The Art of Creating Alpha Males

By C.J. Cronin

“The Art of Creating Alpha Males” Humans come in two forms, male and female, and as with other animals males have certain instincts unique to their sex, as do females. So knowing and using the other sex’s instincts to advantage is doable, as many a Casanova or Mata Hari will confirm, and is the secret to eliciting the type of behavior most desired from them. 38,840 words

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.J. Cronin
• Release date: May 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458081766

C.J. Cronin

The author of 42 feature films, 5 television series, 4 plays, 11 novels, 2 novellas, & 3 non-fiction books. Directed and narrated the documentary “Treasure the Gulf of Thailand Incident". Authored and designed the concept and function of the seven electronic games in the electronic book “Seven” in association with the Acme games company. Invented and designed the concept and function of the electronic component of “Slip Slap”, an indoor game and exercise invention.

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© C.J. Cronin

38,840 words

Copyright. Smashwords edition. ISBN: 9781458081766 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, C.J. Cronin, his agent, or a properly authorized officer bearing a written authority from C.J. Cronin to that end, excepting brief quotes used in connection with reviews written specifically for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, internet article or on any form of multi-media book show.

For my mother, Shirley Cronin.

Bonus Book 2 The Bazza Chronicles

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 – The pragmatist meets the romantic

Chapter 2 – Why we are so sexy

Chapter 3 – Sex roles in hunter-gatherer society

Chapter 4 – Why all men are bastards

Chapter 5 – The peacock’s tail – why we are so smart

Chapter 6 – Sexism & superstition

Chapter 7 – The concept called ‘love’

Chapter 8 – Na to whores

Chapter 9 – What men want and why

Chapter 10 – 5 ways to get a man and keep him & 5 ways to use his instincts advantageously

Introduction

From homing pigeons to hunting hawks to sheep dogs, humans have found ways to ‘trick’ animals into performing useful tasks by tweaking their instincts in certain ways. Although most of us are unaware of it, and as this book will contend, human beings are in fact the most instinctive of all animals and our behavior can most certainly be tweaked in a number of ways. Marketing companies, for instance, have long ago worked out that our instincts can indeed be utilized for profit, and that certain procedures can increase market share and/or the popularity and saleability of particular individuals e.g. politicians and rock stars.

We are not homogenous in our instincts; however, as humans come in two flavors, male and female, and as with other animals, males have certain instincts unique to their sex, as do females. Using the other sex’s instincts to advantage is also possible, as many a Casanova or Mata Hari will confirm, and so knowing what the opposite sex’s instincts are is the key to eliciting the type of behavior most desired from them.

In trying to understand human behavior we are reading only the most recent jottings in a long, long story, the beginnings of which most of us choose to ignore or even acknowledge. This rather unintelligent approach is like coming to a conclusion about a novel’s plot by reading just the final paragraph. The overwhelming bulk of the time humans - genetically identical to ourselves - have existed on Earth has been as hunter-gatherers, and not as tribes or super-tribes. Our ancestors before that, who slowly adapted over millions of years, becoming Homo sapiens, lived in completely different circumstances than is the average experience these days. So to make judgments on male/female interactions without referring to adaptive evolution is to deliberately pursue ignorant conclusions.

The ‘Mars’ and ‘Venus’ exponents may be telling you what you want to hear in accordance with current village customs, because, after all, you were raised and indoctrinated into this culture, but such advice often has little to do with what male and female instincts were developed for. The current culture is a leftover from a by-gone era and was initially introduced to ensure group security. Once hunter-gatherers were forced to take up village life due to over-population, an imbalance between male and female numbers quickly ensued. A village suffering the turmoil such imbalance engenders becomes vulnerable to attack from other more stable villages, so an artificial policy of one-man-one-woman was invented – although ‘concocted’ is a more accurate word.

Even though we now live in super-villages where this arrangement is all but irrelevant, it is still perpetuated due to inherited customs and fixed laws.

