4 ms·
Did we read the same article? > People were kidnapped and forced to work as laborers in other countries, a practice called blackbirding. Prime agricultural lan
by culi 2y ago
Did we read the same article?
> People were kidnapped and forced to work as laborers in other countries, a practice called blackbirding. Prime agricultural land was taken by planters to raise crops such as coconuts for export, with natives coerced into working for the planters. Up until 1919, employers were free to flog the natives for disobedience; afterward, flogging was technically forbidden but still took place. Colonial administrators jailed natives who stepped out of line.
> The natives were saying that the spirits of their ancestors had appeared to several in the villages and told them that all flour, rice, tobacco, and other trade belonged to the New Guinea people, and that the white man had no right whatever to these goods
These "cargo cults" are not a cult of people who think of these cargo as magical gifts. They are well aware of the socioeconomic forces that oppress them. They are cults of people who think that they are rightfully owed these goods
How is that in any way similar to the pop sci definition?
- sobellian 2y agoMy parent post is notably not about the context that drove the cultists to adopt their practice. Even so. The pop-sci definition, directly quoted: > During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas Incomplete? Yes, since the practice predated planes. But it is accurate to say that the cults persisted during / after WW2 and that cargo from colonial powers drew the (understandable!) envy of the cultists. And it is undeniable that they undertook rituals to obtain cargo, and that those rituals could not have worked.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- stonemetal12 2y agoJust because they had cargo cults before WW2 doesn't make the WW2 cargo cults any less cargo culty. >New Guinea people, and that the white man had no right whatever to these goods And believed their ancestors were going show up on a cargo ship with free stuff. In the same way the oppressors came.
- lolinder 2y agoDid you read the rest of the article or just the first few paragraphs? The rest of it straight up describes the exact practices recounted in Feynman's telling of the story, including "a cult of people who think of these cargo as magical gifts" as you call it. Yes, these came later according to TFA, and yes, there are dark undertones and overtones throughout, but if you read the article I'm not sure how you can argue that Feynman's version bears no similarity to fact. It's basically in TFA verbatim. The only thing they really claim Feynman was missing was context.