hello there just before we kick off today's video i do want to give a quick plug to a brand new
channel that i have called into the shadows if the name doesn't give it away the channel is very much
focused on the darker side of everything early episodes have covered things like how we fight the
world's deadliest disease how the congo suffered the worst of colonialism and how the nazis escaped
europe to south america on the rat lines so if you'd like to explore the darker side of history
and science please check out into the shadows there is a link below and now today's video
every february the 15th the people of tana an island in the south pacific archipelago of vanuatu
gathered to take part in a strange ritual in a display that would not look out of place at
a 4th of july celebration or super bowl halftime show an american flag is reverently carried into
the village square and raised up a bamboo flagpole then as the stars and stripes flap in the breeze
accompany a forty men with the letters usa painted in red white and blue across their chests and
backs shoulder bamboo rifles and perform precision marches and drill routines before the village
chief this celebrity ceremony is performed in honor of john frum a mythical american
soldier who it is believed will one day return to vanuatu and bring its people vast resources
and wealth the jonathan religion is one of the last remaining examples cargo cults a curious
spiritual movement born of the often turbulent collisions between industrialized western nations
and the peoples of the south pacific while long dismissed as primitive superstitious nonsense
cargo cults are in fact sophisticated belief systems that reveal much about the cultural
and spiritual disruptions wrought by colonialism and the determination of pacific islanders to
preserve their traditional cultures first coined in 1945 by norris mervin bird an administrator in
the then australian territory of papua the turn cargo cult is derived from the new guinea pigeon
or toc pissing word cargo a catch-all term for commercial goods when the people of new guinea
and other pacific islands first encountered european explorers and traders in the 18th and
19th centuries they were astonished by the sheer quantity of manufactured goods they brought with
them such as clothing metal tools medicine and weapons especially firearms as the europeans began
trading with the island as these western goods became increasingly fetishized and began feeding
into and altering traditional social structures in unusual ways at the time many traditional south
pacific societies were characterized by big man political systems in which prestigious status were
determined by how many gifts one could distribute to the rest of the community those who could give
generously were respected as big men while those who could not reciprocate were considered garbage
men in the face of european colonizers with their seemingly endless supply of goods which
the islanders could not hope to match these societies began to feel like they had all suddenly
become garbage men admiration of the europeans soon turned to resentment and the islanders came
to believe that the european's endless cargo was actually meant for them but was being selfishly
withheld by the colonists cargo cults thus emerged in order to secure said cargo for the islanders
allowing them to finally expel the colonists and enter a new golden age of material prosperity
the trouble was no one had ever actually seen the europeans manufacture their cargo leading the
islanders to assume that they possessed some kind of magic that spontaneously made the cargo appear
by ship or airplane as we shall see this belief resulted in the development of some truly bizarre
rituals the earliest recorded cargo cult was the tika movement which arose on the island of fiji
in 1885. the movement was led by tukur a spiritual leader who claimed to have visions or myth dreams
which revealed to him the path to his people's salvation by returning to traditional morality
rejecting colonial ideas and adopting other dramatic cultural reforms tuka believed the people
of fiji could regain their lost ancestral potency or manner in this respect the deacon movement was
similar to the ghost dance movement which swept the indigenous peoples of the western united
states five years later started by northern paiute spiritual leader avoca the ghost dance galvanized
resistance against the american government among western indigenous tribes like the lakota
ultimately contributing to the famous massacre at wounded knee on december 9 1890. however the
first well-documented case of an archetype cargo cult was the vailala madness which began in papua
new guinea in 1919. this incident was vividly described by danish adventurer jens pejare in
his 1956 book the last cannibals the rumor spread that a big ship was on the way to them from the
spirits in heaven fully loaded with tobacco cloth preserves electric torches knives axes
and with rifles and ammunition too it was said later the weapons were to drive the whites out
of the country so that they couldn't steal any more of the goods that were intended
for the people some dark knight or rather the natives would imagine they saw a ship nearing
