The cargo cult metaphor is commonly used by programmers. This metaphor was popularized by Richard Feynman's "cargo cult science" talk with a vivid description of South Seas cargo cults. However, this metaphor has three major problems. First, the pop-culture depiction of cargo cults is inaccurate and fictionalized, as I'll show. Second, the metaphor is overused and has contradictory meanings making it a lazy insult. Finally, cargo cults are portrayed as an amusing story of native misunderstanding but the background is much darker: cargo cults are a reaction to decades of oppression of Melanesian islanders and the destruction of their culture. For these reasons, the cargo cult metaphor is best avoided.
In this post, I'll describe some cargo cults from 1919 to the present. These cargo cults are completely different from the description of cargo cults you usually find on the internet, which I'll call the "pop-culture cargo cult." Cargo cults are extremely diverse, to the extent that anthropologists disagree on the cause, definition, or even if the term has value. I'll show that many of the popular views of cargo cults come from a 1962 "shockumentary" called Mondo Cane. Moreover, most online photos of cargo cults are fake.
Feynman and Cargo Cult Science
The cargo cult metaphor in science started with Professor Richard Feynman's well-known 1974 commencement address at Caltech.1 This speech, titled "Cargo Cult Science", was expanded into a chapter in his best-selling 1985 book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman". He said:
In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. 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—he’s the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.
But the standard anthropological definition of "cargo cult" is entirely different: 2
Cargo cults are strange religious movements in the South Pacific that appeared during the last few decades. In these movements, a prophet announces the imminence of the end of the world in a cataclysm which will destroy everything. Then the ancestors will return, or God, or some other liberating power, will appear, bringing all the goods the people desire, and ushering in a reign of eternal bliss.
An anthropology encyclopedia gives a similar definition:
A southwest Pacific example of messianic or millenarian movements once common throughout the colonial world, the modal cargo cult was an agitation or organised social movement of Melanesian villagers in pursuit of ‘cargo’ by means of renewed or invented ritual action that they hoped would induce ancestral spirits or other powerful beings to provide. Typically, an inspired prophet with messages from those spirits persuaded a community that social harmony and engagement in improvised ritual (dancing, marching, flag-raising) or revived cultural traditions would, for believers, bring them cargo.
As you may see, the pop-culture explanation of a cargo cult and the anthropological definition are completely different, apart from the presence of "cargo" of some sort. Have anthropologists buried cargo cults under layers of theory? Are they even discussing the same thing? My conclusion, after researching many primary sources, is that the anthropological description accurately describes the wide variety of cargo cults. The pop-culture cargo cult description, however, takes features of some cargo cults (the occasional runway) and combines this with movie scenes to yield an inaccurate and fictionalized dscription. It may be hard to believe that the description of cargo cults that you see on the internet is mostly wrong, but in the remainder of this article, I will explain this in detail.
Background on Melanesia
Cargo cults occur in a specific region of the South Pacific called Melanesia. I'll give a brief (oversimplified) description of Melanesia to provide important background. The Pacific Ocean islands are divided into three cultural areas: Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. Polynesia is the best known, including Hawaii, New Zealand, and Samoa. Micronesia, in the northwest, consists of thousands of small islands, of which Guam is the largest; the name "Micronesia" is Greek for "small island". Melanesia, the relevant area for this article, is a group of islands between Micronesia and Australia, including Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, and New Guinea. (New Guinea is the world's second-largest island; confusingly, the country of Papua New Guinea occupies the eastern half of the island, while the western half is part of Indonesia.)
The inhabitants of Melanesia typically lived in small villages of under 200 people, isolated by mountainous geography. They had a simple, subsistence economy, living off cultivated root vegetables, pigs, and hunting. People tended their own garden, without specialization into particular tasks. The people of Melanesia are dark-skinned, which will be important ("Melanesia" and "melanin" have the same root). Technologically, the Melanesians used stone, wood, and shell tools, without knowledge of metallurgy or even weaving. The Melanesian cultures were generally violent3 with everpresent tribal warfare and cannibalism.4
Due to the geographic separation of tribes, New Guinea became the most linguistically diverse country in the world, with over 800 distinct languages. Pidgin English was often the only way for tribes to communicate, and is now one of the official languages of New Guinea. This language, called Tok Pisin (i.e. "talk pidgin"), is now the most common language in Papua New Guinea, spoken by over two-thirds of the population.5
For the Melanesians, religion was a matter of ritual, rather than a moral framework. It is said that "to the Melanesian, a religion is above all a technology: it is the knowledge of how to bring the community into the correct relation, by rites and spells, with the divinities and spirit-beings and cosmic forces that can make or mar man's this-worldly wealth and well-being." This is important since, as will be seen, the Melanesians expected that the correct ritual would result in the arrival of cargo. Catholic and Protestant missionaries converted the inhabitants to Christianity, largely wiping out traditional religious practices and customs; Melanesia is now over 95% Christian. Christianity played a large role in cargo cults, as will be shown below.
European explorers first reached Melanesia in the 1500s, followed by colonization.6 By the end of the 1800s, control of the island of New Guinea was divided among Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands. Britain passed responsibility to Australia in 1906 and Australia gained the German part of New Guinea in World War I. As for the islands of Vanuatu, the British and French colonized them (under the name New Hebrides) in the 18th century.
The influx of Europeans was highly harmful to the Melanesians. "Native society was severely disrupted by war, by catastrophic epidemics of European diseases, by the introduction of alcohol, by the devastation of generations of warfare, and by the depredations of the labour recruiters."8 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.9 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.7
Cargo cults before World War II
While the pop-culture cargo cults explains them as a reaction to World War II, cargo cults started years earlier. One anthropologist stated, "Cargo cults long preceded [World War II], continued to occur during the war, and have continued to the present."
