Alpha Male – Photo by Art DiNo via Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)
Anthropology reveals interesting information about ourselves, particularly because of its ability to conduct an examination of our human behaviour and customs from the distance of different cultures and long periods of time. This provides anthropology with an illuminating perspective that is available to few other sciences. An illuminating example of this is provided by “The Enemy Within”, an article in the July 12, 2025, edition of New Scientist, written by Jonathan R. Goodman. (Also see his book, Invisible Rivals: How We Evolved to Compete in a Cooperative World.)
As a sociologist, Goodman explores the interface between anthropology, primatology, psychology and economics to explain the dynamic of inequality. This has become particularly worrisome in our present culture as the rich get richer, the powerful more influential, and everyone else is feeling justifiably victimized. Goodman begins by taking us back to our very historical beginning.
Humans are social primates, like chimpanzees and baboons. So, how did we evolve to be so socially different? In primates, he explains, a dominant individual, usually an alpha male, uses the raw power of aggression to take control of the social structure, thereby perpetuating its genetic characteristics, but also perpetuating this hierarchical dynamic of the social order.
As anthropology and primatology suggests, human societies were able to structure differently when we invented tools and weapons. Over the course of time, the muscular supremacy of the alpha leaders lost their authority and advantages to those with more ingenuity. According to Richard Wrangham, a primatologist from Harvard University, our ancestors slowly “selected against the trait of human aggression”. In brief, over millennia, we eventually “domesticated ourselves”, evolving the basic and universal social principle of treating others as we ourselves would like to be treated. This accounts for the difference between the social order in primates and that in human societies. But, as is usual with humans, even simple processes become complicated.
The complexities of living socially increases brain size and accelerates sophisticated thinking, which then introduces other psychological and sociological dynamics into behaviour. For humans, this encouraged those with alpha attributes to develop more subtle, devious and insidious ways of exerting control. This led, as Goodman explains, to the cunning manipulation of others with a particular kind of Machiavellian social intelligence. This results in an “invisible rivalry” within a society, which usually works in conflict with our evolved inclination to trust, share and cooperate for the betterment of the collective.
Those with this alpha inclination seem to be cooperating and respecting approved norms and rules, but they only do so selectively for their own advantage. They give the impression of complying with social values, but they bend and twist them for their own purposes. The power, sex, authority, prestige and control for which they strive are the same kinds of rewards earned by aggressive chimpanzees and baboons.
The result of our social sophistication is a cooperative social structure within which is a competitive component. If this competitive component overcomes the cooperative one, then the viability of the society is at risk. This happened with the Roman Republic, Goodman concludes, when the machinations of a few powerful individuals created autocracies which so hollowed out the supporting structure of cohesion and cooperation in the culture that it eventually rotted from the inside and collapsed.
As Goodman explains, this corrosive dynamic is much less likely to occur in small societies such as tribes and clans where people know each other, where the deviousness is more conspicuous, and the pressure for social conformity is much more direct and intense. But problems managing this internal rivalry arise when cultures become large, complex and convoluted. This is presently becoming a corrosive, destructive and demoralizing social problem in our currently integrated world of affluence, technology and sophistication.
Probably to avoid the censure of politicizing his subject, a sociologist such as Goodman did not propose solutions. However, he did suggest that we become aware of the civilizing history of our evolution from primates to Homo sapiens. But the obvious political solution would be to limit and curtail the power of the alpha humans who are exploiting and corroding the social system. This could be done by breaking up monopolies, by restricting the loopholes that their deviousness employs, and by taxing them sufficiently that they become net contributors to the wellbeing of society rather than the pillagers of it. If they do not contribute to the collective benefit of everyone, then they need to be considered the enemy within.
Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra
Please note: On Saturday March 21, Sierra Quadra is hosting Ben Parfitt, noted writer and conservationist. His presentation will be “Forests, Reconciliation, and the Path Not Taken”, Quadra Community Centre, 7:30 pm.