the village from the sea they would run out of their huts swing burning torches and shout and
scream in hysterical excitement they completely lost their mental balance and these fevers of
hysteria could last for several weeks even months the whole rhythm of daily life of the village was
disrupted the fields went untended for now it was not necessary to work in the many more for
all they needed was on the way in some places they even started to build large huts to store
the goods when the ship arrived in the huts they put stone sticks and piles of leaves as symbols of
the guns and goods they expected other reactions were even more extreme in certain places islanders
destroyed their crops burned down their villages and slaughtered all their pigs believing that
infinite quantities of food and other goods would soon be arriving from their ancestors
unsurprisingly this cargo never came and many of these people stopped to death the greatest
single wellspring of cargo cults however was the second world war which saw hundreds of thousands
of american troops descend upon the islands of the south pacific and with the troops came the cargo
in truly staggering quantities the islanders could scarcely have imagined landed by ship or
dropped by airplane a seemingly endless supply of trucks radios clocks medicine tin food chocolate
bars coca-cola and other exotic goods flooded onto the islands a great quantity of which was sold or
given to the natives by american gis thousands of pacific islanders were also employed in the
construction of airfields and other military infrastructure further exposing them to the
wonders of industrialized american life but when the war ended in 1945 the airfields closed down
the americans laughed and the cargo stopped arriving desperate to get it back the islanders
began imitating various american practices which they believed to be magic rituals that made the
cargo appear in one famous case cargo cultists constructed an entire full-sized mock airfield
complete with runways taxiways dummy aircraft waiting rooms and a control tower with a bamboo
antenna manned day and night by a radio operator wearing dummy headphones other groups built mock
harbors to entice cargo ships while still others like the aforementioned tanner army of vanuatu
recreated the marching and drill of american soldiers in an attempt to summon the coveted cargo
other american symbols including cross-shaped grave markers are also common fixtures
of cargo cult installations it is around this time that various cargo cults also acquired their own
messiah in the form of jon frum likely deriving from an unknown u.s serviceman's introduction as
john from america john frum is described as a white american gi who will one day return
bringing vast amounts of cargo and prosperity to the south pacific many islanders claimed to have
seen this messiah while intoxicated on a local drink called carver while over the years several
spiritual leaders have claimed to be the physical incarnation of jon from such cults have had a
powerful impact on the culture and politics of the region over the last 75 years for example when the
elections were held for papua's house of assembly in 1964 the inhabitants of new hanover island
decided that their candidate should be none other than u.s president lyndon b johnson the islanders
refused to pay their taxes and instead took up a collection to entice the president to run for
them to their great but inevitable disappointment lbj failed to turn up in 1957 jon from followers
formed their own political party in order to oppose the creation of an independent nation of
vanuatu such independence they feared would result in a centralized western-style government and the
erosion of traditional customs the party still exists and will celebrate its 65th anniversary
in 2022. indeed though numerous cargo cults sprang up throughout the century in new guinea and the
surrounding islands including the turagan nation the fifth cargo belief and the kivung bining the
john from cult of tanner is one of the few still going strong counting nearly half of vanuatu's
twenty thousand citizens among its members perhaps the strangest cargo cult of all though belongs to
the residents of yao hananen who worship of all people prince philip duke of edinburgh
and the long time consort of queen elizabeth ii this god came about thanks to an ancient
prophecy about the son of a mountain spirit who traveled far to marry a rich and powerful woman
sometime in the 1960s the people of vanuatu then known as the new hebrides applied this
legend to prince philip whose official portrait hung in every colonial administrative office
their beliefs were further boistered in 1971 when the duke resplendent in his white naval uniform
paid an official visit to the new hebrides capital of dwart villa reportedly amused to honor by the
veneration he received over the next 50 years philip made sure to send his worshipers copies
of his official portrait whenever a new one was taken three are known to survive kept his
venerated relics in the home of village chief jack malia one from the 1960s one from 1980 showing
philip wielding a traditional pig hunting club and one from 2000. there is a strange irony to
this particular cult given prince philip's long history of culturally insensitive comments says