The first writings about cargo cult behavior date back to 1919, when it was called the "Vailala Madness":10
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; in a short time all the white men were to be driven away, and then everything would be in the hands of the natives; a large ship was also shortly to appear bringing back the spirits of their departed relatives with quantities of cargo, and all the villages were to make ready to receive them.
The 1926 book In Unknown New Guinea also describes the Vialala Madness:11
[The leader proclaimed] that the ancestors were coming back in the persons of the white people in the country and that all the things introduced by the white people and the ships that brought them belonged really to their ancestors and themselves. [He claimed that] he himself was King George and his friend was the Governor. Christ had given him this authority and he was in communication with Christ through a hole near his village.
The Melanesians blamed the Europeans for the failure of cargo to arrive. In the 1930s, one story was that because the natives had converted to Christianity, God was sending the ancestors with cargo that was loaded on ships. However, the Europeans were going through the cargo holds and replacing the names on the crates so the cargo was fraudulently delivered to the Europeans instead of the rightful natives.
The Mambu Movement occurred in 1937. Mambu, the movement's prophet, claimed that "the Whites had deceived the natives. The ancestors lived inside a volcano on Manum Island, where they worked hard making goods for their descendants: loin-cloths, socks, metal axes, bush-knives, flashlights, mirrors, red dye, etc., even plank-houses, but the scoundrelly Whites took the cargoes. Now this was to stop. The ancestors themselves would bring the goods in a large ship." To stop this movement, the Government arrested Mambu, exiled him, and imprisoned him for six months in 1938.
To summarize, these early cargo cults believed that ships would bring cargo that rightfully belonged to the natives but had been stolen by the whites. The return of the cargo would be accompanied by the spirits of the ancestors. Moreover, Christianity often played a large role. A significant racial component was present, with natives driving out the whites or becoming white themselves.
Cargo cults in World War II and beyond
World War II caused tremendous social and economic upheavals in Melanesia. Much of Melanesia was occupied by Japan near the beginning of the war and the Japanese treated the inhabitants harshly. The American entry into the war led to heavy conflict in the area such as the arduous New Guinea campaign (1942-1945) and the Solomon Islands campaign. As the Americans and Japanese battled for control of the islands, the inhabitants were caught in the middle. Papua and New Guinea suffered over 15,000 civilian deaths, a shockingly high number for such a small region.12
The impact of the Japanese occupation on cargo cults is usually ignored. One example from 1942 is a cargo belief that the Japanese soldiers were spirits of the dead, who were being sent by Jesus to liberate the people from European rule. The Japanese would bring the cargo by airplane since the Europeans were blocking the delivery of cargo by ship. This would be accompanied by storms and earthquakes, and the natives' skin would change from black to white. The natives were to build storehouses for the cargo and fill the storehouses with food for the ancestors. The leader of this movement, named Tagarab, explained that he had an iron rod that gave him messages about the future. Eventually, the Japanese shot Tagarab, bringing an end to this cargo cult.13
The largest and most enduring cargo cult is the John Frum movement, which started on the island of Tanna around 1941 and continues to the present. According to one story, a mythical person known as John Frum, master of the airplanes, would reveal himself and drive off the whites. He would provide houses, clothes, and food for the people of Tanna. The island of Tanna would flatten as the mountains filled up the valleys and everyone would have perfect health. In other areas, the followers of John Frum believed they "would receive a great quantity of goods, brought by a white steamer which would come from America." Families abandoned the Christian villages and moved to primitive shelters in the interior. They wildly spent much of their money and threw the rest into the sea. The government arrested and deported the leaders, but that failed to stop the movement. The identity of John Frum is unclear; he is sometimes said to be a white American while in other cases natives have claimed to be John Frum.14
The cargo cult of Kainantu17 arose around 1945 when a "spirit wind" caused people in the area to shiver and shake. Villages built large "cargo houses" and put stones, wood, and insect-marked leaves inside, representing European goods, rifles, and paper letters respectively. They killed pigs and anointed the objects, the house, and themselves with blood. The cargo house was to receive the visiting European spirit of the dead who would fill the house with goods. This cargo cult continued for about 5 years, diminishing as people became disillusioned by the failure of the goods to arrive.
The name "Cargo Cult" was first used in print in 1945, just after the end of World War II.15 The article blamed the problems on the teachings of missionaries, with the problems "accentuated a hundredfold" by World War II.
Stemming directly from religious teaching of equality, and its resulting sense of injustice, is what is generally known as “Vailala Madness,” or “Cargo Cult.” "In all cases the "Madness" takes the same form: A native, infected with the disorder, states that he has been visited by a relative long dead, who stated that a great number of ships loaded with "cargo" had been sent by the ancestor of the native for the benefit of the natives of a particular village or area. But the white man, being very cunning, knows how to intercept these ships and takes the "cargo" for his own use... Livestock has been destroyed, and gardens neglected in the expectation of the magic cargo arriving. The natives infected by the "Madness" sank into indolence and apathy regarding common hygiene."
In a 1946 episode, agents of the Australian government found a group of New Guinea highlanders who believed that the arrival of the whites signaled that the end of the world was at hand. The highlanders butchered all their pigs in the expectation that "Great Pigs" would appear from the sky in three days. At this time, the residents would exchange their black skin for white skin. They created mock radio antennas of bamboo and rope to receive news of the millennium.16
The New York Times described Cargo Cults in 1948 as "the belief that a convoy of cargo ships is on its way, laden with the fruits of the modern world, to outfit the leaf huts of the natives." The occupants of the British Solomon Islands were building warehouses along the beaches to hold these goods. Natives marched into a US Army camp, presented $3000 in US money, and asked the Army to drive out the British.
