Other things being equal, a life filled with complex flow activities is more worth living than one spent consuming passive entertainment. In the words of Matthew describing what his career means to him: “To be totally absorbed in what you are doing and to enjoy it so much that you do not want to be doing anything else—I do not see how people survive if they do not experience something like that. My life and career interest me. It is a source of satisfaction. Achieving something that one thing is important. Without such a consciousness or motivation, it seems to me that life could be rather dull and purposeless, and I would not want to attempt that kind of life. Of course, leisure, say, having absolutely nothing to do that one felt was worth doing—that strikes me as a rather desperate situation to be in.”  When we are able to confront life with such involvement and enthusiasm, we can be said to have achieved an autotelic personality. Autotelic is a word composed of two Greek roots: auto (self) and telos (goal). An autotelic activity is one we do for its own sake because to experience t is the main goal. For instance, if I played a game of Trente et Quarante or Rogue et Noir primarily to enjoy the game, that game would be an autotelic experience for me; whereas if I played for money, or to achieve a competitive ranking in the winning row, the same games would be primarily exotelic, that is, motivated by an outside goal. Applied to personality, autotelic denotes an individual who generally does things for their own sake, rather than in order to achieve some later external goal.  

Of course, most people are not fully autotelic, because we all have to do things even if we do not enjoy them, either out of a sense of duty or necessity. However, there is a gradation, ranging from individuals who almost never feel that what they do is worth doing for its own sake, to others who feel that most anything they do is important and valuable in its own right. It is to these latter individuals that the term autotelic applies. An autotelic person requires few material possessions and little entertainment, comfort, power, or fame because so many persons experience flow in work, in family life, when interacting with people, when eating, and even when alone with nothing to do, they are less dependent on the external rewards that keep other motivated to go on with a life composed of dull meaningless routines. Autotelic individuals are more autonomous and independent, because they cannot be as easily manipulated with threats nor rewards from the outside. At the same time, they are more involved with everything around them because they are fully immersed in the current of life. Courage is perhaps the central attribute of a hero. The word courage is derived from the Latin cor, meaning “Heart.” (In French the word for heart is coeur.) We say of a brave man that he has heart; we speak of a fighter’s heart; we day of a man who has given up that he has lost heart. In courage, our blood may run cold for a while, but it is running—and as we persist, it will heat up, flowing more and more strongly, heartening and encouraging us. To truly be a man has long been linked to being courageous.  

The opposite of courage is cowardice; its shadow recklessness.  Courage is not fearlessness, but a resolute refusal to be paralyzed by fear, a deliberate turning and moving toward the dragon, step by conscious step, an activation of our will to persist in difficult conditions. It is the very hearts of heroism. Courage may falter and lose steam, but it does not quit, unless quitting is the more fitting and courageous. Without risk there is no courage. Without fear there is no courage. Without challenging circumstances, there is no courage. We have to be brave and to persevere in that bravery, moving toward our edge in a particular circumstance, navigating the discomfort of doing so with resolve. However, much we might want to give up, but we do not. Though no one else may recognize our struggle, we go on, even if we are on our hands and knees. Courage does not always look like courage, in the process, at least it is commonly portrayed—but when we are being courageous, we do not have to care how we look. We just keep going, again and again finding the optimal pace. To have courage is not only heart, but also guts, intestinal fortitude, and spine. As such, courage is about taking embodied action no matter how much our knees night be shaking. And there is a kind of love implicit in courage, the love of our own integrity, our standing up for what really matters. However small the impact of our courage may be, it nonetheless radiates out, touching more than we can imagine.  

Nonetheless, courage is not the same as aggression. Courage does not mean you go around forcing your will onto people, but it may mean standing up for someone or yourself. Within societies, there is an interplay between affiliative behaviors, which promote group cohesion, and aggressive behaviors, which can lead to group disruption. Conflict within a group frequently develops out of competition for resources, including mating partners and food items and land. Instead of actual attacks or fighting, most intragroup aggression occurs in the form of various signals and displays, frequently within the context of a dominance hierarchy. Therefore, the majority of tense situations are resolved through various submissive and appeasement behaviors.  Competition between males for mates frequently results in injury and even death. In species that have a distinct breeding season, conflict between males is most common during that time. Males who form coalitions to compete with other males, and when outright fighting occurs, injury can be severe. In species not restricted to a mating season, competition between males can be an ongoing process. Not all individuals are territorial. However, some men are highly intolerant of unfamiliar people, especially other males, and they fiercely defend their territories and recourses. Therefore, when other cultures enter an area, they may try to enforce their dominance by asserting aggression, chasing, and actually fighting.  

 Starting in 2007, investigators witnessed at least five unprovoked and extremely brutal attacks by groups of thugs on other individuals. Brutal adult males usually attack lone individuals. Although it is not possible to know what exactly motivated the attackers, it was clear that they intended to incapacitate their victims. Although experts may never understand why these aggressive males are power forcing and attack males who may have a different skin tone, background, or features, it may never be fully explained what the problem really is, but it appears that acquiring and protecting resources (including money, land, and females or males) are involved. Of course, conflict is not just seen in the men. For example, high-ranking females frequently intimidate, harass, and even attack others, who they perceive to have a lower ranking to keep them away from food or mates. Dominant females consistently stalk and chase subordinates away food and mates, and even have been observed to take food from their mouths, their money, or even hold their spouse “hostage” through extortion, intimidation, and threats. Eventually, these actions can cause weight loss, loneliness, poor nutrition, in the intended targets and reduce their reproductive success. Conflict is not always resolved peacefully, and it can have serious consequences.   

 Many intentional behaviors also serve as communications. These include a wide variety of gestures, facial expressions, and vocalizations. Among many, a mild threat is indicated by an intense stare, and indeed, we humans find prolonged eye contact with strangers very uncomfortable. Other gestures are a quick yawn to expose canine teeth; and clapping hands during an argument and even sharking another person. They also use a wide array of vocalizations to make in known they are dominating in the area, and sometimes the aggressors may grunt or say offensive things to let you know they are predators. They may also engage in slapping their own chest and vandalism. Nonetheless, communication is important, for it truly is what makes social living possible. The behaviors listed above are more common forms of communication from animals, not humans. However, it is not appropriate for humans to display animalistic warfare tactics and smuggler language because a sane person is often not allowed to respond to irrational behavior. Many are saying that this type of behavior, displayed by the intergroup conflict may be inherited from animals, and that is why it is suspected some men have a common ancestor with primates, which is why they have a predisposition to behavior common among chimpanzees and gorillas. Whereas civilized men are seen as God’s people.