Cargo Cults and Politics

I had never heard of this phenomenon until coming across it yesterday while doing some marketing research for my site. At first I laughed out loud at the obsurdity of the scene. Then I looked at the timeline again and was amazed that it had occurred so recently given mankinds advancements.

Then, I realized there was certainly a phenomenon just like this taking place in American politics today. (gulp) Perhaps, it isn't so funny?

The term itself has since been used to reference computer programming, scientific methods and in other ways, so I wondered how you might apply it to American politics todayno one who participated in a cargo cult actually knew that they were doing so.When Westerners explained to them that the riches came from labor and that islanders would get them as well if they worked hard enough, the cultists couldn't help noticing that, in missions and camps, islanders were doing the hardest work but got the least of the goods.

A similar cult, the dance of the spirits, arose from contact between American Indians and the American civilization in late 19th century. The Paiute prophet Wovoka preached that by dancing in a certain fashion, the ancestors would come back on railways and a new earth would cover the white people.

Some Amazonian Indians have carved wood mockups of cassette players (gabarora from Portuguese gravadora or Spanish grabadora) that they use to communicate with spirits.

Anthropologist Marvin Harris has linked the social mechanisms that produce cargo cults to those of Messianism.

Eventually, the Pacific cultists gave up. But, from time to time, the term "Cargo cult" is invoked as an English language idiom, to mean any group of people making obeisance to something that it is obvious they do not comprehend