El vocabulario empresarial ha penetrado hasta tal punto en la educación superior que apenas somos conscientes del sistema de valores que, con él, hemos incorporado
Si tu lo dices en tu condición de filóloga quién soy yo para discutirlo
Por lo que respecta a tus afirmaciones "Un pastor sin rebaño no es un pastor. Un alfa sin manada no es un alfa." y entendiendo lo que quieres decir, me permitirás una matización. Tanto el pastor como el alfa lo son independientemente de si tienen rebaño o manada respectivamente. La diferencia es que no podrán ejercer o ejecutar sus capacidades ¿no te parece?
Por lo que respecta al verso de Iriarte que tampoco conocía, a qué se refiere exactamente con la expresión "Si el sabio no aprueba". Qué es lo que el sabio ha de aprobar
En cuanto a la primera observación, creo que entraríamos en una cuestión casi filosófica, un poco en la línea del viejo debate sobre si un árbol que cae en un bosque donde no hay nadie para escucharlo produce o no produce ruido (aunque, en realidad, aquí la cuestión sea algo distinta: no tanto si un fenómeno existe sin observador, cuanto si una propiedad relacional puede existir al margen de la relación que la constituye). Mi afirmación era deliberadamente metafórica. Es cierto que alguien puede conservar las cualidades propias de un pastor o de un alfa aunque, circunstancialmente, no tenga rebaño o manada. Pero lo que pretendía señalar es que tanto el pastor como el alfa son figuras cuya identidad se define por una relación: sin rebaño no hay pastoreo; sin manada no hay liderazgo. Puede existir la capacidad, pero, si no se ejerce, permanece como potencialidad y no como acto.
Respecto al verso de Iriarte, la idea es que solo quien posee un conocimiento profundo en un campo está realmente en condiciones de valorar una aportación novedosa. Un “necio” o un profano puede aplaudirla o rechazarla acríticamente, pero difícilmente puede juzgar su verdadero alcance, porque carece de los conocimientos necesarios para hacerlo. En otras palabras, no tiene la formación necesaria para distinguir una teoría verdaderamente innovadora de una banalidad revestida de originalidad. Por eso su aplauso, por sí solo, carece de valor.
El sabio, en cambio, gracias a su experiencia y a su conocimiento del campo, dispone de criterios para reconocer cuándo una idea es, al mismo tiempo, sólida y rompedora. Ser rompedor es relativamente fácil; serlo sin sacrificar el rigor es lo verdaderamente excepcional. Ahora bien, ahí es donde Cajal introduce el matiz y revela, al hacerlo, un conocimiento muy fino de la naturaleza humana. Quien ha construido su prestigio dentro de un determinado paradigma puede sentirse inclinado –consciente o inconscientemente– a resistirse a aquello que lo cuestiona. El juicio del sabio es el más valioso, pero no por ello deja de estar expuesto a las inercias, los intereses o, muy a menudo, las envidias.
Por lo que respecta al sabio, la pregunta se antoja obvia: Quién realmente sabe y qué es saber. Desgraciadamente, el mundo está lleno de necios que tienen mucho más poder del que creemos ya que son quienes dan el poder, pero no a sabios, sino a otros necios que son los que detentan el poder
En el libro "The Listening Society", que recoge la propuesta de un grupo reducido de intelectuales que se hacen llamar Metamodernistas, se habla de la triada Game Acceptance - Game Denial - Game Changer para referirse a tres maneras de relacionarse con la realidad.
El Game Changer, aquel que ve el juego y no lo niega enteramente ni tampoco lo acepta, encuentra la tensión dinámica para expandir los imaginarios y cambiar las normas sin perder la fuerza de gravedad.
Esta posición me recuerda mucho al comportamiento que describes: que la excentricidad del hombre sigma tenga la suficiente tracción como para captar la atención de un grupo de personas.
Ya me dices cómo lo ves y gracias por el artículo!
Muchas gracias, Adrián. Me parece muy sugerente esa tríada (Game Acceptance – Game Denial – Game Changer). No la conocía y creo que ofrece un marco muy interesante para pensar distintas formas de situarse frente a las reglas del juego social.
En cuanto al hombre sigma, creo que no encajaría del todo en ninguna de esas tres categorías. El sigma no niega que el juego exista, pero tampoco lo acepta como el principio que deba organizar su vida, ni siente necesariamente el impulso de cambiar sus reglas. Puede llegar a influir sobre otras personas, expandir imaginarios o modificar algunas normas. Pero, cuando eso sucede, esa influencia no responde a un propósito deliberado, sino que aparece como una consecuencia sobrevenida de su forma de estar en el mundo. En ese sentido, el hombre sigma no aspira a ganar la partida ni a cambiar las reglas, sino a no permitir que el juego determine quién es.