A 1951 paper described cargo cults: "The insistence that a 'cargo' of European goods is to be sent by the ancestors or deceased spirits; this may or may not be part of a general reaction against Europeans, with an overtly expressed desire to be free from alien domination. Usually the underlying theme is a belief that all trade goods were sent by ancestors or spirits as gifts for their descendants, but have been misappropriated on the way by Europeans."17
In 1959, The New York Times wrote about cargo cults: "Rare Disease and Strange Cult Disturb New Guinea Territory; Fatal Laughing Sickness Is Under Study by Medical Experts—Prophets Stir Delusions of Food Arrivals". The article states that "large native groups had been infected with the idea that they could expect the arrival of spirit ships carrying large supplies of food. In false anticipation of the arrival of the 'cargoes', 5000 to 7000 native have been known to consume their entire food reserve and create a famine." As for "laughing sickness", this is now known to be a prion disease transmitted by eating human brains. In some communities, this disease, also called Kuru, caused 50% of all deaths.
A detailed 1959 article in Scientific American, "Cargo Cults", described many different cargo cults.16 It lists various features of cargo cults, such as the return of the dead, skin color switching from black to white, threats against white rule, and belief in a coming messiah. The article finds a central theme in cargo cults: "The world is about to end in a terrible cataclysm. Thereafter God, the ancestors or some local culture hero will appear and inaugurate a blissful paradise on earth. Death, old age, illness and evil will be unknown. The riches of the white man will accrue to the Melanesians."
In 1960, the celebrated naturalist David Attenborough created a documentary The People of Paradise: Cargo Cult.18 Attenborough travels through the island of Tanna and encounters many artifacts of the John Frum cult, such as symbolic gates and crosses, painted brilliant scarlet and decorated with objects such as a shaving brush, a winged rat, and a small carved airplane. Attenborough interviews a cult leader who claims to have talked with the mythical John Frum, said to be a white American. The leader remains in communication with John Frum through a tall pole said to be a radio mast, and an unseen radio. (The "radio" consisted of an old woman with electrical wire wrapper around her waist, who would speak gibberish in a trance.)
In 1963, famed anthropologist Margaret Mead brought cargo cults to the general public, writing Where Americans are Gods: The Strange Story of the Cargo Cults in the mass-market newspaper supplement Family Weekly. In just over a page, this article describes the history of cargo cults before, during, and after World War II.19 One cult sat around a table with vases of colorful flowers on them. Another cult threw away their money. Another cult watched for ships from hilltops, expecting John Frum to bring a fleet of ships bearing cargo from the land of the dead.
One of the strangest cargo cults was a group of 2000 people on New Hanover Island, "collecting money to buy President Johnson of the United States [who] would arrive with other Americans on the liner Queen Mary and helicopters next Tuesday." The islanders raised $2000, expecting American cargo to follow the president. Seeing the name Johnson on outboard motors confirmed their belief that President Johnson was personally sending cargo.20
A 1971 article in Time Magazine22 described how tribesmen brought US Army concrete survey markers down from a mountaintop while reciting the Roman Catholic rosary, dropping the heavy markers outside the Australian government office. They expected that "a fleet of 500 jet transports would disgorge thousands of sympathetic Americans bearing crates of knives, steel axes, rifles, mirrors and other wonders." Time magazine explained the “cargo cult” as "a conviction that if only the dark-skinned people can hit on the magic formula, they can, without working, acquire all the wealth and possessions that seem concentrated in the white world... They believe that everything has a deity who has to be contacted through ritual and who only then will deliver the cargo." Cult leaders tried "to duplicate the white man’s magic. They hacked airstrips in the rain forest, but no planes came. They built structures that look like white men’s banks, but no money materialized."21
National Geographic, in an article Head-hunters in Today's World (1972), mentioned a cargo-cult landing field with a replica of a radio aerial, created by villagers who hoped that it would attract airplanes bearing gifts. It also described a cult leader in South Papua who claimed to obtain airplanes and cans of food from a hole in the ground. If the people believed in him, their skins would turn white and he would lead them to freedom.
These sources and many others23 illustrate that cargo cults do not fit a simple story. Instead, cargo cults are extremely varied, happening across thousands of miles and many decades. The lack of common features between cargo cults leads some anthropologists to reject the idea of cargo cults as a meaningful term.24 In any case, most historical cargo cults have very little in common with the pop-culture description of a cargo cult.
Cargo beliefs were inspired by Christianity
Cargo cult beliefs are closely tied to Christianity, a factor that is ignored in pop-culture descriptions of cargo cults. Beginning in the mid-1800s, Christian missionaries set up churches in New Guinea to convert the inhabitants. As a result, cargo cults incorporated Christian ideas, but in very confusing ways. At first, the natives believed that missionaries had come to reveal the ritual secrets and restore the cargo. By enthusiastically joining the church, singing the hymns, and following the church's rituals, the people would be blessed by God, who would give them the cargo. This belief was common in the 1920s and 1930s, but as the years went on and the people didn't receive the cargo, they theorized that the missionaries had removed the first pages of the Bible to hide the cargo secrets.
A typical belief was that God created Adam and Eve in Paradise, "giving them cargo: tinned meat, steel tools, rice in bags, tobacco in tins, and matches, but not cotton clothing." When Adam and Eve offended God by having sexual intercourse, God threw them out of Paradise and took their cargo. Eventually, God sent the Flood but Noah was saved in a steamship and God gave back the cargo. Noah's son Ham offended God, so God took the cargo away from Ham and sent him to New Guinea, where he became the ancestor of the natives.
