THERE IS NO ALPHA WOLF
The concept of an alpha wolf is outdated. New research instead points to wolf pairs who are faithful for life and who help raise the cubs. Go here for more information
The idea will not go away of the Alph wolf, because it is inculcated in our culture. The idea of a dominant male (or female) appeals to us. As does the idea of a subservient person. We believe in hierarchy, or pyramids, of power with a superior on top directing underlings below. One place in society where it is important to emphasize this difference is in the culture of BDSM. There is a tradition of Dominants vs submissive persons. The Top dog and the bottom dog; Top and bottom. Often practitioners talk of ’switching’ where the partners change roles. Mainly they don’t; a Top is aTop and a bottom is a bottom. The one on top gets to punish the one on the bottom - in principal.
The history of sadomasochism dates to the Marquis de Sade and to Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch; but humans have been inflicting pain and torture on other humans for years. Often for sexual gratification, often just to be cruel. Perhaps the most famous sexual pervert of all time is the Marquis se Sade. Sadism was named after him after all. Here for more information on de Sade.
Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch wrote a novel called Venus In Furs, detailing the nature of masochism. It is the opposite of Sadism in some ways. Sadomasochism combines the two.
Let’s get back to wolves. If the idea of an alpha male is false, then where do we go from there? If wolves have an egalitarian society, then what animal model can we cling to? If we look at our cousins, the apes, we find the Chimpanzees and the Bonobos.
Chimpanzees
“Always, the strongest male leads their troops, and this alpha-male position is usually passed along the bloodlines. Chimps are omnivores, and they hunt in groups sometimes. They are highly territorial, and the males never allow the neighbours to cross the boundaries”
Bonobos
Interestingly, the female bonobos dominate their troops, and those include a large number of individuals with males, females, and offspring. Bonobos are omnivorous feeders, but they do not often hunt in groups. The territories are clearly marked but sometimes they intrude into neighbouring territories, allowing them to be overlapped. In fact, they sometimes share sexual mates within troops. It is interesting to notice the sexualism in bonobos is frequent, and it is being used to greet or treat the others. Scientists have observed female bonobos with homosexual behaviours.
More on the sexuality of Bonobos here.
Chimpanzees at War
Yes chimpanzees kill and torture other chimpanzees. More about that here.
So our ape cousins can be as cruel as humans. So can wolfs in certain situations. Now the question is, ‘Do they enjoy it?” Is this only the domain of humans….?
Are there people who are naturally cruel and like to hurt people? Are these people Alphas?
In an experiments exploring how you can find out if someone is a ‘sadist’ based on disgust, they showed subjects heart surgery to determine their ‘disgust’. The degree of disgust was correlated with their degree of sadism. Well, since I am a medical illustrator, it wouldn’t have upset me to watch surgery… More here.
It seems that Doms and Dominitrix probably have sub clinical sadism (also called everyday sadism). “Everyday sadists lack empathy, and they possess an internal motivation to hurt others. However, they are unlikely to act in a way that would be criminal or dangerous — at least in most contexts, where such behavior is met with social disapproval or punishment,” More here
Milgram experiment
And then you have this Yale University experiment that forced people to be cruel.
“Participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a "learner". These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real.The experiment found, unexpectedly, that a very high proportion of subjects would fully obey the instructions, albeit reluctantly.”
There has been some criticism of the experiment yet…
“Nestar Russell and John Picard take issue with Perry for not mentioning that "there have been well over a score, not just several, replications or slight variations on Milgram’s basic experimental procedure, and these have been performed in many different countries, several different settings and using different types of victims. And most, although certainly not all of these experiments have tended to lend weight to Milgram’s original findings."
And then there are the dark Triad disorders…and this one I just found:
Paraphilic coercive disorder
Such a fancy name for a rapist.
Here is a paper on this if you are interested.
Conclusion
Despite the new research that disavows the ‘alpha wolf’ paradigm , the idea of a human alpha male (or female) still prevails in our society. The idea of a powerful forceful individual who gets whatever they want appeals to us. Contrast that with the idea of a wolf who helps raise the cubs and is faithful to his partner; it is not as appealing. We as human beings at our best are just animals - without fur - and at our worst we are humans without morals. Somewhere between the two extremes is where we find ourselves.
