There is less competition in "being human"

Let us start with Nature. Being superior to one's mind, give confidence in surviving. Fear of being outdone by any one is driving force against competitors in any similar field, as one's chances will be reduced and there will be limitations on expectations. so the competition and successes may called natural instincts of all species, controlled by pain & fear. However, narcissism doesn't allow us to consider other's situation and survival. It couldn't withstand any thing or person supposedly challenging him and it is bad.

The winner's laugh is cruel as it is made on tears of losers. But it is the way of life. And we are among the best life form of nature. We have evolved for a long time to be in this position. We are animals and part of nature. Basically Food, sex and shelter is sufficient for us (animals) to survive and sustain our species. Animals in jungle don’t play any games yet we see them playful that is to enhance or sharpen their respective unique abilities which serve them the purpose of survival and sustain life as an adult.

Humans - we are really high in number considering the category of animals. Speaking generally, we don’t have much to lose (as a species). If one set of people go for exploring and colonizing exoplanets - a part of our species will still be here on Earth as well, we’ll still be multiplying.

Competition is a part of a community or colony, its nature. Watching Nat Geo/Animal planet you think animals are happy as a community, you think animals don't have any competition within their own community? Just Google dark side of nature.

Once a scientist set up an experiment with a set of rat community starting with 10 rats. The rats were placed in a hygiene and proper environment with wheels to play around. Rats multiply fast, at a very early age they can reproduce. So in a span of time, there were too much rats however the scientist observed total nos of rats (say 200) were not in a single community, for every 20–25 rats they formed a separate community with an individual leader for each community. The numbers may not be accurate But I believe you get my point here.

To “defeat competitors” - In a monkey community if the leader dies or shows weakness or a considerable population of community consider him danger, they put up a competition to death or defeat to see who takes over the community further. Generally in animals/birds/insects mostly during mating season competition happens to attract or steal the female to provide offspring.

Another way to explain happy and success is it lies in what we (humans) believe where it lies. Earlier we used barter system to obtain goods or service. However things got simple when we got coin and money system where we have assigned values for different currencies and it is subject to change by many factors (stock exchange, demand, supply etc).

We left barter system because it was confusing, if I want my clothes stitched for 3 apples and if you already have a basket of apple, I can’t get my clothes stitched. Money and currencies were invented as because we believe the value it holds. Consider religious/philosophical opinions: Take religion for example, though we accept god in different forms and worship in different forms, within the religion we have differences - Catholic/Orthodox, Shiva/Vishnu (this is the major difference I could think of right now). You can relate this to the rat experiment above when numbers go beyond a point we form separate groups though we have a common goal.

Your statement itself provides the answer - “we all human beings are unique” - that’s the point. Literally no one can satisfy everyone and that too our population numbers are increasing. There is no utopia! The people among us believe that their happiness lies when they defeat someone physically or in terms of wealth or possession of property. They believe success is defined when they destroy someone! This can’t be changed as they are unique from anyone who thinks otherwise! If you can make humans stand together on one opinion it would be for our sole survival and existence. Though I doubt all would say yes!

Today, when the pressure is so intense daily to perform, you are bound to receive motivational/guidance-based lectures from faculties. I vividly remember one such anecdote from my Physics faculty, who was quoting advice from his faculty when he was preparing for the same examination. He said - “No way are you coming on top of this competition if you consider it to be a race of 1.4 million aspirants. You need to narrow it down to a single person who is the best in your class and try to beat him/her. You will find the pressure lowered and better results.”

Moreover, since childhood, I have never been a blind follower and have tried to analyze the advice that was thrown towards me. After pondering on the above opinion, I found one point that stood out to me and one that wasn’t logically acceptable. The logically sound one was narrowing it to “one individual.” It definitely will stop overthinking and help me adjust my goals in a significantly simpler manner. But, the fact that it has to be a class-topper bugged me a lot because this advice would not work for the topper himself. There is no means for him to get better if he sticks to this approach.

Now after giving it a deep thought, I finally came to a refinement that the one person that I will aim to beat daily is the “person I was yesterday.” That’s all I need to do to ensure constant growth, and frankly, that’s all we can do as individuals. We just don’t realize it sooner. I stuck to this and slowly but surely worked on my weaknesses every day. I would be lying if I said that it was easy. I faced numerous setbacks, multiple failures but somehow gathered the courage to stand up and try one more time since I had to beat the person who was about to give up yesterday. This not only resulted in me getting into my dream college but also strengthened me as an individual. I went in a different person and came out a totally different one.

Also, coming to my take on human nature and competition. I think that as humans, we don’t ever want to defeat our competition, although we might celebrate the defeat of a competitor on multiple occasions. Human beings enrich their life experiences by being a better version of themselves, and it is impossible to do the same without comparing these two versions. This competition is what brings about a purpose to all of us in our respective domains.

The actual difference that we want to create in our respective fields is not just by doing better than others, but better than how you were doing the same thing yesterday. For instance, if we were happy with only defeating our competitors, you would feel satisfied with a win even though you know you had performed awfully. But, such is not the case if you are performing at top levels. Success in a match/competition only means that you performed better on that particular day, but the fact that you learned something new, strengthened one of your weakness, or brought any positive change in yourself is the actual “win” that we all are looking for in our day-to-day lives.

We, as humans, always want to experience this feeling of winning, implying that we strive on competition but only when it is between the present self and the past self. Since then, I have been following this approach and have tried to make marginal improvements in myself regularly, if not daily, only to see amazing results in myself. The beauty of this approach is that you are the performer and the judge at the same time. All you have to do is be 100% honest with yourself, and good things like being human will follow. Cheers!