Competion, is it human nature? Or something animalistic?

For ages, people of the human race have always desired to be the best of the best. The race to see who gets the better food, the better job, better living conditions, and almost anything under the sun. For many, every single thing that they have always been doing is for self-purposes only. They want to emerge victorious in the daily struggle for dominance, and not to mention seeing the loser drown in tears of disappointment.

Why is this so? Why do people have this strong urge inside them to win every competition, even though its not as if its a life and death situation? You could say that its a sort of survival mechanism inside each and every one of us, something that's very primitive, and that its has always been inside of us ever since the first caveman killed his comrade just to pry a bigger piece of meat to eat from his cold lifeless hands inside a dark cave. Sounds very brutal, isn't it?

Then, it is good to note the competition is not always necessarily a bad thing. In fact, competition has in many ways led to the creation of many fusion of cultures as well as the subsequent flourishing of them. In an unforgiving environment such as this world, people of different cultures who try to impose their ways of living on others will often find themselves in situations where acceptance for it is very hard to come by. Instead, they will be clashing with the existing culture and its people who prefer to keep things as they were and to not accept a 'foreign' way of life.

However, there are bound to be some that do not see eye to eye with them, and instead would like to see some fresh changes being brought into their way of living. Therefore, a competition between the acceptance for these two separate cultures occur, and the winner is the one with the most 'popular vote', so to speak, while the loser fades into the annals of history. The winning culture then forms the general backdrop for society in which they follow.

For example, the head-hunting culture in some of the tribes of the indigenous people of the world, this practice is accepted by their society and they are even encouraged to do it. However when colonist from a foreign land show up and impose their cultures onto these people, the head-hunting gradually stopped. In the present society, these same people who once practice head-hunting now oppose this practice vehemently. This clearly shows that the dominant culture will be the one that will survive competition in the end. Nevertheless, tons of other cultures have also gained a unique identity through being successful in competition and until today remains as the very fabric that holds society together.