One sentence: Metis is the belief, the ritual, and the world view, and they are way less separable than you think.
Explores the recent history of gri-gri, witch doctor magic used in Africa to make people invulnerable to bullets to fight against local warlords (it also can involve some nasty sacrifice and cannibalism rituals). Lou emphasizes the point that it’s not enough to go “ah, gri-gri is a useful lie that helps motivates everyone to fight as a unified force, and fighting as a unified force is what actually has a huge impact on fighting of warlords...”
The State’s response is likely going to be “Ahhh, so gri-gri doesn’t do anything, let’s ban it and just tell people to fight in groups”. This will fail, because this has no theory of individual adoption (i.e, the only reason people fought as one was because they literally thought they were invulnerable).
This is all to hammer in the point that for any given piece of illegible metis, it’s very hard to find a actual working replacement, and Very hard (possibly beyond the states pay grade) to find a legible replacement.
#3 Use and Abuse of Witchdoctors
One sentence: Metis is the belief, the ritual, and the world view, and they are way less separable than you think.
Explores the recent history of gri-gri, witch doctor magic used in Africa to make people invulnerable to bullets to fight against local warlords (it also can involve some nasty sacrifice and cannibalism rituals). Lou emphasizes the point that it’s not enough to go “ah, gri-gri is a useful lie that helps motivates everyone to fight as a unified force, and fighting as a unified force is what actually has a huge impact on fighting of warlords...”
The State’s response is likely going to be “Ahhh, so gri-gri doesn’t do anything, let’s ban it and just tell people to fight in groups”. This will fail, because this has no theory of individual adoption (i.e, the only reason people fought as one was because they literally thought they were invulnerable).
This is all to hammer in the point that for any given piece of illegible metis, it’s very hard to find a actual working replacement, and Very hard (possibly beyond the states pay grade) to find a legible replacement.