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NB: This may not be a word-for-word transcript. How Dead Relatives Shape Your Decisions We may feel that it is a uniquely Western neurosis, especially one afflicting people who have spent too long in psychotherapy, to go on and on about one’s relatives and their contribution to one’s unhappiness – to be twenty-five or sixty-two and still turning over in one’s mind how mum or grandpa have been responsible for spoiling one’s relationships or ruined one’s life. But in case we thought this approach irritatingly modern and self-indulgent, we should keep in mind that every traditional African society has entertained comparable thoughts. From the Yoruba of West Africa to the Oromo of Ethiopia and the Hutu of Rwanda and Eastern Congo, the patterns are always the same: one’s parents or relatives die and one then has to handle their ghosts or spirits with immense care – or face grave mischief. In Yoruba culture, those whose minds have been giving them difficulties have tradit
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