with other packs, or . . . meh.
While I was chewing on this, I had a minor revelation about Stormy. It's my understanding that it's HON teaching that Herw-Wer kids always have Set as a beloved, and Set kids always have Herw-Wer as a beloved. Stormy's a Set kid; Stormy's giving me all of this processing about what makes a good and bad alpha, and what's unacceptable alphality, and such. Serious input into acceptable rulership, but not a ruler herself.
I always think like this; this is part of my base social interaction processing. It can cause me problems in a number of situations, which basically boil down to: I still think like a beta even when I don't have beta status. In a group where there is no legitimate alpha status (a group of equals), when someone starts trying to throw alpha vibes around, the hackles go up, the head goes down, and there's no legitimate alpha. No alpha, lots of displaying of alphaness, the brain goes all haywire. Or a situation where there is an alpha, and I'm just a generic pack member. No status to have an affiliation shift register, let alone matter, and if one junior wolf goes off to a different pack, well, that happens sometimes.
teinedreugan says that I tend to have an excessively antagonistic response to these sorts of issues. Teeth, teeth, teeth. Damn monkeys make no sense.
[ The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling ]
[ Note #2: This may not make much sense; part of the writing it is trying to work things out. I did some working-out talking to
teinedreugan and later brooksmoses last night, but a lot of it's still under my tongue. ][ Note #3: I should add a wolf silhouette to my hawk icon. ]
[ Note #4: I wish I could pull the people out of my head so I could talk with them. I can try to pull the threads out and get individual voices, but I'm not especially confident of my ability to do so or not second-guess myself. It's like just trying to listen to the oboe.
What I want to to lately is talk to Stormwolf, because I'm pretty sure she's part of what's driving a lot of my thinking lately. I don't know if Stormy's level of broad influence is because she's the one that's most instinct-driven, the most primal, or because she's somehow more central than some of the others of me; I get curious about that too sometimes, but that's a tangent.
I want to talk to Stormy and figure out what it is that she's reacting to. Unfortunately, she's not exactly the most verbal aspect I've got, so getting her out of my head where I could talk to her might not help, but anyway. ]
- 'What are you all?' snapped Big Fido. 'You're the pack! No mercy! Get them!'
But a pack doesn't act like that, Angua had said. A pack is an association of free individuals. A pack doesn't leap because it's told -- a pack leaps because every individual, all at once, decides to leap.
[ from Men At Arms, by Terry Pratchett; quotation courtesy
oneironaut because I can't find my copy arrrrrgh. ]The individual I'm happiest being in the pack is the beta.
One of the things that this means is that I'm picky about my alphas. If I'm going to consider myself responsible for seeing things through for the alpha, I want an alpha I can trust. If there isn't an alpha I can trust, I'll dig in my heels; if there's no alpha at all, eventually I'm likely to get frustrated and say, "Fuck it. I'll be the goddamn alpha. I hate being the alpha, but someone's got to do it."
I figured out why I hate being the alpha, I think, or at least part of it; being the alpha translates to me as going at it alone. It's not just the question of whether my ideas are enough better than other people's that I feel justified in implementing them -- and I rarely feel that, because I'm so twitchy-hypersensitive about territory. It's . . .
. . . damnit, Stormy, can't you learn any English? . . .
The risk of turning to someone for assistance is a risk of face; the alpha needs to be face-careful. I'm already in a lot of ways too face-careful, too much concerned about visibility of weaknesses. The role of the alpha is a role that has to be especially careful of showing the undersides of things; putting me in a place where my status explicitly needs underbelly-awareness is a good way of getting me to melt down internally in hyper-self-consciousness.
Now we're getting into mythology, the king's health and fertility is the nation's health and fertility; the alpha's face is the pack's health. A weak alpha indicates a weak pack, because if there were a better alpha than that someone would have done something about it already. Hum. Interesting thought that.
