“Animals kill to eat. Humans sometimes destroy each other to succeed. The jungle is not a place, it’s a behavior.” — Edouard
In the forest, survival is honest.
A lion chases because it is hungry. A wolf defends because it must protect its pack. Conflict in the wild is direct, visible, and purposeful. No animal pretends to be your ally while quietly plotting your fall. No deer smiles while setting a trap for another deer’s reputation.
But step into modern society: an office, a boardroom, a political campaign, even a social circle, and you may notice something unsettling: the hunt never ended. It simply learned how to wear perfume, speak politely, and send emails.
The Competition That Creates Enemies
Many of the rivalries that shape our lives are not born from real threats.
Two colleagues join the same team. Neither has harmed the other. Yet within weeks, comparison creeps in:
- Who speaks more in meetings?
- Who gets recognized by leadership?
- Who seems closer to the manager?
- Who might be promoted first?
From nothing; literally nothing, jealousy begins to grow. Not because someone attacked us, but because someone else’s success quietly confronts our own self-doubt.
And self-doubt has a dangerous habit: it looks for someone to blame.
Instead of confronting our insecurity, we redirect it outward. The harmless colleague becomes “too ambitious.” The high-performing teammate becomes “arrogant.” The quiet one becomes “untrustworthy.” We start building emotional cases against people who never wronged us, and before long, we’ve created an enemy out of a stranger.
No claws. No teeth. Just perception, whispered opinions, and subtle exclusion.
The Workplace Hunt
Nowhere is this more visible than at work.
In many organizations, performance is measured individually but achieved collectively. That tension creates fertile ground for disguised aggression:
- A team member shifts blame for a missed deadline to protect their image.
- Someone withholds critical information to ensure they appear more competent later.
- Credit for shared work is carefully edited before being presented upward.
- A mistake is allowed to escalate quietly — until it becomes useful leverage.
Individually, these acts may seem small. Strategically, they are survival moves. But collectively, they create a system where success is pursued not only by doing better — but by ensuring someone else appears worse.
And this is where human behavior can become more destructive than anything in the forest.
A predator in the wild does not weaken another animal’s reputation before the hunt. It does not manipulate the herd’s perception. It does not pretend to collaborate while quietly engineering failure.
Humans do.
Not always out of cruelty — often out of fear. Fear of losing status. Fear of exposure. Fear of being seen as replaceable. Hidden interests begin to outweigh shared goals, and colleagues become obstacles to navigate rather than partners to trust.
When Protection Turns Into Harm
Sometimes, the push behind these behaviors feels strange even to the person engaging in them.
Why did I interrupt them in that meeting?
Why did I highlight their mistake publicly?
Why did I feel relieved when their project failed?
These reactions often come from a silent calculation: If they fall, I rise.
It is a primitive instinct dressed in professional logic. A modern version of securing territory — except now the territory is recognition, opportunity, or influence.
In trying to protect our own standing, we may drag others into trouble not because they deserve it, but because their success threatens the fragile story we tell ourselves about our worth.
Beyond “Human Nature”
It’s tempting to shrug all this off as simply human nature.
But perhaps the real difference between us and the forest is not that we are less savage — it’s that we have the awareness to choose otherwise.
Animals cannot decide not to hunt. Humans can decide not to humiliate.
Animals cannot question instinct. Humans can question insecurity.
The jungle may still live in us, but civilization was never meant to eliminate instinct — it was meant to teach us responsibility for it.
The real test of being human is not whether we compete.
It’s whether we can succeed without needing someone else to lose.
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