You should have this conversation with your Brownstone Institute fellow Bret Weinstein, who is in his own words a "professor in exile" but I'm sure he'd love to talk about it on his podcast. It would also be very interesting to hear a Brownstone España fellow and a Brownstone Institute fellow discuss shared interests such as this topic of academic excellence and leadership.
Excellent piece, and strangely coincidental as I was talking about many of these points with my family last night!
I agree with your thesis: "However, leadership and intellectual excellence are not equivalent. The highest intellectual competence may, in fact, be conceptually at odds with leadership." This is especially frustrating in a university context where one would hope intellectual excellence was rewarded above all else – however in a corporate context, intellectual excellence is a liability and avoided (and punished) by those who want to become "thought leaders".
A few years ago I was thinking about this very topic and wrote a short story in which some young boys organize into four types: alphas, betas, gammas, and omegas. As the story exhibits, they are categorized by a two-by-two matrix, in which one axis is low-to-high intelligibility, and the other axis is low-to-high competence. So to spell out all four types:
• Alpha is high-intelligibility and high-competence.
• Beta is high-intelligibility and low-competence.
• Gamma is low-intelligibility and low-competence.
• Omega is low-intelligibility and high-competence.
A historical example of how the alpha often likes to keep an omega within arm's reach (as it is the omega who has original ideas) is King Henry VIII (the alpha) and Sir Thomas More (the omega). Any number of betas are vying for power behind the king, while gamma grunts fill the ranks, but it's the aloof omega who holds court with the king, and sadly gets on the wrong side of power by holding to principles. Another example (of losing one's head by holding to principles) is of course John the Baptist (omega) which is discussed by Girard in his book The Scapegoat.
And that's an interesting characterization of a "sigma" – a term I wasn't aware of. Doing a quick search, the internet suggests that a sigma is a sort of "lone winner" whereas an omega is more of a "lone loser". Two sides of the same coin? Same person perhaps?
Regarding academia, the whole point of tenure was to protect the original thinker from the cult of leadership. That is no longer the case, as one only achieves tenure nowadays by way of a popularity contest and feats of totemic conformity. As others have pointed out, our institutions now punish high-agency individuals, but reward compliance (and goes without saying in corporate culture).
My grandmother Doris would always say, "Be your own preson." But then again she lived on a mountain by herself, and I can't really recommend that severity of hermitage.
I found your two-by-two matrix of intelligibility and competence particularly interesting. In fact, I think it offers a much richer framework than the popular alpha-beta-omega-sigma taxonomy that circulates on the internet, because it focuses on underlying variables rather than simply assigning labels. I also enjoyed your historical examples of Henry VIII and Thomas More, and of John the Baptist. They illustrate very well the tension between intellectual independence and power.
Your comparison between the sigma and the omega also made me stop and think. I can certainly see the family resemblance, and they certainly overlap in some respects, but I would not identify them completely. As you describe him, the omega is still defined by his place within the hierarchy, even if that place is marginal. The sigma, at least as I understand the term, is characterized less by where he stands in the hierarchy than by his refusal to let the hierarchy become the principle that organizes his life. He neither seeks leadership nor defines himself in opposition to it. If he ends up influencing other people, that influence is usually a consequence of the way he lives rather than something he consciously pursues.
I also share your concern about academia. Universities have never been immune to power dynamics. Yet in recent years there seems to have been a clear shift. Visibility, management and leadership increasingly outweigh intellectual achievement itself, while the slow, solitary work from which original ideas often emerge receives less and less recognition. It is a curious paradox.
And I loved your grandmother's advice: "Be your own person." It seems to me that it captures, in just four words, something essential about the sigma.
Thank you again for such a thoughtful contribution, Jason..
Yes! The tension between intellectual independence and power is definitely a recurring theme in the sigma/omega story it seems – and central to the Brownstone ethos, if I dare say so from the outside reading in. But so many examples come to mind from history and literature: Antigone is a perfect example, also Emilia from Othello (Iago's wife is an unambiguous omega character – a cat around corners who ends up being the philosophical heroine of the tragedy in many ways).
And this brings something else to mind – while everyone hates Foucault (and they're not wrong for doing so) some of his late-career lectures were very much on this topic. Strangely out of print despite being so good, "Fearless Speech" explores this concept of the "parrhesiastes" (παρρησιαστής) which is someone who is emboldened by the truth to speak frankly and thus unafraid of political power's influence (e.g. Antigone and Creon).