The other thing is . . . I'm not good with compromises. I'm not good at organisation. I want a problem I can hit; being a person who's officially delegated to hit problems is right my speed. As the alpha I need to in part restrain my urge to hit problems, take them on my own, and unilaterally say, "Fuck it" and go do things; my judgements are affecting everyone, and so I have to consider everyone, not just myself. (Which is odd set against the feeling that not being the alpha means not being alone; I hate it when things translate into English in ways that look mutually contradictory. It all makes sense in our head. :/ )
Which leaves me with the question of "What indicates a weak alpha?" And here's where I want to get Stormy out of my head because she just bares her teeth at examples of same and leaves the rest of us trying to figure out what the problem is.
This is what I've come up with so far, trying to get Stormy into English.
- Excessive display of dominance. A strong alpha doesn't need to overtly strut very often, because that's the alpha; the need to put on displays of potency reads to me as insecurity, and insecurity is showing underbelly. Teeth. (
teinedreugan tells me that this carries over into the BDSM literature/community he's familiar with; the real dominants don't pull the Master DomlyDom shit.)- Lack of recognition of territory signals. This gets everyone teeth, but is particularly egregious in an alpha. A tendency to overstep a legitimate claim indicates some combination of lack of respect for others, inability to recognise others' territorial claims, an overly rapacious tendency (Keeper, never eat anything larger than your head), or a desire to exert dominance in general (see point 1, add an eyeroll).
- Insufficient confidence. Dithering, pleading for support or sycophantism, inability to recognise when a decision needs to be made and implemented rather than consensus sought. This needs to be balanced with recognition of territory.
- Basic lack of ability. Ineptitude is bad alphaing all round. ;)
- Inconsistency. Back to dithering, somewhat, but also not making it possible to trust whether or not the alpha's decisions will hold from moment to moment.
- Rigidity. But some of the alpha's decisions won't work, so the alpha should know when to back out and reconsider. Another matter of balance.
- Capriciousness.
- Vacillation and doormatitude. Probably tied to insufficient confidence.
- Organisational skills, facilitation of compromise and togetherness.
Basically, these read to me in a lot of ways as making an ostentatious public display of weakness; this is unacceptable to me in an alpha. It reflects badly upon me as a member of the pack, it creates weakness by inviting public damage to the pack. My native response to this sort of thing as a beta type is to want to depart the pack or throw in my support behind a competent alpha.
I can see the beta role as kingmaker, but . . . from my point of view, that's a position of last resort. (Clearly, my beta personality is Seelie.) Kingmaking runs the risk of breaking the pack, creating dissention. But bad alphaing also can break packs -- schisming them in inept leadership, or provoking fights with other packs, or . . . meh.
While I was chewing on this, I had a minor revelation about Stormy. It's my understanding that it's HON teaching that Herw-Wer kids always have Set as a beloved, and Set kids always have Herw-Wer as a beloved. Stormy's a Set kid; Stormy's giving me all of this processing about what makes a good and bad alpha, and what's unacceptable alphality, and such. Serious input into acceptable rulership, but not a ruler herself.
I always think like this; this is part of my base social interaction processing. It can cause me problems in a number of situations, which basically boil down to: I still think like a beta even when I don't have beta status. In a group where there is no legitimate alpha status (a group of equals), when someone starts trying to throw alpha vibes around, the hackles go up, the head goes down, and there's no legitimate alpha. No alpha, lots of displaying of alphaness, the brain goes all haywire. Or a situation where there is an alpha, and I'm just a generic pack member. No status to have an affiliation shift register, let alone matter, and if one junior wolf goes off to a different pack, well, that happens sometimes.
teinedreugan says that I tend to have an excessively antagonistic response to these sorts of issues. Teeth, teeth, teeth. Damn monkeys make no sense.- But we do not notice them even when they throw nuts and filth on our heads.
[ The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling ]
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From:
no subject
It makes sense to me. It's sort of like the joke postcards that are captioned "if you're not the lead dog, the view never changes" -- if you are the lead dog, you can only see the other dogs if you're focusing on them rather than focusing on the outside world. As soon as your focus goes to figuring out where to go, there aren't any other dogs in sight.
