Competition and human nature...

Anthropologists have recently begun to question the notion that competitiveness is inherent in human nature. The tribes that did best were those that were able to better cooperate with each other. And neuro-scientists have discovered recently that we are actually "hard-wired" (I know, I don't like that phrase either!) to get greater jolts of pleasure chemicals (dopamine, I think) in our brain when we cooperate. That would strongly suggest that the response developed in early hominids as an evolutionary advantage.