So I wonder if – at best – what characterizes a sigma/omega individual is this "parrhesia" quality. The word appears in the New Testament some-31-times, such as in Acts 4:13 when the authorities describe the lowly fishermen Peter and John speaking with parrhesia (because who are they to be so bold, if not for truth's sake?) Those instances when a perceptive child blurts out an insight no one else can spot, their emphatic tone is parrhesiastic one could say.
Lastly, I've heard some Brownstone Fellows refer to our current time as "The Cartesian Crisis" or an epistemological mess where no one can be certain of what they think they know. But the ancients had a very different understanding of knowledge because it wasn't based in any theory of mind, rather the "proof in the pudding" was made by courage and principled speech. It's hard to wrap our modern heads around it, especially with so many sophists and brazen provocateurs these days. I suspect Sophocles and Shakespeare understood the bygone paradigm they were referencing in their plays however.
Thanks again for your essay, and I look forward to future articles of yours here on the Brownstone España Substack (although I'm waiting for someone to explain to me what the connection between Brownstone Institute and Brownstone España is—someday I'll find out).
Muy, pero que muy interesante tu reflexión. Desconocía el término "hombre sigma". No creo que a una empresa le interese tener una persona sigma ni viceversa
Por lo demás, creo que hay un error de corrección en la conocida sentencia "primi inter pares". Diría que lo correcto es "primus inter pares"
Primus inter pares significa, efectivamente, «primero entre iguales». En este caso, como no me refería a un solo individuo, sino a varios -primeros de sus respectivos grupos-, opté por pluralizar la expresión: primi inter pares. Para ello, pasé el adjetivo a nominativo plural (primi).
Ahora bien, entiendo la observación, porque lo habitual es citar la locución en su forma canónica, primus inter pares, incluso cuando se emplea de manera más o menos genérica. En ese sentido, tu comentario es perfectamente razonable y quizá, por razones de uso, hubiera sido preferible mantener la forma tradicional, redactando la frase de otra manera... Lo tendré en cuenta en futuras ocasiones.
Querida Monica
Si tu lo dices en tu condición de filóloga quién soy yo para discutirlo
Por lo que respecta a tus afirmaciones "Un pastor sin rebaño no es un pastor. Un alfa sin manada no es un alfa." y entendiendo lo que quieres decir, me permitirás una matización. Tanto el pastor como el alfa lo son independientemente de si tienen rebaño o manada respectivamente. La diferencia es que no podrán ejercer o ejecutar sus capacidades ¿no te parece?
Por lo que respecta al verso de Iriarte que tampoco conocía, a qué se refiere exactamente con la expresión "Si el sabio no aprueba". Qué es lo que el sabio ha de aprobar
Muchas gracias, Jorge, por tus comentarios.
En cuanto a la primera observación, creo que entraríamos en una cuestión casi filosófica, un poco en la línea del viejo debate sobre si un árbol que cae en un bosque donde no hay nadie para escucharlo produce o no produce ruido (aunque, en realidad, aquí la cuestión sea algo distinta: no tanto si un fenómeno existe sin observador, cuanto si una propiedad relacional puede existir al margen de la relación que la constituye). Mi afirmación era deliberadamente metafórica. Es cierto que alguien puede conservar las cualidades propias de un pastor o de un alfa aunque, circunstancialmente, no tenga rebaño o manada. Pero lo que pretendía señalar es que tanto el pastor como el alfa son figuras cuya identidad se define por una relación: sin rebaño no hay pastoreo; sin manada no hay liderazgo. Puede existir la capacidad, pero, si no se ejerce, permanece como potencialidad y no como acto.
Respecto al verso de Iriarte, la idea es que solo quien posee un conocimiento profundo en un campo está realmente en condiciones de valorar una aportación novedosa. Un “necio” o un profano puede aplaudirla o rechazarla acríticamente, pero difícilmente puede juzgar su verdadero alcance, porque carece de los conocimientos necesarios para hacerlo. En otras palabras, no tiene la formación necesaria para distinguir una teoría verdaderamente innovadora de una banalidad revestida de originalidad. Por eso su aplauso, por sí solo, carece de valor.