Other natives believed that God lived in Heaven, which was in the clouds and reachable by ladder from Sydney, Australia (source). God, along with the ancestors, created cargo in Heaven—"tinned meat, bags of rice, steel tools, cotton cloth, tinned tobacco, and a machine for making electric light"—which would be flown from Sydney and delivered to the natives, who thus needed to clear an airstrip (source).25
Another common belief was that symbolic radios could be used to communicate with Jesus. For instance, a Markham Valley cargo group in 1943 created large radio houses so they could be informed of the imminent Coming of Jesus, at which point the natives would expel the whites (source). The "radio" consisted of bamboo cylinders connected to a rope "aerial" strung between two poles. The houses contained a pole with rungs so the natives could climb to Jesus along with cane "flashlights" to see Jesus.
Mock radio antennas are also discussed in a 1943 report26 from a wartime patrol that found a bamboo "wireless house", 42 feet in diameter. It had two long poles outside and with an "aerial" of rope between them, connected to the "radio" inside, a bamboo cylinder. Villagers explained that the "radio" was to receive messages of the return of Jesus, who would provide weapons for the overthrow of white rule. The villagers constructed ladders outside the house so they could climb up to the Christian God after death. They would shed their skin like a snake, getting a new white skin, and then they would receive the "boats and white men's clothing, goods, etc."
Mondo Cane and the creation of the pop-culture cargo cult
As described above, cargo cults expected the cargo to arrive by ships much more often than airplanes. So why do pop-culture cargo cults have detailed descriptions of runways, airplanes, wooden headphones, and bamboo control towers?27 My hypothesis is that it came from a 1962 movie called Mondo Cane. This film was the first "shockumentary", showing extreme and shocking scenes from around the world. Although the film was highly controversial, it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and was a box-office success.
The film made extensive use of New Guinea with multiple scandalous segments, such as a group of "love-struck" topless women chasing men,29 a woman breastfeeding a pig, and women in cages being fattened for marriage. The last segment in the movie showed "the cult of the cargo plane": natives forlornly watching planes at the airport, followed by scenes of a bamboo airplane sitting on a mountaintop "runway" along with bamboo control towers. The natives waited all day and then lit torches to illuminate the runway at nightfall. These scenes are very similar to the pop-culture descriptions of cargo cults so I suspect this movie is the source.
The film claims that all the scenes "are true and taken only from life", but many of the scenes are said to be staged. Since the cargo cult scenes are very different from anthropological reports and much more dramatic, I think they were also staged and exaggerated.28 It is known that the makers of Mondo Cane paid the Melanesian natives generously for the filming (source, source).
Did Feynman get his cargo cult ideas from Mondo Cane? It may seem implausible since the movie was released over a decade earlier. However, the movie became a cult classic, was periodically shown in theaters, and influenced academics.30 In particular, Mondo Cane showed at the famed Cameo theater in downtown Los Angeles on April 3, 1974, two months before Feynman's commencement speech. Mondo Cane seems like the type of offbeat movie that Feynman would see and the theater was just 11 miles from Caltech. While I can't prove that Feynman went to the showing, his description of a cargo cult strongly resembles the movie.31
Fake cargo-cult photos fill the internet
Fakes and hoaxes make researching cargo cults online difficult. There are numerous photos online of cargo cults, but many of these photos are completely made up. For instance, the photo below has illustrated cargo cults for articles such as Cargo Cult, UX personas are useless, A word on cargo cults, The UK Integrated Review and security sector innovation, and Don't be a cargo cult. However, this photo is from a Japanese straw festival and has nothing to do with cargo cults.
Another example is the photo below, supposedly an antenna created by a cargo cult. However, it is actually a replica of the Jodrell Bank radio telescope, built in 2007 by a British farmer from six tons of straw (details). The farmer's replica ended up erroneously illustrating Cargo Cult Politics, The Cargo Cult & Beliefs, The Cargo Cult, Cargo Cults of the South Pacific, and Cargo Cult, among others.32
Other articles illustrate cargo cults with the aircraft below, suspiciously sleek and well-constructed. However, the photo actually shows a wooden wind tunnel model of the Buran spacecraft, abandoned at a Russian airfield as described in this article. Some uses of the photo are Are you guilty of “cargo cult” thinking without even knowing it? and The Cargo Cult of Wealth.
Many cargo cult articles use one of the photo below. I tracked them down to the 1970 movie "Chariots of the Gods" (link), a dubious documentary claiming that aliens have visited Earth throughout history. The segment on cargo cults is similar to Mondo Cane with cultists surrounding a mock plane on a mountaintop, lighting fires along the runway. However, it is clearly faked, probably in Africa: the people don't look like Pacific Islanders and are wearing wigs. One participant wears leopard skin (leopards don't live in the South Pacific). The vegetation is another giveaway: the plants are from Africa, not the South Pacific.33
The point is that most of the images that illustrate cargo cults online are fake or wrong. Most internet photos and information about cargo cults have just been copied from page to page. (And now we have AI-generated cargo cult photos.) If a photo doesn't have a clear source (including who, when, and where), don't believe it.
Conclusions
The cargo cult metaphor should be avoided for three reasons. First, the metaphor is essentially meaningless and heavily overused. The influential "Jargon File" defined cargo-cult programming as "A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose."34 Note that the metaphor in cargo-cult programming is the opposite of the metaphor in cargo-cult science: Feyman's cargo-cult science has no chance of working, while cargo-cult programming works but isn't understood. Moreover, both metaphors differ from the cargo-cult metaphor in other contexts, referring to the expectation of receiving valuables without working.35
The popular site Hacker News is an example of how "cargo cult" can be applied to anything: agile programming, artificial intelligence, cleaning your desk. Go, hatred of Perl, key rotation, layoffs, MBA programs, microservices, new drugs, quantum computing, static linking, test-driven development, and updating the copyright year are just a few things that are called "cargo cult".36 At this point, cargo cult is simply a lazy, meaningless attack.
