Civilized humans are the only animals who think of the food chain, or of total numbers, as a contest to win. And by evaluating it in the present, rather than in the future, we are actually losing, by destroying the planet which gives us life.
Imagine ten shipwreck survivors on a fragile but stable raft in the ocean. They have enough food and water to have a great chance of rescue, but one guy starts obsessing about survival and trying to win for himself in the present instead of cooperating to win for everyone in the future, consuming as much food and water as he can, playing mind games to turn people against each other, resulting in fights which damage the raft. If he causes the raft to fall apart or the fresh water to spill into the sea, he might seem like the most successful survivor to himself for a short time, but in the end he’s endangering everyone’s survival.
Similarly, we have a huge population of humans now… but it’s way too many for our planet’s resources, especially while we’re creating the desire for more and more consumption for everyone. Counting the population and even consumption levels as success is the problem – it leads to us continuing to overpopulate and overconsume, making us a disastrous threat to the planet and ourselves, and blinding us from seeing what we can do to try to turn things around.