passages-single-most-useful-long-price-holds

# The single most useful thing this book will do for... > The single most useful thing this book will do for the reader is replace the word _madness_ with the word _price_. The person who terrorized you was not malfunctioning. The friend who sold you out, the parent who chose the other child, the partner whose affection became surveillance, the boss who humiliated you in the meeting, the family that closed ranks and left you outside, the group that discovered your weakness and used it, were each running ordinary primate programs at the exact moment those programs became cheap. **Behavior appears where its price falls.** The coalition attacks when it is eight to one. The predator chooses the isolated. The bully chooses the unprotected. The betrayer defects the day defection pays more than loyalty. The mother's love is conditional on helpers, partner, rank and prospects, and so, if you look closely enough, is everyone else's. Civilization is a price list laid over an appetite; prisons, police, courts, reputation, marriage law, inheritance law and the entire planetary apparatus of surveillance are a tariff schedule imposed on drives that have not changed in two million years, and the only reason your neighbor has not done to you what the chimpanzee does to his is that someone raised the cost. {{What civilized people call madness is usually a behavior whose price they failed to see, performed by an animal that saw it perfectly.}} {{Normal is not gentle. Normal is a killer at rest, and the rest lasts exactly as long as the price holds.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The single most useful thing this book will do for the reader is replace the word madness with the word price. The person who terrorized you was not malfunctioning. The friend who sold you out, the parent who chose the other child, the partner whose affection became surveillance, the boss who humiliated you in the meeting, the family that closed ranks and left you outside, the group that discovered your weakness and used it, were each running ordinary primate programs at the exact moment those programs became cheap. Behavior appears where its price falls. The coalition attacks when it is eight to one. The predator chooses the isolated. The bully chooses the unprotected. The betrayer defects the day defection pays more than loyalty. The mother's love is conditional on helpers, partner, rank and prospects, and so, if you look closely enough, is everyone else's. Civilization is a price list laid over an appetite; prisons, police, courts, reputation, marriage law, inheritance law and the entire planetary apparatus of surveillance are a tariff schedule imposed on drives that have not changed in two million years, and the only reason your neighbor has not done to you what the chimpanzee does to his is that someone raised the cost. What civilized people call madness is usually a behavior whose price they failed to see, performed by an animal that saw it perfectly. Normal is not gentle. Normal is a killer at rest, and the rest lasts exactly as long as the price holds.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-single-most-useful-long-price-holds ```