<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # They were not there because they did the math. A... > They were not there because they did the math. A family is a coalition of coalitions, and every member in it is continuously, unconsciously pricing every other member: what you contribute, what you cost, what rank you hold inside the group, what it would cost the group to stand between you and whoever has come for you. When the attacker outranks the family, the family appeases, because appeasement is cheap and a fight with a superior is ruinous; when the attacker is inside the family, a spouse, a favored sibling, a parent, the family sides with the higher-ranking party because coalitions preserve their strongest members first and their weakest as a courtesy; when your own rank in the household has fallen, through distance, difference, divorce, illness, poverty, honesty or simply being the one who left, the price of defending you rises above what you are worth to the ledger, and the ledger closes. Sometimes the calculation is worse than neglect. A coalition under pressure will hand over its cheapest member to buy peace, and the sibling who sided with your attacker was not confused about loyalty; he was collecting the rank you vacated. {{Families do not abandon their members by accident. They abandon the ones whose defense has become more expensive than their membership, and they call it staying out of it.}} {{The relative who sided with the person who destroyed you was not deceived. He was promoted.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out (a new book under development)]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “They were not there because they did the math. A family is a coalition of coalitions, and every member in it is continuously, unconsciously pricing every other member: what you contribute, what you cost, what rank you hold inside the group, what it would cost the group to stand between you and whoever has come for you. When the attacker outranks the family, the family appeases, because appeasement is cheap and a fight with a superior is ruinous; when the attacker is inside the family, a spouse, a favored sibling, a parent, the family sides with the higher-ranking party because coalitions preserve their strongest members first and their weakest as a courtesy; when your own rank in the household has fallen, through distance, difference, divorce, illness, poverty, honesty or simply being the one who left, the price of defending you rises above what you are worth to the ledger, and the ledger closes. Sometimes the calculation is worse than neglect. A coalition under pressure will hand over its cheapest member to buy peace, and the sibling who sided with your attacker was not confused about loyalty; he was collecting the rank you vacated. Families do not abandon their members by accident. They abandon the ones whose defense has become more expensive than their membership, and they call it staying out of it. The relative who sided with the person who destroyed you was not deceived. He was promoted.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-math-family-coalition-destroyed-deceived-promoted ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->