Be The Best?

I'm usually interested in observations of human nature - observations of our minds ability to understand, our ability to process and store information and how the evolutionary theory allowed our brains to come to what it is today. Lately, the male's nature in gaming, competition and brain activity during these moments of activity has peaked my interest. I've always seen guys to be more competitive than the female. But why? What does it mean to males when they win or lose? I believe males all naturally possess the "instinct" to win, overcome an opponent of some kind, gain territory. I started a bit with this excerpt. I've read that one's testosterone level is correlated to mental depression, irritability and other things. This brings to my attention that maybe winning, overcoming opponents, and rising in some kind of social hierarchy makes a male's life more worthwhile and cheerful. Whether it's through hunting, gaming, swimming, golfing, scrabble, whatever. We should be good at something and pursue being the best or one of the best. We should find people that are close to our level and overcome them (in whatever it is we decide to do), or maybe just learn to be satisfied in all that we do, even in failure.

I see this in almost every male. They build up the "respectability" in whatever it is they are interested in (what is usually what they are better than most at). Even when it comes to academics, many of the intelligent glow in their intelligence or in some kind of mental ability (eg. highest ACT score in school). I highly doubt that if these "intelligent" people were surrounded by people surpassing even them they would glow as much. If they were thrown in a city of geniuses, there is less of feeling of being at the top of an hierarchy, thus no more glow. I've seen in others and myself the let down in growing up, realizing that there are people that are better, faster and more intelligent than you, no matter what you do. I've heard becoming wise is really us realizing how little we know; it's our ability to deal with these realizations. It can really hurt depending on how much importance one puts on being special in some area of interest.

We are all social animals, we all have some instinctive pressures to be the best or 'better'. Is it worth all the effort to be good at something knowing full well you will still be sucky (that's a current problem I'm having with starcraft)? Even if it isn't your overall life goal to be the best in gaming, I believe even the smallest of wins can be beneficial to one's wellbeing. It's all about receiving just the right amount for yourself. It's okay to believe there's respectability even in D ranked iCCup gameplay.

On the internet, watching videos on youtube and reading comment sections of gaming pages, there are all kinds of people trying to build up respectability of games they play and love, even if they aren't 100 percent serious in gaming, it still brings a certain feeling to themselves that they like, otherwise they wouldn't say anything.

I'm throwing out some ideas and will probably think of more things to say just as I publish this.