From Alpha to Omega

Art, chivalry and the need to serve

Men today are portrayed as binary creatures. Peruse the headline pages of Substack and it is strewn with dead cats well spent having hit their alpha vs. beta male article targets. (I note, these are metaphorical dead cats and not the Springfield, OH eating variety felines.) Countless articles describing the virtues of strong "alpha" males, and the woes of their "beta" counterparts are posted every day. I find these articles on manliness about as useful as fitness advice. No amount of fitness guru advice is going to transform my old and follicly challenged mortal coil, one ravaged by a lifetime of use and abuse, into the version it was in my 20s. So too with innumerable alpha male daily vignettes. No amount of alpha male advice can shake Divine male design by focusing on merely on alpha and ignoring the remaining 23 letters of the alphabet. Given the frequency of posts from a variety of gender declaring types, discussions about alpha vs. beta males must be the low hanging fruit for click-baiting gender-obsessed writing stackers.

Men are not binary creatures. They are not either alpha or beta, nor even on a spectrum in between those two characteristics. Man is something far more complicated. Despite a bounty of "hold my beer," Darwin Awards contending videos on the internet, a man is much more than alpha or beta. My guess is, the alpha male article sells because it lays out a simple version on super maleness, an architype achievable by minimal effort and instruction to men to ignore their other male tendencies. The formulaic alpha male article touts testosterone boosting supplements and “type A” activities that instantly transform them into Gordan Gekkos in the boardroom and Fabios in the bedroom. These claim that with power of will, modern man can become superman without him making the impossible, yet necessary journey of Jor-El’s infant son in a spaceship crossing the timeless cosmos.

The alpha vs. beta man genre is crap. Man is not designed to dominate; he is designed to serve. The words "servant," "service," and "serve" appear in the Bible more than 1,100 times. "For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”- Mark 10:45. Complicated men by the action of service are always mopping up the messes wrought by "alphas." Whether it is cleaning up endless wars, broken marriages or floundering companies, it is not the singular-focusing alphas riding to the rescue but whole men of complex character that rise to the challenge.

Recently, a friend of mine who developed and sold a successful software company, surprised me by taking the CEO position of another company. He is only a few years younger than me and, through the sale of his company, had achieved the enviable "not ever needing to work another day in his life," moniker. Like many that find that level of success and comfort, he remodeled his home, acquired a beautiful lake "cabin," and formed a foundation-oriented charity organization. To most, like those who dream of winning the lottery so they can "Johnny Paycheck" their employer, they wonder why someone how doesn't need to work would take on the stress of running an entirely new organization? The easiest way for these lucky few to serve is to take a big fat check for a couple hours of work as a board member. That move is all prestige, no risk and a big reward. I know not whether the move to take the CEO position is to serve an ego or a greater good, but thanks to the invisible hand of free markets, it really doesn't matter. If the company my friend assumed the helm of is successful, his service, no matter where his motivation is placed, will benefit many. If he flops, the company dies, and his service is for nought.

I can't help but tie that same scenario to Donald Trump. He is successful in his own right. He is a man, like my friend, who could avoid the stress (and bullets) of running for reelection and easily retire to a life of leisure at Mar-A-Lago. Whether one thinks of Trump as Tiberius or Julius Caesar, his position of the 45th President of these United States, will forever be etched in the annals of history and Donald Trump does not need a second term for his name to reach immortality levels of recognition. I look at a second Trump presidential term existentially. It matters not if Trump's desire to serve again is to feed a megalomaniacal ego or because he altruistically desires to restore a fallen nation to a Constitutional Republic once again. If he is successful in his term in office, millions of people's lives will improve and if he fails, millions of people will suffer. The barrels of ink spent portraying Trump as the ego-chasing version of alpha maleness in this endeavor is as incomplete as all the other screeds about alpha males.

Men, for simplicity’s sake, may be reduced to those who tend towards alpha (fierce) or beta (meek) traits. But that is an incomplete picture of a man. It may be what is base via natural instincts but, is not what God designed nor intends. We are made in the image of God and that is from Alpha to Omega, not alpha to beta. To be a man in God's eye is to be a portrait of chivalry. True manliness is more a work of art than of nature; a work painted on canvas, where the first bush stroke is made as he comes kicking and screaming into this world and the last stroke occurs as his signature is scribed in the lower right corner when he draws his final breath. Masculinity is a Divine masterpiece, impossible to achieve in mortal flesh, yet a sculpture of maleness that an enlighten man aspires to emulate.

Chivalry demands that one be fierce on the battlefield yet gentle in the hall among ladies. A man is design to protect and serve, which places him among the greatest evils of the universe witnessing unspeakable ills while at the same time, caressing and cradling the means of his progeny. Those two acts of maleness are not alpha or beta but Alpha to Omega. They are incongruent in the binary terms so often written by low attention, ADD addled authors. Nonetheless, despite the last 20 years of popular culture portraying men as hapless halfwits to their superior lifeform female counterparts, men are not that simple.

If they were, my friend, Donald Trump, and countless other successful men of great means would not forgo lives of wine, women and song, for the difficult and often thankless job of serving others. Wars would not be fought by volunteer soldiers on behalf of weak leaders, but by conscripted men in chains that have no allegiance to the political “masterminds” that put them in harm’s way.

Because, in the end, the man who does not need the money yet goes back to work anyway, risks the one thing his money cannot buy. He risks his time. And, when a man approaching the winter of his life sacrifices that precious and limited commodity to be of service to others, his recompense lies not in earthly treasure or reputation, but with He who will judge him. If the man’s deeds were noble, God will bestow upon him the highest honor by declaring him a good and faithful servant. For a man to achieve that desired end, there can not only be alpha actions in his calculations. He must be Alpha, Beta and every other letter of the alphabet ending with Omega.