The second problem with "cargo cult" is that the pop-culture description of cargo cults is historically inaccurate. Actual cargo cults are much more complex and include a much wider (and stranger) variety of behaviors. Cargo cults started before World War II and involve ships more often than airplanes. Cargo cults mix aspects of paganism and Christianity, often with apocalyptic ideas of the end of the current era, the overthrow of white rule, and the return of dead ancestors. The pop-culture description discards all this complexity, replacing it with a myth.
Finally, the cargo cult metaphor turns decades of harmful colonialism into a humorous anecdote. Feynman's description of cargo cults strips out the moral complexity: US soldiers show up with their cargo and planes, the indigenous residents amusingly misunderstand the situation, and everyone carries on. However, cargo cults really were a response to decades of colonial mistreatment, exploitation, and cultural destruction. Moreover, cargo cults were often harmful: expecting a bounty of cargo, villagers would throw away their money, kill their pigs, and stop tending their crops, resulting in famine. The pop-culture cargo cult erases the decades of colonial oppression, along with the cultural upheaval and deaths from World War II. Melanesians deserve to be more than the punch line in a cargo cult story.
Thus, it's time to move beyond the cargo cult metaphor.
Update: well, this sparked much more discussion on Hacker News than I expected. To answer some questions: Am I better or more virtuous than other people? No. Are you a bad person if you use the cargo cult metaphor? No. Is "cargo cult" one of many Hacker News comments that I'm tired of seeing? Yes (details). Am I criticizing Feynman? No. Do the Melanesians care about this? Probably not. Did I put way too much research into this? Yes. Is criticizing colonialism in the early 20th century woke? I have no response to that.
Notes and references
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As an illustration of the popularity of Feynman's "Cargo Cult Science" commencement address, it has been on Hacker News at least 15 times. ↩
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The first cargo cult definition above comes from The Trumpet Shall Sound; A Study of "Cargo" Cults in Melanesia. The second definition is from the Cargo Cult entry in The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Written by Lamont Lindstrom, a professor who studies Melanesia, the entry comprehensively describes the history and variety of cargo cults, as well as current anthropological analysis.
For an early anthropological theory of cargo cults, see An Empirical Case-Study: The Problem of Cargo Cults in "The Revolution in Anthropology" (Jarvie, 1964). This book categorizes cargo cults as an apocalyptic millenarian religious movement with a central tenet:
When the millennium comes it will largely consist of the arrival of ships and/or aeroplanes loaded up with cargo; a cargo consisting either of material goods the natives long for (and which are delivered to the whites in this manner), or of the ancestors, or of both.
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European colonization brought pacification and a reduction in violence. The Cargo Cult: A Melanesian Type-Response to Change describes this pacification and termination of warfare as the Pax Imperii, suggesting that pacification came as a relief to the Melanesians: "They welcomed the cessation of many of the concomitants of warfare: the sneak attack, ambush, raiding, kidnapping of women and children, cannibalism, torture, extreme indignities inflicted on captives, and the continual need to be concerned with defense." That article calls the peace the Pax Imperii.
Warfare among the Enga people of New Guinea is described in From Spears to M-16s: Testing the Imbalance of Power Hypothesis among the Enga. The Enga engaged in tribal warfare for reasons such as "theft of game from traps, quarrels over possessions, or work sharing within the group." The surviving losers were usually driven off the land and forced to settle elsewhere. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Australian administration banned tribal fighting and pacified much of the area. However, after the independence of Papua New Guinea in 1975, warfare increased along with the creation of criminal gangs known as Raskols (rascals). The situation worsened in the late 1980s with the introduction of shotguns and high-powered weapons to warfare. Now, Papua New Guinea has one of the highest crime rates in the world along with one of the lowest police-to-population ratios in the world. ↩
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When you hear tales of cannibalism, some skepticism is warranted. However, cannibalism is proved by the prevalence of kuru, or "laughing sickness", a fatal prion disease (transmissible spongiform encephalopathy) spread by consuming human brains. Also see Headhunters in Today's World, a 1972 National Geographic article that describes the baking of heads and the eating of brains. ↩
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A 1957 dictionary of Pidgin English can be found here. Linguistically, Tok Pisin is a creole, not a pidgin. ↩
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The modern view is that countries such as Great Britain acquired colonies against the will of the colonized, but the situation was more complex in the 19th century. Many Pacific islands desperately wanted to become European colonies, but were turned down for years because the countries were viewed as undesiable burdens.
For example, Fiji viewed colonization as the solution to the chaos caused by the influx of white settlers in the 1800s. Fijian political leaders attempted to cede the islands to a European power that could end the lawlessness, but were turned down. In 1874, the situation changed when Disraeli was elected British prime minister. His pro-imperial policies, along with the Royal Navy's interest in obtaining a coaling station, concerns about American expansion, and pressure from anti-slavery groups, led to the annexation of Fiji by Britain. The situation in Fiji didn't particularly improve from annexation. (Fiji obtained independence almost a century later, in 1970.)