Finding ways that people can live more successfully with each other in this unnatural arrangement is what this book is about.

Back to Contents

CHAPTER 1 - The pragmatist meets the romantic

Throughout history, females have picked providers for their mates. Males pick anything.[1] - Anthropologist, Margaret Mead.

Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe - comedian, Jackie Mason.

In Michael Crichton’s Travels[2] he refers to a personal episode in his life when he split-up with a woman with whom he was deeply in love. He was locker-room-sharing his heartache with an alpha-male friend who was dating many of the top models around town at the time, and his friend pointed out that women are not romantically inclined, but rather they have a more practical mentality. Men are actually the ones who are the romantic dreamers – that was the reason Michael was so distracted by the bust-up - he had been ‘fired’ by his lover for technical reasons, not love-based. Michael thought about that for some time then came to the conclusion that his friend was absolutely right.

Both sexes foist their ‘perfect-mate’ criteria onto the other sex, and both are self-deluding. When someone cheats us out of money there is a high degree of mental seduction, psychology, and preconceived ideas in play, but the most powerful ingredient is the hope that the person being cheated has invested in the cheater. They strongly want to believe that the person holding their money is honest, sincere and well-meaning. So even when they receive clear signals that everything is not okay, when their logic says ‘pull out now or lose your money’ they continue down the road to financial doom because of the faith they have already placed in the other person. It is throwing good money after bad, good faith after bad, it is self-delusion.

That’s a little like the self-delusion regarding the opposite sex. We want our faith in them to be rewarded with deep, ongoing love and affection. Women don’t want to believe that men are really just interested in them for sex, and men don’t want to believe that women just want their money. In most cases both sexes are usually right but just as in the financial world, fraud is common.

We live in a world of pop-medicine, pop-psychology, and pop-magazine-advice where the snake-oil sales men and women have cottoned onto the fact that if they tell each sex what they want to hear then there are big financial gains to be had. You take a ‘PhD.’ ‘expert’ who received a degree from a now banned and highly suspect university, recycle the values from the 1950’s that your mom and dad told you were the right ones to have, and talk about men being from a warlike planet and women from a love-filled planet, and thereby get yourself on all the pop-self-help talk-shows, and you can make big money - sincerity, if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

Why are we talking about pigeon-holing the sexes anyway, and why is such a simplistic, patronizing, sycophantic approach so effective in today’s quick-fix culture? Why does talk-show ‘couples-help’ have such wide appeal and make us trust obvious con-artists who offer trite advice about what we already know, and which hasn’t worked in the past? Isn’t it obvious that 90% of the audience and 90% of the home viewers for such shows are women and that men are almost completely disinterested in the subject? That alone should highlight that at least half the potential audience is only being told what they already know and want to hear. It is mere affirmation of childhood indoctrination. It is confirmation, not education. Comforting for many, but not the truth.

Why do so many people in the Western world walk around play-acting their lives, playing to cameras that are not there? Portraying characters from pop-culture TV shows that have nothing to do with what either sex is really feeling toward the other? Why is it that the one sure thing we can say about the sexes in the West is that no one is really sure how they should behave anymore and that fear of saying or doing something politically incorrect hangs over everyone’s head like the sword of Damocles?

I am writing this book in Shanghai. Travel does broaden the mind, and living in China is a great eye-opener vis-à-vis the sexes and how they interplay. Most people in the West have only a vague idea as to what life is really like in China. When they arrive they are often surprised to sit in sparkling new malls replete with Burger King, Kentucky Fried, McDonalds or Häagen Das and to look at all the wealthy Chinese who are electronically gizmoed to within an inch of their lives, expensively dressed, and usually sporting a college degree or two (although I am of course mainly referring to modern cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen for the time being). The Chinese, having a healthier diet and possessing on average more generically athletic frames and symmetrical features than the more potpourri Westerners, are indeed on average a strikingly handsome people. What one sees is a healthy, attractive and vibrant population with virtually no obesity and many of the same trappings of modern life we have in the West. But as one gets to know the Chinese, the difference between how the sexes behave toward each other becomes clearer than in the West. There would, naturally enough, be a plethora of subtle cultural reasons why this would be so, but in my opinion the most important ingredient which makes them, for the time being at least, far less difficult to observe regarding the interplay of the sexes, is socialism.

