Headline Sep21, 2012/

The Very: 

"SECOND BEST!"

It's often said that if women ruled the world, there'd be a lot less war. This may very well be true provided you delete names like Condoleza Rice and Margaret Thatcher from the past and from History. For Millennia, we have separated ourselves from the Beasts. How far we have succeeded is for all of you to make your own judgement. We seek the peaceful conclusion, sacrifice our own interests for the sake of majority, try to help our fellow human beings. 

But when it comes to business, we come over all Darwinian : "It's survival of the fittest", we say, as if at any moment we could be clubbed to death by a raiding party from the Caves next door. "It's dog-eat-dog", we intone, our eyes clenched shut like Clint Eastwood,. In the School, University and in the Office, the Alpha Male, he who feels himself Born to Run Things, and expects you to believe it too, still rules. We accept this, yet in any other context we would probably agree that beta males - those who "fail" to make the top of the heap, - are the higher, more sophisticated form of life. Do we really want to spend our lives like dogs - or worse, adolescent boys - engaged in long contest of virility. At work, the alpha behaves as if it's a jungle out there, but it is not. In fact, it's a Zoo, where everyone is given an enclosure and feeding times and where things are run according to a whole web of conventions that we call Civilization. 

Yes, you are thinking. but Alphas get the rewards, the glory, the excitement. They are the winners. Well, sometimes. More often they are just the most driven and consequently the most needy, unfeeling, selfish, vain, unsatisfied, and unhappy. At work they may get the fat-cat salaries beloved of the tabloids, but they also get the job-life expectancy of Football Managers, and all the Ulcers that go with it. So, because. and don't forget, there are many many prizes for coming Second, they just come in different guises. First, the beta has a chance to attain that mythical work-life balance, to bring to life the hoary cliché that no man ever said on his deathbed, "I wish I had spent more time in the Office." They get a life: they can spend time with friends and even family, if they so choose. They don't even have to marry three times and keep a string of joyless affairs going just because of an overwhelming need to dominate. And it's just more fun being a beta. 

And while you are thinking about it, please do spare a thought for the poor Alphas. More just born that way, they just can't help it. More often than not they are no doing the job they wanted to do, but merely being a face for it; not even creating strategies, but just telling other people what they have to get done, and when. Betas are the ones who achieve things, as opposed to overseeing achievements. Many thanks to !WOW! for this delightful research. And this post continues. 

Good night and God bless!

SAM Daily Tiems - the Voice of the Voiceless