As an example of the cost of a colony, Australia was subsidizing Papua New Guinea (with a population of 2.5 million) with over 100 million dollars a year in the early 1970s. (source) ↩
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When reading about colonial Melanesia, one notices a constant background of police activity. Even when police patrols were very rare (annual in some parts), they were typically accompanied by arbitrary arrests and imprisonment. The most common cause for arrest was adultery; it may seem strange that the police were so concerned with it, but it turns out that adultery was the most common cause of warfare between tribes, and the authorities were trying to reduce the level of warfare. Cargo cult activity could be punished by six months of imprisonment. Jailing tended to be ineffective in stopping cargo cults, however, as it was viewed as evidence that the Europeans were trying to stop the cult leaders from spreading the cargo secrets that they had uncovered. ↩
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See The Trumpet Shall Sound. ↩
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The government imposed a head tax, which for the most part could only be paid through employment. A 1924 report states, "The primary object of the head tax was not to collect revenue but to create among the natives a need for money, which would make labour for Europeans desirable and would force the natives to accept employment." ↩
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The Papua Annual Report, 1919-20 includes a report on the "Vailala Madness", starting on page 118. It describes how villages with the "Vialala madness" had "ornamented flag-poles, long tables, and forms or benches, the tables being usually decorated with flowers in bottles of water in imitation of a white man's dining table." Village men would sit motionless with their backs to the tables. Their idleness infuriated the white men, who considered the villagers to be "fit subjects for a lunatic asylum." ↩
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The Vailala Madness is also described in The Missionary Review of the World, 1924. The Vaialala Madness also involved seizure-like physical aspects, which typically didn't appear in later cargo cult behavior.
The 1957 book The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of "Cargo" Cults in Melanesia is an extensive discussion of cargo cults, as well as earlier activity and movements. Chapter 4 covers the Vailala Madness in detail. ↩
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The battles in the Pacific have been extensively described from the American and Japanese perspectives, but the indigenous residents of these islands are usually left out of the narratives. This review discusses two books that provide the Melanesian perspective.
I came across the incredible story of Sergeant Major Vouza of the Native Constabulary. While this story is not directly related to cargo cults, I wanted to include it as it illustrates the dedication and suffering of the New Guinea natives during World War II. Vouza volunteered to scout behind enemy lines for the Marines at Guadalcanal but he was captured by the Japanese, tied to a tree, tortured, bayonetted, and left for dead. He chewed through his ropes, made his way through the enemy force, and warned the Marines of an impending enemy attack.
SgtMaj Vouza, British Solomon Islands Constabulary. From The Guadalcanal Campaign, 1949.Vouza described the event in a letter:
Letter from SgtMaj Vouza to Hector MacQuarrie, 1984. From The Guadalcanal Campaign. -
The Japanese occupation and the cargo cult started by Tagareb are described in detail in Road Belong Cargo, pages 98-110. ↩
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See "John Frum Movement in Tanna", Oceania, March 1952. The New York Times described the John Frum movement in detail in a 1970 article: "On a Pacific island, they wait for the G.I. who became a God". A more modern article (2006) on John Frum is In John They Trust in the Smithsonian Magazine.
As for the identity of John Frum, some claim that his name is short for "John from America". Others claim it is a modification of "John Broom" who would sweep away the whites. These claims lack evidence. ↩
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The quote is from Pacific Islands Monthly, November 1945 (link). The National Library of Australia has an extensive collection of issues of Pacific Islands Monthly online. Searching these magazines for "cargo cult" provides an interesting look at how cargo cults were viewed as they happened. ↩
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Scientific American had a long article titled Cargo Cults in May 1959, written by Peter Worsley, who also wrote the classic book The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of 'Cargo' Cults in Melanesia. The article lists the following features of cargo cults:
- Myth of the return of the dead
- Revival or modification of paganism
- Introduction of Christian elements
- Cargo myth
- Belief that Negroes will become white men and vice versa
- Belief in a coming messiah
- Attempts to restore native political and economic control
- Threats and violence against white men
- Union of traditionally separate and unfriendly groups
Different cargo cults contained different subsets of these features but no specific feature The article is reprinted here; the detailed maps show the wide distribution of cargo cults. ↩↩
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See A Cargo Movement in the Eastern Central Highlands of New Guinea, Oceania, 1952. ↩↩
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The Attenborough Cargo Cult documentary can be watched on YouTube.
I'll summarize some highlights with timestamps:
5:20: A gate, palisade, and a cross all painted brilliant red.
6:38: A cross decorated with a wooden bird and a shaving brush.
7:00: A tall pole claimed to be a special radio mast to talk with John Frum.
8:25: Interview with trader Bob Paul. He describes "troops" marching with wooden guns around the whole island.
12:00: Preparation and consumption of kava, the intoxicating beverage.
13:08: Interview with a local about John Frum.
14:16: John Frum described as a white man and a big fellow.
16:29: Attenborough asks, "You say John Frum has not come for 19 years. Isn't this a long time for you to wait?" The leader responds, "No, I can wait. It's you waiting for two thousand years for Christ to come and I must wait over 19 years." Attenborough accepts this as a fair point.
17:23: Another scarlet gate, on the way to the volcano, with a cross, figure, and model airplane.
22:30: Interview with the leader. There's a discussion of the radio, but Attenborough is not allowed to see it.
24:21: John Frum is described as a white American.The expedition is also described in David Attenborough's 1962 book Quest in Paradise. ↩
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I have to criticize Mead's article for centering Americans as the heroes, almost a parody of American triumphalism. The title sets the article's tone: "Where Americans are Gods..." The article explains, "The Americans were lavish. They gave away Uncle Sam's property with a generosity which appealed mightily... so many kind, generous people, all alike, with such magnificent cargoes! The American servicemen, in turn, enjoyed and indulged the islanders."
The article views cargo cults as a temporary stage before moving to a prosperous American-style society as islanders realized that "American things could come [...] only by work, education, persistence." A movement leader named Paliau is approvingly quoted: "We would like to have the things Americans have. [...] We think Americans have all these things because they live under law, without endless quarrels. So we must first set up a new society."