It can cause me problems in a number of situations, which basically boil down to: I still think like a beta even when I don't have beta status.
It strikes me that humans are somewhat unlike many social animals, in that, while we have packs of various sorts, they all shift in and out of relevance. You have several newsgroups, the temple, a mush -- all of which are different packs, with different status-arrangements, and that's just in online life! Wolves have the advantage of only needing to deal with one pack, and it's always there. So it's probably a lot harder for humans to get into the right instinctive reaction-space for a pack that they're in, because those things are so transient.
From:
no subject
Oh, man, tell me about it! I'm so clearly the wrong species...
And *seeble* at Darkhawk.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
As far as I can tell, Stormy's the only one who has a really strong opinion about heirarchy inside my head; nobody else thinks like that. But Stormy's sufficiently influential in that realm overall that it percolates up into the aggregate self.
To the extent that there's an alpha, it's the aggregate self, which is in many situations dominated by Darkhawk; however, I don't have a genuine alpha (as is demonstrated by the fact that when I hit a completely new situation I tend to shut down into the equivalent of the subcommittee meeting for figuring out who's supposed to deal).
Now that I ponder this angle, I think that frustrates Stormy a little; sometimes when she takes front it's in the "Hell with this, someone's got to do something" mode. Mostly, Stormy's actually fairly quiet aside from the broad contribution to the gestalt; she has her passions, and when those come up, she goes and Does Something About Them <tm>. Very goal-focused, in a lot of ways.
I imagine Stormy might be less content with my lack of internal organisation if she were in a situation where there wasn't someone (several someones, depending on situation, but one primary someone) outside my head she trusted as an alpha.
I'm guessing that your internal processing is w/re: Wolf?
From:
no subject
--Liz
From:
no subject
Interestingly enough, a dog trainer I respect very highly makes this same point. A lot of people come to her thinking their snarling, posturing dog is alpha and needs to be taken down a few notches-- she tells them, "Nope, he's a wannabe, and he needs some security." The dogs in charge do 99% of the job with eye contact and very understated body language.
From:
no subject
We really should talk sometime. Wolves who don't have much access to English, or indeed, words at all, are a major part of my life at the moment, and anything that helps me understand is a blessing. :) A lot of what you wrote here had me nodding in recognition, a lot more of it makes me want to bring to the other party and go discuss.
Also a lot of it speaks to the kinds of issues of face and hierarchy I find are innate to my understanding of How Things Work as a reconstructionist Celt, and I have a devil of a time explaining it all to anyone else. Nice to see a really clear go of it here. :)
From:
no subject
I wish I knew where I stood on wolf politics-- I'm neither alpha nor beta, but black sheep/wolf/whatever. I don't do the pack thing well, never have. I could count the number of alphas that I consider acceptable on one hand. While everyone else gushes over the alpha, I see the flaws. I don't seek them out, but I see them and wonder why in the world the betas don't. I have no clue what that means.
BTW, I don't know if I hold with the HON assertion about Set and Heru-wer-- I'm a Heru-wer kid and I don't have ANY relationship with Set. (Although I have something semi-similar, email me if you want me to explain.) But what you're saying definitely sounds like Heru-guidance. :)
From:
no subject
I think that the recognition of an alpha for those people who do that sort of thing is an intimate thing; some people hit the recognition patterns in a subset of other people, but there isn't going to be everyone. And I wonder if some things you would consider flaws don't register as important to others.
Like . . . one of the people who I'm comfortable having as alpha has no sense of direction, none. (And a "Not all those who wander are lost" bumper sticker, but hey.) We were wandering around Edinborough (Scotland) at one point, and I think at some level I noticed she didn't know where we were, but I wouldn't have dreamed of mentioning it if she hadn't asked if I knew where the hotel was, because The Alpha Leads. The fact that she can't find her way out of a paper bag with a compass isn't relevant to the alphaness I perceive, but it might be to you, say.
I'm not surprised that there's an exception to the HON claim. :} I'm amused that they've got Stormy dead to rights, though.