I was speaking of human nature, and it was not very charitable of you to characterize my point a locker room mentality. But yes, there may well be a gender bias in my question, although I think a lot of capable, competent women who have taken pride and self-worth from managing a home, a family, a business, etc, can also understand my point.
It is a fact that men thrive on adversity. Give a man a problem and he immediately begins to work out a solution. That is our nature. I’ve heard women complain that men, as a gender, are not good listeners because we think that women are telling us their problems because they want us to solve them. We are happiest when we are overcoming obstacles and using our intellect to solve problems and master our environment. There is something in our psyche that makes us feel useful and happy when we are fixing things. Men will break things so they can fix them. Men will take something that works perfectly well and try to improve it. We like to manage things and to put things in order. We like to supercharge things. We like to add chrome and fuel injectors and megs of memory to things. We thrive on adventure, exploration, discovery, risk taking. Take away the problems, remove the risk, answer all the questions, solve all the puzzles, and the typical man will feel pretty bored and useless. Put us in an environment where everything already is maximized and working perfectly to it’s fullest potential, where we have no obstacles to overcome, no problems to fix, where nothing ever malfunctions, and we are going to be pretty friggin miserable on the whole.
Also, my point (which you missed completely) was that risk of failure is what makes success so sweet. If everyone can do it, if it is easy and a “no-brainer”, if mediocre performers can achieve the same success as outstanding performers then there is very little risk but also the rewards are so easily gotten that they are devalued. The greater the risk the greater the reward. Take away the risk of failure and you also remove the exuberance and celebratory joy that comes from success. Take away the category of the top 1% that achieve outstanding results, and level the playing field by rewarding everyone with the same Utopian bliss, then the top one-percenter’s get down right disgusted and demotivated. It is the high risk of failure and the ability to overcome your fear of failure, and trust your ability to make a difference, to persevere when the common man quits, to do what others are unwilling and incapable of doing, that is what makes success so incredibly and enticingly wonderful to men (and women) of superior ability.
Basically, if you put mankind in a cushioned environment where there is no want unsatisfied, no disease uncured, no need unmet, no innovation not already achieved, no knowledge not already discovered, then you have taken away the very thing that has brought out the best and the finest in mankind.
Again, somebody has to explain to me the appeal of heaven because it has never appealed to me all that much. It always sounds like a wonderful place to visit, maybe mellow out for a few days, but not somewhere that men would choose to spend enternity. What the heck would we do with ourselves anyway??