Humans as suppressed pack animals

A wolf pack averages about seven or eight members, though they can go up to twenty, including two alphas (most people think it's just one). Alphas are, most scientists believe, born that way, or at least with a propensity to become alphas. To be sure, if the pack lacks an alpha, someone will step into the role, and if there's two with a propensity, one will probably back down; alphahood isn't an all-or-nothing thing, it has gradations. But evolution does seem to have built wolves with a tendency to make about one out of every five to ten pups have a predilection to become an alpha, because that's what works best for wolves -- forms the strongest, most cohesive packs, therefore the packs most likely to take prey and avoid predators and survive to have more pups.

Many mammals have similar structures and similar corresponding tendencies, though the numbers vary as does the intensity of the tendency towards pack structures. Most primates have some sort of social pack-like structure and many of them are, as much as wolves, dominated by alphas.

Anthropologists generally agree that humans share this tendency at a fundamental level. Many aspects of human social behavior are attributed in part to the effects of a natural tendency towards pack formation, hierarchical structures, and similar social behavior. But humans are noted for their large forebrains which possess the capability, to some extent (just how much is widely disputed), of overriding such tendencies. Overriding them does not always produce happy, well-adjusted humans, though.

We have thousands of years of civilization pushing us, more and more, into patterns of living and behavior which go against some of those innate tendencies, often leading to maladjusted, unhappy people and antisocial behavior. You sometimes see a bit of atavistic throwback behavior, though. Watch a football team huddle and tell me you can't see them in loincloths gathered around a fire banging spears in preparation to go drive off the other tribe from their hunting grounds so they can hunt gazelles.

One of the things where we're farthest from our social-animal roots is the more that it's wrong to have alphas. Most of us are expected, in our work and personal lives both, to be strong, confident, decisive. Not to take any guff from anyone. To get out there and to go boldly. We're supposed to act like we're all alphas. And at the same time, to be conciliatory, cooperative, deferential, and non-presumptuous, to respect everyone else's rights to self-determination to an almost pathological level, as if none of us is an alpha.

But millions of years of biology have hardwired us. The simple fact is, most of us are not alphas. Most of us, in some secret part, crave having a decisive, strong alpha somewhere to submit to, freeing us from all the societal pressure to be something we're not built to be. Most of us never express this feeling out loud, and many never even realize it in themselves, never name it. This is one source of the modern existential angst that leaves so many feeling a vague but unshakeable dissatisfaction with life.

And the alphas amongst us don't have it any better. Society is just as quick to call them bossy, pushy, presumptuous, and arrogant, and demand they be conciliatory. Though a disproportionate number are drawn by alpha charisma to positions of authority, many of them cannot because of the vagaries of workplace and politics, and chafe in an unsuited role of compliance and conformity. And they find themselves thronged by non-alphas who find them compelling (pun intended) without, in many cases, knowing why, longing for their strength and company and yet in most cases bent by societal pressures away from accepting either.

The fact is, we're built with this proportion of alphas to non-alphas for good reasons. We'd all be happier if we acknowledged this facet of our natures, and while we might not want to let it rule our lives, we should probably take it into account at least somewhat, rather than structuring our entire society willfully ignorant of it.