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On a tangent, Cargo Cults in the Pacific are a more complex phenomenon than many people assume. I remember in college I had a great Pacific studies professor a
by InfiniteRand 6y ago
On a tangent, Cargo Cults in the Pacific are a more complex phenomenon than many people assume.
I remember in college I had a great Pacific studies professor and one of the topics he touched upon was the idea of cargo cults as a form of disruptive political protest. I forget the details of his argument, but I think this article captures the gist of it - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/1959-cargo-cults-melanesia/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/1959-cargo-cults-...
I also think there was an element of trying to play Americans off of other colonial powers, although I can't find any citation for that.
Interesting to note that at least one cargo cult made the transition into an actual political party - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagriamel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagriamel
- QuercusMax 6y agoFantastic SciAm article - thanks for sharing! Really interesting, especially having been written 62 years ago!
- tantalor 6y agoPopular science and culture have made a "cargo cult" out of the term "cargo cult".
- mr_toad 6y ago> The Whites, who possessed the secret of the cargo, were intercepting it and keeping it from the hands of the islanders, to whom it was really consigned. Replace “whites” with “establishment” and “cargo” with jobs and “the apocalypse” with revolution and you have the essence of a conspiracy theory or extreme political movement. Edit: this next bit is disturbingly prophetic: > Of course the cargo never comes. The cults nonetheless live on. If the millennium does not arrive on schedule, then perhaps there is some failure in the magic, some error in the ritual. New breakaway groups organize around "purer" faith and ritual. The cult rarely disappears, so long as the social situation which brings it into being persists.