El sabio, en cambio, gracias a su experiencia y a su conocimiento del campo, dispone de criterios para reconocer cuándo una idea es, al mismo tiempo, sólida y rompedora. Ser rompedor es relativamente fácil; serlo sin sacrificar el rigor es lo verdaderamente excepcional. Ahora bien, ahí es donde Cajal introduce el matiz y revela, al hacerlo, un conocimiento muy fino de la naturaleza humana. Quien ha construido su prestigio dentro de un determinado paradigma puede sentirse inclinado –consciente o inconscientemente– a resistirse a aquello que lo cuestiona. El juicio del sabio es el más valioso, pero no por ello deja de estar expuesto a las inercias, los intereses o, muy a menudo, las envidias.
Querida Mónica.
Por lo que respecta al sabio, la pregunta se antoja obvia: Quién realmente sabe y qué es saber. Desgraciadamente, el mundo está lleno de necios que tienen mucho más poder del que creemos ya que son quienes dan el poder, pero no a sabios, sino a otros necios que son los que detentan el poder
Me ha gustado mucho, Mónica.
En el libro "The Listening Society", que recoge la propuesta de un grupo reducido de intelectuales que se hacen llamar Metamodernistas, se habla de la triada Game Acceptance - Game Denial - Game Changer para referirse a tres maneras de relacionarse con la realidad.
El Game Changer, aquel que ve el juego y no lo niega enteramente ni tampoco lo acepta, encuentra la tensión dinámica para expandir los imaginarios y cambiar las normas sin perder la fuerza de gravedad.
Esta posición me recuerda mucho al comportamiento que describes: que la excentricidad del hombre sigma tenga la suficiente tracción como para captar la atención de un grupo de personas.
Ya me dices cómo lo ves y gracias por el artículo!
Muchas gracias, Adrián. Me parece muy sugerente esa tríada (Game Acceptance – Game Denial – Game Changer). No la conocía y creo que ofrece un marco muy interesante para pensar distintas formas de situarse frente a las reglas del juego social.
En cuanto al hombre sigma, creo que no encajaría del todo en ninguna de esas tres categorías. El sigma no niega que el juego exista, pero tampoco lo acepta como el principio que deba organizar su vida, ni siente necesariamente el impulso de cambiar sus reglas. Puede llegar a influir sobre otras personas, expandir imaginarios o modificar algunas normas. Pero, cuando eso sucede, esa influencia no responde a un propósito deliberado, sino que aparece como una consecuencia sobrevenida de su forma de estar en el mundo. En ese sentido, el hombre sigma no aspira a ganar la partida ni a cambiar las reglas, sino a no permitir que el juego determine quién es.
You should have this conversation with your Brownstone Institute fellow Bret Weinstein, who is in his own words a "professor in exile" but I'm sure he'd love to talk about it on his podcast. It would also be very interesting to hear a Brownstone España fellow and a Brownstone Institute fellow discuss shared interests such as this topic of academic excellence and leadership.
Thank you, Jason. That's a very kind suggestion. I appreciate it.
Excellent piece, and strangely coincidental as I was talking about many of these points with my family last night!
I agree with your thesis: "However, leadership and intellectual excellence are not equivalent. The highest intellectual competence may, in fact, be conceptually at odds with leadership." This is especially frustrating in a university context where one would hope intellectual excellence was rewarded above all else – however in a corporate context, intellectual excellence is a liability and avoided (and punished) by those who want to become "thought leaders".
A few years ago I was thinking about this very topic and wrote a short story in which some young boys organize into four types: alphas, betas, gammas, and omegas. As the story exhibits, they are categorized by a two-by-two matrix, in which one axis is low-to-high intelligibility, and the other axis is low-to-high competence. So to spell out all four types:
• Alpha is high-intelligibility and high-competence.
• Beta is high-intelligibility and low-competence.
• Gamma is low-intelligibility and low-competence.
• Omega is low-intelligibility and high-competence.
A historical example of how the alpha often likes to keep an omega within arm's reach (as it is the omega who has original ideas) is King Henry VIII (the alpha) and Sir Thomas More (the omega). Any number of betas are vying for power behind the king, while gamma grunts fill the ranks, but it's the aloof omega who holds court with the king, and sadly gets on the wrong side of power by holding to principles. Another example (of losing one's head by holding to principles) is of course John the Baptist (omega) which is discussed by Girard in his book The Scapegoat.
And that's an interesting characterization of a "sigma" – a term I wasn't aware of. Doing a quick search, the internet suggests that a sigma is a sort of "lone winner" whereas an omega is more of a "lone loser". Two sides of the same coin? Same person perhaps?
Regarding academia, the whole point of tenure was to protect the original thinker from the cult of leadership. That is no longer the case, as one only achieves tenure nowadays by way of a popularity contest and feats of totemic conformity. As others have pointed out, our institutions now punish high-agency individuals, but reward compliance (and goes without saying in corporate culture).
