My Take | In our brave new world China is a sigma and America an alpha
- When two alphas are in the same room, they will fight. No one will argue that the US is a long-time alpha, but is China really the new wannabe?
It’s a good thing that the Greek alphabet has 24 letters. That way, pop psychologists and hacks like yours truly can advance catchy theories for a long time about this and that cultural or political phenomenon.
You have no doubt heard of the alpha male or female. More recently, there is a new addition: the sigma male. There have also been beta, delta, epsilon, gamma and omega males, with slightly different psychological traits, but roughly, we can generalise and say they all fall under the category of “losers”.
I think they originally come from Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley who incidentally was a sigma man, a Greek letter classification that interestingly wasn’t featured in his science fiction classic.
The phrase sigma male has recently gained online currency. There are YouTube channels devoted exclusively to analysing or glorifying such individuals.
Supposedly, sigma men have the competence, independence and intelligence of alphas. But instead of enjoying dominating and leading followers, sigmas are “lone wolves”.
They have few friends or allies, but can form useful relations when the need arises. They don’t like to be dominated or told what to do, but they don’t hesitate to dominate and influence others, not for their own ego, but for longer-term goals and plans.