journalist nick squires wrote in 2007. he once asked a group of australian aborigines
if they still threw spears at one another he inquired of a black british member of parliament
what country he came from and he advised some british students in china not to stay too long
for fear of developing slitty eyes nonetheless when prince philip passed away in april 2021
perhaps none mourned harder than his devotees in yao nan tribal leader chief yapper sent his
condolences to the royal family the union jack was flown half mast in front of the nakamal or meeting
place and for two weeks the local people gathered to perform elaborate funeral rites in honor of the
departed duke which included dancing processions feasts and the ritual slaughtering of pigs
according to anthropologist kirk huffman with philip's passing the group's veneration will
likely transfer to his son prince charles since the 1950s the term cargo cult has entered the
english lexicon as a metaphor for venerating an object or practice without fully understanding
its function in his 1954 commencement address at caltech physicist richard feynman coined the term
cargo cult science to describe this phenomenon in the field of scientific inquiry as an example
feynman cites the famous 1909 oil drop experiment conducted by american physicist robert milliken
to measure the charge of the electron due to an incorrect value for the viscosity of air
milliken's original results were slightly off from the currently accepted figure but while subsequent
independent experiments eventually honed in on the correct value they did so in an unnatural way
rather than having a random distribution around the correct value these results instead drift
incrementally from milliken's original figures this fine monarchy suggests that scientists
were so afraid to contradict milliken that they rejected any experimental results that deviated
too much from his original findings other examples of cargo cult science listed by feynman include
leaving out evidence that contradicts a pet theory only publishing studies with positive results and
overstating the practical applications of research in order to secure funding the cargo cult metaphor
has also made its way into the field of computer science where cargo cult programming refers to the
practice of blindly copy pasting code or using particular programming structures and protocols
without understanding exactly why they are written that way according to software engineer steve
mcconnell such practices can also worm their way into the very organizational structures and
cultures of software companies themselves these imposter organizations look at successful
companies like microsoft observe that they generate very little documentation offer
stock options to their employees and then require them to work mountains of overtime they conclude
that if they too minimize documentation offer stock options and require extensive overtime
they will be successful the less documentation and the more overtime the better but these
organizations miss the fact that microsoft and other successful commitment-oriented companies
don't require overtime they hire people who love to create software they provide lavish
organizational support and rewards for creating software and then they turn them loose the natural
outcome is that software developers and managers choose to work long hours voluntarily imposter
organizations confuse the effect long hours with the cause high motivation we call the imposter
organization sweatshops because they emphasize working hard rather than working smart and they
tend to be chaotic and ineffective they're not very enjoyable to work for either but while
through such metaphors cargo cultism has taken on an almost universally derogatory connotation
anthropologists warn against dismissing these movements as mere primitive superstition or
even using the term cargo cult to describe them such labels they argue greatly oversimplify and
generalize a diverse and complex array of cultural movements that emerged in response
to the disruption of colonialism according to ralph raganbani director of the vanuatu
national culture council cults like this are a way to preserve traditional culture and reject
organized religion there was a great deal of pressure from missionaries for people to abandon
their customs and embrace the church the colonial authorities arrested a lot of the cult leaders but
that only made them grow more it's still basically a cultural preservation movement it melds exposure
to the west with old belief systems it served people well and as quaint and bizarre as dummy
airfields mock us army drill and john from might seem to outsiders the fundamentals of cargo cult
belief as kirk huffman points out are not all that different to those of traditional christianity
if you say to the tanis you've been waiting all this time and neither john frum nor philip has
turned up i'd point out that christians have been waiting for the return of jesus for 2000 years
this is not south sea's mumbo jumbo these are strong vibrant millennial movements and they're
only getting stronger so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit
that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe as always thank you for watching