My grandmother Doris would always say, "Be your own preson." But then again she lived on a mountain by herself, and I can't really recommend that severity of hermitage.
Thank you very much, Jason.
I found your two-by-two matrix of intelligibility and competence particularly interesting. In fact, I think it offers a much richer framework than the popular alpha-beta-omega-sigma taxonomy that circulates on the internet, because it focuses on underlying variables rather than simply assigning labels. I also enjoyed your historical examples of Henry VIII and Thomas More, and of John the Baptist. They illustrate very well the tension between intellectual independence and power.
Your comparison between the sigma and the omega also made me stop and think. I can certainly see the family resemblance, and they certainly overlap in some respects, but I would not identify them completely. As you describe him, the omega is still defined by his place within the hierarchy, even if that place is marginal. The sigma, at least as I understand the term, is characterized less by where he stands in the hierarchy than by his refusal to let the hierarchy become the principle that organizes his life. He neither seeks leadership nor defines himself in opposition to it. If he ends up influencing other people, that influence is usually a consequence of the way he lives rather than something he consciously pursues.
I also share your concern about academia. Universities have never been immune to power dynamics. Yet in recent years there seems to have been a clear shift. Visibility, management and leadership increasingly outweigh intellectual achievement itself, while the slow, solitary work from which original ideas often emerge receives less and less recognition. It is a curious paradox.
And I loved your grandmother's advice: "Be your own person." It seems to me that it captures, in just four words, something essential about the sigma.
Thank you again for such a thoughtful contribution, Jason..
Yes! The tension between intellectual independence and power is definitely a recurring theme in the sigma/omega story it seems – and central to the Brownstone ethos, if I dare say so from the outside reading in. But so many examples come to mind from history and literature: Antigone is a perfect example, also Emilia from Othello (Iago's wife is an unambiguous omega character – a cat around corners who ends up being the philosophical heroine of the tragedy in many ways).
And this brings something else to mind – while everyone hates Foucault (and they're not wrong for doing so) some of his late-career lectures were very much on this topic. Strangely out of print despite being so good, "Fearless Speech" explores this concept of the "parrhesiastes" (παρρησιαστής) which is someone who is emboldened by the truth to speak frankly and thus unafraid of political power's influence (e.g. Antigone and Creon).
Nab a copy if you can find one: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781584350118/fearless-speech/
So I wonder if – at best – what characterizes a sigma/omega individual is this "parrhesia" quality. The word appears in the New Testament some-31-times, such as in Acts 4:13 when the authorities describe the lowly fishermen Peter and John speaking with parrhesia (because who are they to be so bold, if not for truth's sake?) Those instances when a perceptive child blurts out an insight no one else can spot, their emphatic tone is parrhesiastic one could say.
Lastly, I've heard some Brownstone Fellows refer to our current time as "The Cartesian Crisis" or an epistemological mess where no one can be certain of what they think they know. But the ancients had a very different understanding of knowledge because it wasn't based in any theory of mind, rather the "proof in the pudding" was made by courage and principled speech. It's hard to wrap our modern heads around it, especially with so many sophists and brazen provocateurs these days. I suspect Sophocles and Shakespeare understood the bygone paradigm they were referencing in their plays however.
Thanks again for your essay, and I look forward to future articles of yours here on the Brownstone España Substack (although I'm waiting for someone to explain to me what the connection between Brownstone Institute and Brownstone España is—someday I'll find out).
Querida Mónica
Muy, pero que muy interesante tu reflexión. Desconocía el término "hombre sigma". No creo que a una empresa le interese tener una persona sigma ni viceversa
Por lo demás, creo que hay un error de corrección en la conocida sentencia "primi inter pares". Diría que lo correcto es "primus inter pares"
Buenos días, Jorge:
Muchas gracias por tus palabras.
Primus inter pares significa, efectivamente, «primero entre iguales». En este caso, como no me refería a un solo individuo, sino a varios -primeros de sus respectivos grupos-, opté por pluralizar la expresión: primi inter pares. Para ello, pasé el adjetivo a nominativo plural (primi).
Ahora bien, entiendo la observación, porque lo habitual es citar la locución en su forma canónica, primus inter pares, incluso cuando se emplea de manera más o menos genérica. En ese sentido, tu comentario es perfectamente razonable y quizá, por razones de uso, hubiera sido preferible mantener la forma tradicional, redactando la frase de otra manera... Lo tendré en cuenta en futuras ocasiones.
Muchas gracias y saludos,
Me ha encantado este artículo. ¡Muchas gracias!
Gracias a ti por leer.