<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # Strip the nouns and the thing has a shape older... > Strip the nouns and the thing has a shape older than families: it is a raid. The physical raid, the one the chimpanzees run at Ngogo, captures territory by removing defenders one at a time until the ground is undefended and can be walked onto. The social raid captures relationships by removing support from a target until the target stands alone, and the prize is the allegiance that used to stand beside them. The raider needs no fabrication, though fabrication helps; selection is usually enough. Repeat one injury, omit ten reconciliations, assign the worst motive to every ambiguous act, tell the story first, tell it often, and make neutrality progressively expensive until each relative discovers that agreeing with the narrator costs less than defending the absent. Where the raider does lie, the lie is chosen for its economics: a fabricated injury costs nothing to produce and everything to disprove from outside the circle, the accused cannot cross-examine a story told in rooms they are no longer allowed into, and the coalition that receives it has no truth detector, only a cost detector. {{Physical domination requires reaching the body. Reputational domination recruits other bodies to withdraw themselves, and it never has to touch you.}} {{The cheapest way to destroy a family member is not to fight them. It is to convince everyone else that abandoning them is virtue.}} {{A lie inside a coalition is not tested against the facts. It is tested against what it would cost each member to doubt it.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “Strip the nouns and the thing has a shape older than families: it is a raid. The physical raid, the one the chimpanzees run at Ngogo, captures territory by removing defenders one at a time until the ground is undefended and can be walked onto. The social raid captures relationships by removing support from a target until the target stands alone, and the prize is the allegiance that used to stand beside them. The raider needs no fabrication, though fabrication helps; selection is usually enough. Repeat one injury, omit ten reconciliations, assign the worst motive to every ambiguous act, tell the story first, tell it often, and make neutrality progressively expensive until each relative discovers that agreeing with the narrator costs less than defending the absent. Where the raider does lie, the lie is chosen for its economics: a fabricated injury costs nothing to produce and everything to disprove from outside the circle, the accused cannot cross-examine a story told in rooms they are no longer allowed into, and the coalition that receives it has no truth detector, only a cost detector. Physical domination requires reaching the body. Reputational domination recruits other bodies to withdraw themselves, and it never has to touch you. The cheapest way to destroy a family member is not to fight them. It is to convince everyone else that abandoning them is virtue. A lie inside a coalition is not tested against the facts. It is tested against what it would cost each member to doubt it.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-strip-nouns-thing-cost-member-doubt ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->