The Communist revolution may be over and the Chinese now more capitalistic than the capitalists, but the residual effect of the revolution on older generations has provided a strong influence on younger generations. The revolution championed the notion that everyone is equal; and to a degree Chinese still grow up with that imbedded in their day-to-day interactions, but it is also significant that it has helped perpetuate greater equality between the sexes.

The main ingredient making someone ‘better’ here is, as in the West, money, but even that doesn’t guarantee a right of passage. Also there is a population measured in the billions. That means there is tremendous pressure to get money, and that is also imbedded in their day-to-day interactions, and consequently maintains a prominent role in the courting rituals of the sexes.

The meal that results from these ingredients wafts these odors – Chinese are real in their behavior, what you see is what you get, and if they try to ‘fake it’ (as we so often do in the West) it is more obvious as false. Chinese men are straight-forward in what they want from a woman: they want sex, good house-keeping (frugality mainly), and fidelity. The women are equally straightforward; they want financial security, long-term commitment, and a degree of male subordination.

In keeping with these desires, the men are conservative, hard-working, and generally compliant. The women on the other hand dress in a feminine style (almost all have long hair and wear high heels), keep their figures trim, are good with money, and are frank but not flirtatious with male acquaintances. Unlike the West, women in China also seldom wear rings, so you do not know who is married and who is not, and this further influences cordiality between the sexes.

Some people may conclude that my consideration of the Chinese is of little value because they are in fact a different race from Western peoples, but this a misconception. As Alan R. Templeton of Washington University, St Louis, has shown through DNA analysis there is no such thing as ‘race’ [3]. It is possible to find more genetic variance, say, between two Chinese men, than between a Chinese man and a Masai Warrior. As Sir Richard Dawkins, the English geneticist, often points out, all humans are so closely related that there is more genetic variance between two chimpanzees from the same region of Africa than there is between any two human beings from anywhere in the world. It is culture that differentiates people from each other and nothing more.

But on that note, Francis Fukuyama in his book The Origins of Political Order makes the point that the Chinese are quite unique in that their society has never known the rule of law. When I first came to China I was expecting to see a suppressed people, afraid and overtly watchful of the government. As in the West, there is fear of authority here, but I was surprised to find that as a culture the Chinese are far more individualistic, even more anarchic, than Westerners – they are anything but rule-followers and behave in a very independent manner, happy to break most laws that they see as impeding or illogical. Fukuyama’s point is that the Chinese have always been subject to absolute rule, whether by emperor or autocratic state. This means that the spirit of common law has always been foisted from above, and is not upheld via the individual. Conversely, in Western history there have been numerous royal lineages but there is also a tradition that even kings and queens are not above the law. Such equality between common man and ruling class has never been tradition in China. In a certain way this relieves the individual of the responsibility for law. Ride your bike down the sidewalk in downtown New York and pedestrians will quickly tell you not to do that. Ride your bike down the sidewalk in downtown Shanghai and no one will bat an eyelid - Chinese tend not to direct the law themselves, but leave it to higher authorities.

In my experience this aspect carries over into relationships between the sexes, further differentiating Chinese culture from Western. Sex is far more practically applied. It is not the conventions of marriage that are so stringently upheld, but rather sex, extra-marital or otherwise, is more rudimentary and relative to the circumstances - they act as they genuinely feel, there is almost no contrivance, a.k.a., what you see is what you get.