On the other hand, by most reports, the Americans treated the residents of Melanesia much better than the colonial administrators. Americans paid the natives much more (which was viewed as overpaying them by the planters). The Americans treated the natives with much more respect; natives worked with Americans almost as equals. Finally, it appeared to the natives that black soldiers were treated as equals to white soldiers. (Obviously, this wasn't entirely accurate.)
The Melanesian experience with Americans also strengthened Melanesian demands for independence. Following the war, the reversion to colonial administration produced a lot of discontent in the natives, who realized that their situation could be much better. (See World War II and Melanesian self-determination.) ↩
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The Johnson cult was analyzed in depth by Billings, an anthropologist who wrote about it in Cargo Cult as Theater: Political Performance in the Pacific. See also Australian Daily News, June 12, 1964, and Time Magazine, July 19, 1971. ↩
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In one unusual case, the islanders built an airstrip and airplanes did come. Specifically, the Miyanmin people of New Guinea hacked an airstrip out of the forest in 1966 using hand tools. The airstrip was discovered by a patrol and turned out to be usable, so Baptist missionaries made monthly landings, bringing medicine and goods for a store. It is pointed out that the only thing preventing this activity from being considered a cargo cult is that in this case, it was effective. See A Small Footnote to the 'Big Walk', p. 59. ↩
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See "New Guinea: Waiting for That Cargo", Time Magazine, July 19, 1971. ↩
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In this footnote, I'll list some interesting cargo cult stories that didn't fit into the body of the article.
The 1964 US Bureau of Labor Statistics report on New Guinea describes cargo cults: "A simplified explanation of them is often given namely that contact with Western culture has given the indigene a desire for a better economic standard of living this desire has not been accompanied by the understanding that economic prosperity is achieved by human effort. The term cargo cult derives from the mystical expectation of the imminent arrival by sea or air of the good things of this earth. It is believed sufficient to build warehouses of leaves and prepare air strips to receive these goods. Activity in the food gardens and daily community routine chores is often neglected so that economic distress is engendered."
Cargo Cult Activity in Tangu (Burridge) is a 1954 anthropological paper discussing stories of three cargo cults in Tangu, a region of New Guinea. The first involved dancing around a man in a trance, which was supposed to result in the appearance of "rice, canned meat, lava-lavas, knives, beads, etc." In the second story, villagers built a shed in a cemetery and then engaged in ritualized sex acts, expecting the shed to be filled with goods. However, the authorities forced the participants to dismantle the shed and throw it into the sea. In the third story, the protagonist is Mambu, who stowed away on a steamship to Australia, where he discovered the secrets of the white man's cargo. On his return, he collected money to help force the Europeans out, until he was jailed. He performed "miracles" by appearing outside jail as well as by producing money out of thin air.
Reaction to Contact in the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea (Berndt, 1954) has a long story about Berebi, a leader who was promised a rifle, axes, cloth, knives, and valuable cowrie by a white spirit. Berebi convinces his villagers to build storehouses and they filled the houses with stones that would be replaced by goods. They take part in many pig sacrifices and various rituals, and endure attacks of shivering and paralysis, but they fail to receive any goods and Berebi concludes that the spirit deceived him. ↩
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Many anthropologists view the idea of cargo cults as controversial. One anthropologist states, "What I want to suggest here is that, similarly, cargo cults do not exist, or at least their symptoms vanish when we start to doubt that we can arbitrarily extract a few features from context and label them an institution." See A Note on Cargo Cults and Cultural Constructions of Change (1988). The 1992 paper The Yali Movement in Retrospect: Rewriting History, Redefining 'Cargo Cult' summarizes the uneasiness that many anthropologists have with the term "cargo cult", viewing it as "tantamount to an invocation of colonial power relationships."
The book Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique (2004) states, "Some authors plead quite convincingly for the abolition of the term itself, not only because of its troublesome implications, but also because, in their view, cargo cults do not even exist as an identifiable object of study." One paper states that the phrase is both inaccurate and necessary, proposing that it be written crossed-out (sous rature in Derrida's post-modern language). Another paper states: "Cargo cults defy definition. They are inherently troublesome and problematic," but concludes that the term is useful precisely because of this troublesome nature.
At first, I considered the idea of abandoning the label "cargo cult" to be absurd, but after reading the anthropological arguments, it makes more sense. In particular, the category "cargo cult" is excessively broad, lumping together unrelated things and forcing them into a Procrustean ideal: John Frum has very little in common with Vaialala Madness, let alone the Johnson Cult. I think that the term "cargo cult" became popular due to its catchy, alliterative name. (Journalists love alliterations such as "Digital Divide" or "Quiet Quitting".) ↩
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It was clear to the natives that the ancestors, and not the Europeans, must have created the cargo because the local Europeans were unable to repair complex mechanical devices locally, but had to ship them off. These ships presumably took the broken devices back to the ancestral spirits to be repaired. Source: The Trumpet Shall Sound, p119. ↩
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The report from the 1943 patrol is discussed in Berndt's "A Cargo Movement in the Eastern Central Highlands of New Guinea", Oceania, Mar. 1953 (link), page 227. These radio houses are also discussed in The Trumpet Shall Sound, page 199. ↩
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Wooden airplanes are a staple of the pop-culture cargo cult story, but they are extremely rare in authentic cargo cults. I searched extensively, but could find just a few primary sources that involve airplanes.
The closest match that I could find is Vanishing Peoples of the Earth, published by National Geographic in 1968, which mentions a New Guinea village that built a "crude wooden airplane", which they thought "offers the key to getting cargo".
The photo below, from 1950, shows a cargo-house built in the shape of an airplane. (Note how abstract the construction is, compared to the realistic straw airplanes in faked photos.) The photographer mentioned that another cargo house was in the shape of a jeep, while in another village, the villagers gather in a circle at midnight to await the arrival of heavily laden cargo boats.
