Friendship

I was reading one of my friend's blog, who is senior to me, a good writer, versatile personality, an engineer, Administrative officer, CEO; i.e. a broad exposure in his life.Here are few lines from his blog.
"Friendships, if they are honest, are not a zero sum game; in relations people win or lose in togetherness. Sometimes they have the scope to blame external factors for barriers; at times it is the false pride, lack of self belief or playing extra safe."

I must appreciate this, a complete definition of relationship. Taking a chance to elaborate this. Hope each one of us agrees that 'win or lose in togetherness'. An important aspect of relationship - 'togetherness', this requires absence of ego, self believe and not getting effected by external factors. but why people play extra safe? may be they donot want to lose if they see a chance of losing, its like share market buy it when it is up, sale it as it starts going down, Or they have a high survival instinct. A base meaning of survival instinct is: The instinct for survival, which translates into fear of death; or one cannot live. it can be translated further into many things, without those someone cannot survive, like food, power, position, social recognition, some followers etc.
This is true, if we see mankind as a species. If we go back to history we can see many such a examples like, fight between different races, Spanish empire, Nazi concentration camps, these days terrorism etc. There are also few examples of togetherness; Gandhi's movement, Nelson mondela, State of Israel ; for purpose of peace and survival of peace and humanity along with freedom and creativity, art and culture.
You may be wondering, how above historical examples is related with this topic 'friendship' or survival instinct. I would just say its all about a desire of an individual or a group. When the desire or ambition come on priority to the human values.
Lets take some example, my mom is hospitalized, money is required and i can get the money by disposing my car, but what if i cannot live without it? then i 'll feel like loosing due to togetherness, there can be many more thing (like 'car'), without those one cannot live. This survival instinct make people to play 'Extra Safe' however every individual has it at different level.
The feeling of togetherness survives unconditionally only when people live for human values ( My senior wrote as 'If they are honest', in his blog ), and keep them at highest priority over personal priorities or ambitions.