One of the aspects of Western society before the sexual revolution in the late 60’s which many (who can remember that era) now long for, is that the roles of both sexes were not confused - men were men, women were women, vive la différence. Although the pill is readily available over the counter in most pharmacies, very few Chinese women opt to use it. There are two reasons for this: frugality – why pay for the pill when condoms are much cheaper and withdrawal is free – and also because the Chinese don’t like imbibing unnatural things, and the pill is definitely one of those. {Footnote 1}

{Footnote 1. There may be a physical reason Chinese marriages are m ore successful on average than Western. Experiments have shown that women not on the pill are attracted to men who they detect as quite different to them genetically. Women on the pill are attracted to men with similar DNA. The pill fools the body into thinking it is pregnant, and pregnant women gravitate to close relatives for security. Breeding with someone quite different from you genetically produces offspring with a better chance of survival against disease and seems to produce an all-round stronger person. Courting females in the West are often on the pill prior to meeting a prospective mate, whereas in China this is rare.}

So what we have is a society which, unlike pre 60’s Western culture, is amazingly equal and respectful between the sexes (due to historical reasons) and this, despite the social influence of contraception which so radicalized sexual relationships in the West.

The wider view of all this is that the roles of the sexes in China are more distinct, and they do indeed bear out that women are the practical-minded sex and make their judgments of the other sex principally on the basis of pragmatic issues – income, long-term planning and sustainability. Make no bones about it, it is commonly understood in China that if a man wants to marry a woman then at the very least he should have enough money saved to buy an apartment. Without such an asset his chances of securing a female are substantially diminished.

Western men who date Chinese women find themselves early on answering some frank financial questions both to do with past performances and future plans. They are also carefully screened about previous relationships and any resulting offspring. In particular, and not so ironically, how well the offspring from a previous relationship are being cared for – and not forgetting that any such outgoings might impact on a subsequent relationship.

So a more correct title for a book about the interplay of the sexes should perhaps be, Men are from Venus, and Women are from PriceWaterhouse Accountants.

Why then, if men are the romantics and women are the hard-nosed pragmatists, do we have books, jokes, calendars and a general consensus that All men are bastards, bastards who cheat on women, and it is okay to say that about them (because everyone knows it to be true) while there is no equivalent deriding commentary about women? Why don’t we have All women are prostitutes, or All women are investment bankers, or All women are gold diggers?

There’s also a glaringly obvious flaw in the logic of men cheating on women. If women are mainly faithful then who are all the cheating men having sex with? Is it that most women are faithful while a minority of them are really, really unfaithful, thereby servicing all the cheating men? Are there in fact two species of women - the goody-two-shoes and the out-and-out tarts?

So all the men who are busily sending suggestive text messages and emails and entering ribald remarks in millions of internet chat rooms are in fact only corresponding with the latter species of women? The resulting ‘hook-ups’, therefore, are purely genetically driven across la grande femelle divide?

While we are at it, we might just as well ask about other inconsistencies, like, why are men so much more expendable in movies than women? Isn’t this the ultimate in sexism? If a woman dies in a movie it illustrates the absolute horror of a situation (we’ve hit rock bottom morally) but if a man dies it just means the situation is becoming dangerous.

There are many such questions and inequalities between the sexes that are never remedied through equal rights legislation, and that we just accept. A man can punch another man in the face and it can even be seen as funny, but if he punches a woman in the face, even if she really deserves it, it’s an outrage.

So are men really romantic and women really pragmatic? In general, men seem to be more logical and consistent in their behavior, and one normally associates that with a pragmatic mindset. It is well known that women can go all gooey and be moved to tears when given flowers and taken to a romantic dinner. Why the conflicting signals? Who is the pragmatic one and who is the romantic one, or are we all just a mixture of these characteristics?

Back to Contents

CHAPTER 2 - Why we are so sexy

The paleontologist, Richard Leakey, the famous son of the equally famous Louis and Mary Leakey, clarified that we are not descended from the apes, but rather we are apes - a chimpanzee in fact; third rock from the sun, third chimp from the bough - we’re the tall ones in the family.

It is interesting too,