The photo is from They Still Believe in Cargo Cult, Pacific Islands Monthly, May 1950.David Attenborough's Cargo Cult documentary shows a small wooden airplane, painted scarlet red. This model airplane is very small compared to the mock airplanes described in the pop-culture cargo cult.
A closeup of the model airplane. From Attenborough's Cargo Cult documentary.The photo below shows the scale of the aircraft, directly in front of Attenborough. In the center, a figure of John Frum has a "scarlet coat and a white, European face." On the left, a cage contains a winged rat for some reason.
David Attenborough visiting a John Frum monument on Tanna, near Sulfur Bay. From Attenborough's Cargo Cult documentary. -
The photo below shows another scene from the movie Mondo Cane that is very popular online in cargo cult articles. I suspect that the airplane is not authentic but was made for the movie.
Screenshot from Mondo Cane, showing the cargo cultists posed in front of their airplane. -
The tale of women pursuing men was described in detail in the 1929 anthropological book The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia, specifically the section "Yausa—Orgiastic Assaults by Women" (pages 231-234). The anthropologist heard stories about these attacks from natives, but didn't observe them firsthand and remained skeptical. He concluded that "The most that can be said with certainty is that the yausa, if it happened at all, happened extremely rarely". Unlike the portrayal in Mondo Cane, these attacks on men were violent and extremely unpleasant (I won't go into details). Thus, it is very likely that this scene in Mondo Cane was staged, based on the stories. ↩
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The movie Mondo Cane directly influenced the pop-culture cargo cult as shown by several books. The book River of Tears: The Rise of the Rio Tinto-Zinc Mining Corporation explains cargo cults and how one tribe built an "aeroplane on a hilltop to attract the white man's aeroplane and its cargo", citing Mondo Cane. Likewise, the book Introducing Social Change states that underdeveloped nations are moving directly from ships to airplanes without building railroads, bizarrely using the cargo cult scene in Mondo Cane as an example. Finally, the religious book Open Letter to God uses the cargo cult in Mondo Cane as an example of the suffering of godless people. ↩
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Another possibility is that Feynman got his cargo cult ideas from the 1974 book Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches: The Riddle of Culture. It has a chapter "Phantom Cargo", which starts with a description suspiciously similar to the scene in Mondo Cane:
The scene is a jungle airstrip high in the mountains of New Guinea. Nearby are thatch-roofed hangars, a radio shack, and a beacon tower made of bamboo. On the ground is an airplane made of sticks and leaves. The airstrip is manned twenty-four hours a day by a group of natives wearing nose ornaments and shell armbands. At night they keep a bonfire going to serve as a beacon. They are expecting the arrival of an important flight: cargo planes filled with canned food, clothing, portable radios, wrist watches, and motorcycles. The planes will be piloted by ancestors who have come back to life. Why the delay? A man goes inside the radio shack and gives instructions into the tin-can microphone. The message goes out over an antenna constructed of string and vines: “Do you read me? Roger and out.” From time to time they watch a jet trail crossing the sky; occasionally they hear the sound of distant motors. The ancestors are overhead! They are looking for them. But the whites in the towns below are also sending messages. The ancestors are confused. They land at the wrong airport.
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Some other uses of the radio telescope photo as a cargo-cult item are Cargo cults, Melanesian cargo cults and the unquenchable thirst of consumerism, Cargo Cult : Correlation vs. Causation, Cargo Cult Agile, Stop looking for silver bullets, and Cargo Cult Investing. ↩
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Chariots of the Gods claims to be showing a cargo cult from an isolated island in the South Pacific. However, the large succulent plants in the scene are Euphorbia ingens and tree aloe, which grow in southern Africa, not the South Pacific. The rock formations at the very beginning look a lot like Matobo Hills in Zimbabwe. Note that these "Stone Age" people are astounded by the modern world but ignore the cameraman who is walking among them.
Many cargo cults articles use photos that can be traced back from this film, such as The Scrum Cargo Cult, Is Your UX Cargo Cult, The Remote South Pacific Island Where They Worship Planes, The Design of Everyday Games, Don’t be Fooled by the Bitcoin Core Cargo Cult, The Dying Art of Design, Retail Apocalypse Not, You Are Not Google, and Cargo Cults. The general theme of these articles is that you shouldn't copy what other people are doing without understanding it, which is somewhat ironic. ↩
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The Jargon File defined "cargo-cult programming" in 1991:
cargo-cult programming: n. A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo-cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually, neither the bug nor the reason the code avoided the bug were ever fully understood.
The term cargo-cult is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of these cults center on building elaborate mockups of airplanes and military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's characterization of certain practices as "cargo-cult science" in `Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman'.
This definition of "cargo-cult programming" came from a 1991 Usenet post to alt.folklore.computers, quoting Kent Williams. The definition was added to the much-expanded 1991 Jargon File, which was published as The New Hacker's Dictionary in 1993. ↩
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Overuse of the cargo cult metaphor isn't specific to programming, of course. The book Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond describes how "cargo cult" has been applied to everything from advertisements, social welfare policy, and shoplifting to the Mormons, Euro Disney, and the state of New Mexico.
This book, by Lamont Linstrom, provides a thorough analysis of writings on cargo cults. It takes a questioning, somewhat trenchant look at these writings, illuminating the development of trends in these writings and the lack of objectivity. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the term "cargo cult" and its history. ↩
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Some more things that have been called "cargo cult" on Hacker News: the American worldview, ChatGPT fiction, copy and pasting code, hiring, HR, priorities, psychiatry, quantitative tests, religion, SSRI medication, the tech industry, Uber, and young-earth creationism. ↩
