Edward Wilson's The Fitness of Human Nature

1.      When Wilson talks about kin selection he means that people are more likely to help those who are blood related such as parents, siblings, children, cousins and others because it will increase the odds of gene transmission to future generations.  People feel altruistic towards members of their family because they want to ensure the continuation of shared genes.  People are more likely to help the relatives that are the most closely related to them. 

2.      Wilson says that the difference in matting strategies between men and woman have to do with women having more at stake because of their limited age span in which they can reproduce and the heavy investment required of them with each child conceived.  Men on the other hand have the physical capacity to inseminate another woman almost immediately.  Wilsons says that these matting strategies have led to men being assertive and ruttish, while woman are to be coy and selective.  Men are predicted to stress exclusive sexual access and guarantees of paternity, while women consistently emphasize commitment of resources and maternal security.   

3.      According to Wilson humans are territorial because limited resources have become a matter of life and death.  Also because people want to survive and reproduce offspring of their own gene to keep their families going.  Wilson says that territory defense usually does not evolve as a hereditary response, meaning it is not in our genes to be territorial; we more or less learn from witnessing it from our parents or other family members. 

4.      Wilson says that humans desire to make agreements because social life is a contrivance to enhance personal survival.  He says, “It is our human trait as characteristic of our species as language and abstract thought, having been constructed from both instinct and high intelligence.”  Wilson sates that we act altruistically towards people who are not closely related to us because humans have evolved and loosened this constraint and improved social organization by extending kinshiplike ties to others through long term contracts.