Human, the social animal

Why is it that we humans nowadays only seek ways to be better than the people we know rather than better ourselves from who we were in the past? By only seeking to get the upper hand over another person, we make every event and it's success subjective or relative. Let us take the example of a monkey, this monkey let us say has a banana. Now imagine another monkey who has two bananas, so our first monkey as we had stated in the beginning would try to get THREE bananas so as to be better than the second monkey rather than get two to better itself. This could be termed as peer pressure but then again it's not always our peers that we try to compete with. It is with the society as a whole that we try and compete with. Why would this be so? Well my explanation would come from the common phrase "Humans are the social animals". We want something to converse and socialize about, thus naturally our achievements become the" brag" factor through which a conversation finds life. Humans would always want to voice their thoughts and emotions and when this feeling takes hold in a group conversation where secrets aren't often exchanged we look to our achievements and success we have attained in the recent past. One would notice that often, the most successful individual in a society gets to voice his/her opinion out loud. This is also related to the attention seeking tendencies we often have. To be recognized, noticed and attain a name in society is what almost every individual wants to achieve. "To make a difference" is a phrase I'm sure we have all heard before. By making a difference we get attention and recognition and become so to say the "alpha male" in the society or more practically in the group/circle of friends we have. Thus we look to succeed over others and not just better ourselves from who we were in the past.