I didn't say "being extremely competitive and taking personal pride in being the best", I said "having to be the best". If you ignore all that, including "cheating to overpower people better than you", of course it makes no sense, but that's of your own making.

If you want me to elaborate on something that you asked, and nothing something I made up, then ask me about something I said, not something you made up.

As I see it, "having" to be the best would be synonymous with being extremely competitive and placing a large amount personal pride in that. It's why I was asking why you felt that way. You separated it from cheating to overpower people, as if strong desire to be the best is a bad thing.

Would the phrasing "having to be 'the best' at all costs" clear it up? I didn't separate it from cheating, I meant that as an example.

It's perfectly fine to be competitive, but this is in the context of someone who said they don't WANT competition, but a monopoly, and that this would somehow make them the "winner". Being just very competitive and taking personal pride in achievements is not what we're talking about.

If everybody played fair and the playing field was level, then winning would mean you're the best. But many people got confused, ignore the uneven playing field, cheat "because everybody does it", and then think winning says anything about them other than that they're needy. They can't "win" that way, and then brag about it, without being "losers" in another way.

When I said I wonder what their parents were like I wasn't being snarky, I meant whether their self-esteem is based on how others estimate their achievements. E.g. were they loved unconditionally, or were they blackmailed and rewarded with pseudo-love?

It seems obvious to me that many people were denied the means to build an inner foundation for themselves, and went from needing to be a certain way to be "loved" by their parents, to needing to be a certain way to be accepted by their peers, to do a certain thing to be considered successful, and so on. Yet a person could own the world without necessarily owning themselves, and not even owning the world can make up for not owning oneself. So many are floating over an abyss they have inside, and the moment they stop moving, consuming and/or subduing, they plummet.

More fortunate people simply have a bedrock of self-esteem, and then ambitions on top of that. They can compete without having to annihilate, they can give credit where it's due, and they build things because they can, not just because their mental floor is lava.