HUMAN NATURE

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HUMAN NATURE

• MATT RIDLEY

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This book is an inquiry into the nature of that
human nature. Its theme is that it is impossible
to understand human nature without understanding
how human sexuality evolved. For the central
theme of our evolution has been sexual. Relate
one aspect of the world today with sexuality.
Sex causes the differences between individuals
but ensures that those differences never diverge
far from a golden mean for the whole
species. Why is it important for the species as
a whole to approve of individualistic choices?
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• Human nature is a product of culture, but
  culture is also a product of human nature, and
  both are the products of evolution.

How does human nature shape our society?
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• Society is composed of competing individuals
  just as markets are composed of competing
  merchants the focus of economic and social
  theory is, and must be, the individual.
• What other components other than the individual
  comprise society?

Sex is merely the dealer, generating unique
hands from the same monotonous deck of genetic
cards shared by the whole species. Explain why
sex is represented as the dealer?
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• Every invention sooner or later leads to a
  counter invention. Every success contains the
  seeds of its own overthrow. Every hegemony comes
  to an end. Evolutionary history is no different.
  Progress and success are always relative.

What are some examples of inventions that have
been or are being innovated within the economy?
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• The faster you run, the more the world moves
  with you and the less you make progress. Life is
  a chess tournament in which if you win a game,
  you start the next game with the handicap of a
  missing pawn.
• Why must one run fast or else lose progress?

Every creature on earth is in a Red Queen Chess
tournament with its parasites (or hosts), its
predators (or prey), and above all, with its
mate. How do all of these components play a
significant role in our lives?
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• Men have evolved to live dangerously because
  success in competition or battle used to lead to
  more or better sexual conquests and more
  surviving children. Women who live dangerously
  merely put at risk those children they already
  have.

Does such competition among men still exist in
some parts of the world today? Why is it that
men are able to act dangerously and women are not?
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• Each sex shapes the other. Women have
  hourglass- shaped bodies because men have
  preferred them that way. Men have an aggressive
  nature because women have preferred them that way
  (or have allowed aggressive men to defeat other
  men in contests over women- it amounts to the
  same thing).
• Explain the symbolism between women and the
  hourglass shape.

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Presented ByLauren Grogan and Brittany Bradley
Discovering and describing human nature and how
it differs from the nature of other animals is as
interesting a task as any that science has faced
it is on par with the quest for the atom, gene,
and the origin of the universe.