How to tell a status struggle from ordinary competition: it's a death-denial. Becker reads sibling rivalry not as childish selfishness but as 'man's tragic destiny: he must desperately justify himself as an object of primary value in the universe; he must stand out, be a hero.' When two people fight bitterly over who's first, they aren't fighting over the candy — each is trying to prove they're an object of primary value, the symbolic buffer against mortality. Look for this need underneath every zero-sum status conflict.

— In our words · Source: The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker)