Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Wham and I'm Christian Saga, and
Speaker 1: today we're gonna be talking about cargo colts. But we're
Speaker 1: not just gonna approach it um from my anthropological stand form.
Speaker 1: We're looking at this in terms of what it says
Speaker 1: about our understanding of science, programming, uh, the environment in
Speaker 1: which we live. In a way, it's a deceptively deep topic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in this because I feel like we're
Speaker 1: not just going to be explaining something for the audience,
Speaker 1: but like that it has applications to our every day
Speaker 1: and also to the way that we view science. Um.
Speaker 1: Similar to the sort of what we did with that
Speaker 1: Wicked Problems episode a couple of weeks ago exactly, this
Speaker 1: one should be a good conversation starter as well. So
Speaker 1: before we get into that, though, we just want to
Speaker 1: remind you podcasting that's not all we do. We're also
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Speaker 1: And it's a it's our own little cargo cult right yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: but before we get into it, we're just gonna just
Speaker 1: initially define cargo cults. So this is where you have,
Speaker 1: you know, an indigenous population um in an island environment
Speaker 1: rather cut off from the rest of the world, and
Speaker 1: then they are suddenly privy to the wonders and marvels
Speaker 1: and materialism of the greater outside world, of of of
Speaker 1: modern civilizations and all of their products and goods, and
Speaker 1: then how they respond to that, Uh, maybe they end
Speaker 1: up building up you know, sort of fake airstrips or
Speaker 1: even airplane effigies to try and lure the foreigners back
Speaker 1: so that they can receive their bountiful goods once more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this may sound like something that's like a fairly
Speaker 1: isolated incident, but it's actually it happened with hundreds of
Speaker 1: different native people's in the Melanesia region, especially during World
Speaker 1: War two. Um, in the Pacific theater, I guess is
Speaker 1: how they would put it. But anthropologists after and during
Speaker 1: the war found a lot of these organizations and they
Speaker 1: were all basically operating around along the same lines that
Speaker 1: you're talking about here, um building these fake runways, fake wharves.
Speaker 1: I mean, we I'm calling them fake, but they to
Speaker 1: them they were real. They were building radio towers out
Speaker 1: of bamboo. Yeah, they were in a way. They were
Speaker 1: like I kept to keep thinking of them as as
Speaker 1: affigies as uh as you know, it's almost like a
Speaker 1: you know, a holy icon to try and bring back
Speaker 1: this presence. Yeah. Absolutely so. The I think the modern
Speaker 1: day names for some of the places that you would
Speaker 1: recognize or Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanua to
Speaker 1: New Caledonia and Fiji. So I mean actually, like we
Speaker 1: hear some of those Fiji we think of as being
Speaker 1: like a resort place, right, but you know this, not
Speaker 1: too long ago there were people there who thought, hey,
Speaker 1: if I build an airstrip, uh, it will bring some deity,
Speaker 1: will bring me cargo goods that will make my life
Speaker 1: better and basically a send me to a paradise. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And these are also areas where um anthropologists, even up
Speaker 1: into recent times here have been able to explore really
Speaker 1: more more ancient and primal ways of viewing the world
Speaker 1: through local beliefs. It's really been a you know, a
Speaker 1: rich place to study how the human condition works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's especially interesting. Uh, we have some examples. And in fact,
Speaker 1: that John From movement in particular, is I believe still
Speaker 1: going today. There's still even though the people who are
Speaker 1: involved in that movement, some of them have been to
Speaker 1: western civilized quote unquote countries and they've seen what is
Speaker 1: out there in the rest of the world, they still
Speaker 1: hold onto this belief that a guy named John From
Speaker 1: is going to show up one day with a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff. Now, this whole topic, especially as we begin
Speaker 1: to dive into it and and as we explore it
Speaker 1: in greater depth. Uh, it's easy to sort of look
Speaker 1: at it in very black and white terms, to look
Speaker 1: at it in terms of modern and primitive of you know,
Speaker 1: of Western and Pacific. Uh. So to sort of ground
Speaker 1: our exploration, I want to introduce a very sci fi
Speaker 1: uh forward thinking concept here, and this is uh, the
Speaker 1: idea of an outside context problem. This was this was
Speaker 1: coined by sci fi author one of my personal favorites, E.
Speaker 1: And M. Banks, in his culture book Accession. Now, this
Speaker 1: this occurs. An outside context problem occurs when a society
Speaker 1: or civilization encounters a problem, threat, or complication that they
Speaker 1: have no context to prepare for or perhaps even efficiently
Speaker 1: deal with. So the classic example is a colonial warship
Speaker 1: arriving on the shores of a primitive society. Uh. In
Speaker 1: the book Accession, it's an object from outside the known
Speaker 1: universe and seemingly older than the known universe popping into
Speaker 1: an existence. Now, another example, and this is apparently the
Speaker 1: the inspiration for for banks creation of the term outside
Speaker 1: context problems is that he uh, back in the day
Speaker 1: he was playing the original version of sid Meier's civilization
Speaker 1: and UH, if you've ever played this, it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's you take control of different civilizations and then you're
Speaker 1: you're you're going up this technology tree. And so sometimes
Speaker 1: you're often you're encountering other civilizations at the same technological level,
Speaker 1: but sometimes there's a discrepancy and UM and for instance,
Speaker 1: one might find oneself in a situation playing this game
Speaker 1: where you're encountering a modern battleship while you're still stuck
Speaker 1: using wooden sailing ships. Outside context problem. You couldn't possibly
Speaker 1: prepare for it now, and an outside context problem is
Speaker 1: often fatal. Most societies and civilizations only ever encounter one
Speaker 1: of these things. UH, and history provides us with numerous
Speaker 1: examples of how these typically play out. UH. Most of
Speaker 1: them seem to come to us through you know, the
Speaker 1: more recent time and more recent times the colonial expansion
Speaker 1: of the imperialist European powers, but we also see some
Speaker 1: thought provoking examples from the twentieth century UM, particularly with
Speaker 1: car occults, which we're discussing here because essentially what we're
Speaker 1: dealing with is how a society, how a culture responds
Speaker 1: to UH an outside context problem to contact with this
Speaker 1: with this force, with this world that is so vastly
Speaker 1: different from what they were prepared for. And what do
Speaker 1: you do? Do you do? You? You do? You? You
Speaker 1: are you just consumed by this power? You just completely
Speaker 1: wiped out by it is? Does everything that you were
Speaker 1: previously come to an end? Uh? Do you do you
Speaker 1: somehow miraculously hold out like the you know, the heroes
Speaker 1: and some sort of science fiction story, or do you
Speaker 1: find some sort of middle ground? Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: interesting too, because going back to what you're saying about
Speaker 1: the um, the idea of looking at these cultures as
Speaker 1: primitive from our lens, I think it's helpful to think
Speaker 1: about this both from like try to put yourself in
Speaker 1: their shoes first of all, but then also try to
Speaker 1: put yourself in that like civilization mode where we're in
Speaker 1: present day society, and like, I don't know, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of like a sci fi example of this,
Speaker 1: like some portal opens up and a huge alien spaceship
Speaker 1: comes out, and the aliens come down, and they don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to make war with us immediately, but you know,
Speaker 1: they're so technologically superior to us that they seem like gods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It actually reminds me of the Cat Stephens song Longer Boats.
Speaker 1: Do you remember this one? Not particularly? Okay, Uh, it's uh.
Speaker 1: When I would hear it when I was younger, I
Speaker 1: always it always brought to mine images of indigenous people's
Speaker 1: encounters with colonial Europeans. Right, But apparently Stevens has said
Speaker 1: in interview that the song was about an encounter with aliens, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it makes a little bit more sense. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: But it's kind of interesting because it works either way
Speaker 1: in the same way that anything we're talking about in
Speaker 1: terms of cargo cults at it could easily apply to
Speaker 1: a sci fi scenario in which we encounter an alien civilization. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I think, like we can use cargo cults
Speaker 1: this sort of metaphor isn't the right word, but like
Speaker 1: a model to apply to all of humanity, regardless of
Speaker 1: where they are technologically or culturally, and sort of look
Speaker 1: at it and say, like, this is how we as
Speaker 1: human beings are going to respond to things that are
Speaker 1: outside of our imagination. Basically, um, and we have examples
Speaker 1: of that, specifically UM talking about science and sort of
Speaker 1: how we deify science in our modern day culture. But
Speaker 1: then also it's really interesting bit in here in the
Speaker 1: research about programming and companies and how they go forward
Speaker 1: in a kind of cargo cult manner as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it it really has roots that extend far beyond
Speaker 1: the mere uh you know, geographical area of the South
Speaker 1: Pacific here. So, as we previously mentioned, it would be
Speaker 1: easy to mistake cargo culture, cargoism as it's often referred
Speaker 1: as the mere worship of a technologically superior civilization. It
Speaker 1: it brings to mind Arthur C. Clark's third law, which
Speaker 1: states any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a great law, and it's but but
Speaker 1: but at times it can it can allow you, with
Speaker 1: this situation to sort of stop at that point, right, Um,
Speaker 1: But the the anthropological evidence seems to suggest something more
Speaker 1: complex than that, though they're not less powerful by any means,
Speaker 1: because remember, these cargo shipments, airplanes, aircraft, all of it
Speaker 1: is making an impression on the people with an existing cosmology.
Speaker 1: They didn't just you know, fall out of the womb
Speaker 1: and then perceive these with these wonders and cast everything
Speaker 1: else aside. They already already had a fully formed, though
Speaker 1: different worldview and then suddenly they're encountering you know, in
Speaker 1: the case of World War two, I think it's important
Speaker 1: for us to remember, and we have to sort of
Speaker 1: put ourselves in a different frame of mind the further
Speaker 1: we get away from it in time. But this was
Speaker 1: a time of true global war in which we had
Speaker 1: economic engines of total war encircling the globe. It was.
Speaker 1: It was a true world war, which is a little
Speaker 1: alien for for us to consider. Yeah, given where we
Speaker 1: are in time. Well, that's That's one of the things
Speaker 1: about cargo cults that I think makes again like manifest
Speaker 1: about just human culture in general, is that, like it's yeah,
Speaker 1: like we in modern civilization can imagine the scenarios that
Speaker 1: are outside of our own personal like right in front
Speaker 1: of us experiences like for instance, economics, right, Like we
Speaker 1: we think we have a grasp on that idea, but
Speaker 1: we're not actually witnessing the events that lead to it.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of in its own way imaginary, right, Uh.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's essentially what they were encountering
Speaker 1: as well, when they would you know, see this uh
Speaker 1: new age basically showing up in front of them, starting
Speaker 1: with cargo deliveries coming to colonial officials, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: it just seems like these people are writing down stuff
Speaker 1: on scraps of paper, and then when they do that,
Speaker 1: a ship shows up and delivers a bunch of things
Speaker 1: they need. So we do the same thing, right, And
Speaker 1: obviously it doesn't quite work that way. As H. Richard
Speaker 1: Feynman says, and we're gonna probably repeat a lot in
Speaker 1: this episode, the planes didn't come. One of the other
Speaker 1: things that's interesting here too is conflict arises out of
Speaker 1: these cargo cults as well. I mean, sometimes the foreigners
Speaker 1: will show up with the cargo and they'll be seen
Speaker 1: as having intercepted and stolen the cargo that was actually
Speaker 1: meant for the native peoples of this region. Right, So
Speaker 1: they'll think, oh, well that was Hey, I I wrote
Speaker 1: my note on the piece of paper and it didn't
Speaker 1: show up for me. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you show up and you've got all this stuff. You've
Speaker 1: got I don't know, radios and microwaves or whatever. Uh,
Speaker 1: that that's got to be mine. You must have stolen it, right,
Speaker 1: And so that leads to conflict. In fact, the Japanese
Speaker 1: during World War Two saw they became highly unpopular in
Speaker 1: this region, um, mainly because they tried to disarm and
Speaker 1: disperse the population. But the natives essentially thought that they
Speaker 1: were interfering with this kind of cargo cult mentality and
Speaker 1: attacked their warships with canoes, uh, And they thought that
Speaker 1: they would be invulnerable because they doused themselves in a
Speaker 1: kind of holy water, but then they were slain by
Speaker 1: Japanese machine guns. So it's really tragic actually when you
Speaker 1: think about it on a kind of larger scale. But
Speaker 1: of course, you know, all of World War two was
Speaker 1: and so where this ties into, I think stuff that
Speaker 1: we're beginning to see in in modern society as well,
Speaker 1: is the idea that like there's a connection between the
Speaker 1: cargo being delivered and the deity manifesting and the end times, right,
Speaker 1: that like this is the end of our modern are
Speaker 1: not ours, but like the way of living that we
Speaker 1: understand is ending, and a new age will be brought
Speaker 1: about by this arrival, right, Uh. Essentially a limitialist worldview. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen it referred to that way and in a
Speaker 1: couple of the literature pieces of literature that we read
Speaker 1: for this piece. But yeah, that like some kind of
Speaker 1: cataclysmic event has to happen first before the paradise occurs,
Speaker 1: and so subsequently then there's this like weird logical behavior
Speaker 1: that they have because they're like, well, it's all gonna end,
Speaker 1: so let's just burn to the ground anyways, right, Like,
Speaker 1: let's we'll destroy all of our actual resources because who
Speaker 1: cares That airplane is going to come and bring us
Speaker 1: the cargo that we need and we're never gonna have
Speaker 1: to worry about growing crops or um maintaining livestock again. Right. So,
Speaker 1: I actually have a personal experience with a situation very
Speaker 1: similar to this that's happening in my life right now,
Speaker 1: and I think it's worth sharing with the listeners because
Speaker 1: maybe you have something else going on that's similar. My
Speaker 1: father believes that the end of the world is coming, uh,
Speaker 1: very strongly. Not only does he believe that's coming, he
Speaker 1: has a date. He thinks it's going to happen on
Speaker 1: October one of this year. Um. And so he is
Speaker 1: currently in the middle of making what I call his
Speaker 1: magical Mystery Tour. Uh. He's touring around the world going
Speaker 1: to see all of the sites that he either hasn't
Speaker 1: gotten to see yet, Like he went to Jerusalem, or
Speaker 1: he just took his wife to New York City or
Speaker 1: visiting family members that he hasn't seen in a long time,
Speaker 1: because he thinks this is the end. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: when I was reading about these cargo cults, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is what's good. Like it seems crazy to me,
Speaker 1: but it's the same thing that's kind of going on
Speaker 1: with my dad, right that he's like, well, in order
Speaker 1: for Paradise to show up, right, because it's this is
Speaker 1: very deeply connected to his beliefs in Christianity. Um, he
Speaker 1: thinks that it has to it has to all be
Speaker 1: destroyed first, right, Like we can't imagine a world without
Speaker 1: a new world, without an apocalypse. Yeah, I mean, you're right.
Speaker 1: I mean the ideas that are wrapped up in cargoism,
Speaker 1: they are not that dissimilar from from many of the
Speaker 1: the ideas existing in in in various Christian movements that
Speaker 1: are very much based on the imminent into the world
Speaker 1: as we know it, the imminent return of a savior.
Speaker 1: And he creates a very dramatic model for the near
Speaker 1: future with with a with a more or less definite
Speaker 1: timeline to work with. Whereas maybe that's part of the
Speaker 1: attraction of it, right, is that it gives you a
Speaker 1: definite timeline for for the future that is just not
Speaker 1: realistic outside of this particular worldview. Yeah, I mean for me, like,
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't want to dive to down
Speaker 1: the personal hole for for myself here, just because that
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't be fair to the audience. We should cover
Speaker 1: the topic at hand here. But looking at my dad's
Speaker 1: experience with it, like it seems to me like it's
Speaker 1: more of an issue of like he's come to this
Speaker 1: point where he doesn't really see how he fits in
Speaker 1: to the modern world, right, Like, um, it's it's like
Speaker 1: almost like it's grown past him. And so the way
Speaker 1: that he deals with that is saying, well, then, of
Speaker 1: course that like if I'm irrelevant, then that must mean
Speaker 1: the world's gonna end, right that like there's some kind
Speaker 1: of imaginary it's easier to create something that's fantastical, right,
Speaker 1: like in the magical thinking terms than it is to
Speaker 1: sort of come to grips with the complexities of reality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and apocalypse is kind of the uh, it's kind of
Speaker 1: the reset, but it's kind of the age quit even yeah,
Speaker 1: of life, right, Yeah, I don't know if others out
Speaker 1: there have experiences with like something like that, or if
Speaker 1: I know, it seems pretty crazy to me when I
Speaker 1: when I hear my family members talk about this, but
Speaker 1: you know it is it's just kind of interesting like
Speaker 1: that you can see somebody in two sixteen sort of
Speaker 1: initiating the same behaviors of I'm just gonna leave all
Speaker 1: that other stuff behind and let it basically uh lay fallow.
Speaker 1: Uh and and because why bother right, like the it's
Speaker 1: it's the apocalypse is coming anyways, um and and all
Speaker 1: the goodies will come my way. I don't need to
Speaker 1: really worry about like earning money or I don't know,
Speaker 1: um that farming my fields. As the example goes with
Speaker 1: cargo cults, and of course it just brings us to
Speaker 1: the question of of how do you interpret the idea
Speaker 1: of cargoism, How do you interpret cargo itself or cargo
Speaker 1: as it's known in the Pigeon English is of melan Asia,
Speaker 1: Because on one hand, it's something that a cargo cult,
Speaker 1: you know, lead or instigated by a charis attic leader.
Speaker 1: That's always important to remember there are there are strong
Speaker 1: elements of cults as we know it inherent in these
Speaker 1: cargo cults. Um. So the uh they asked for it
Speaker 1: through dance, through marching, ritual communication with spirits, in the
Speaker 1: building of these effigies in some cases, so in its
Speaker 1: most literal form, we're talking about cargo as money or
Speaker 1: Western manufactured goods that are shipped into the island, and
Speaker 1: massive amounts particularly that we're talking about that you know,
Speaker 1: during the Pacific War. The most remarkable version, of course,
Speaker 1: is just about the recreation of landing strips and airplanes, um,
Speaker 1: you know, making it possible for these items to return. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean in down to wharves and warehouses and the
Speaker 1: radio towers. One is the one that kept getting me.
Speaker 1: They would actually build antennas, and it was like they
Speaker 1: didn't understand what an antenna was, but they saw what
Speaker 1: it looked like, and they knew there was some kind
Speaker 1: of cause and effect between the antenna and the cargo arriving, right. Um,
Speaker 1: so they did their best to replicate that. You know.
Speaker 1: I didn't encounter the in the material we're looking at,
Speaker 1: But I wonder to what extent um cargo cultism plays
Speaker 1: into ancient astro not beliefs. I'm assuming there's a strong
Speaker 1: connection there. Uh, But I'm not done. I'm not that
Speaker 1: familiar with all the ancient haster not the materials out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know if you've ever done an
Speaker 1: episode on it before. I'm wondering if the conspiracy guys
Speaker 1: here at how stuff works or do stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know, have done something on it. But
Speaker 1: can you just briefly summarize that for our audience. This
Speaker 1: is the idea that extraterrestrial visitors or I think in
Speaker 1: some cases you know, maybe it's somebody from the future,
Speaker 1: but anyway, some Essentially, it's saying that humanity as we
Speaker 1: know it was shaped by an outside context um event
Speaker 1: earlier in its existence. So you know, space aliens came
Speaker 1: and showed us how to make bread. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like the Stargate model, right, Like I think Stargate is
Speaker 1: sort of based off of that idea that, like the
Speaker 1: deities that were worshiped in ancient Egypt were actually technologically
Speaker 1: advanced aliens. There's something long list, and you know, I
Speaker 1: could see if someone were looking at the cargo cult model,
Speaker 1: you could take that model apply it to ancient civilizations
Speaker 1: and you could try and make you know, you try
Speaker 1: and bring the two together and say, well, they built
Speaker 1: this particular monument uh as a kind of you know,
Speaker 1: fake radio tower. They were trying to um to recreate
Speaker 1: the form, though we're unable to understand the function of
Speaker 1: you know, very technologically advanced items. And I brought up
Speaker 1: economics earlier, So here's kind of an example of how
Speaker 1: the economics aspect played out in this region in a
Speaker 1: similar way to the cargo cult thing wasn't necessary. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were connected, but it wasn't necessarily an example of it.
Speaker 1: But so, for instance, they would find, hey, we're trading
Speaker 1: with these colonials that have shown up all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I don't know what. They're giving them cava maybe uh,
Speaker 1: and are selling them and uh, it's worth thirty pounds
Speaker 1: one week, right, And so they think, okay, this unit
Speaker 1: of cavas worth thirty pounds. And then a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks later, the colonials show up and they say, we're
Speaker 1: only going to give you five pounds for it now,
Speaker 1: and they go, well, what are you talking about? Why
Speaker 1: it was it's worth thirty pounds uh. And because they
Speaker 1: have no you know, outside context for understanding like fluctuations
Speaker 1: of the value of a pound or the value of
Speaker 1: cava or whatever. Uh it, it doesn't make sense for them, right,
Speaker 1: and that to us seems like a basic cause and
Speaker 1: effect type thing, right, but then extrapolate that outwards to
Speaker 1: like a d if it proportion, right. Yeah. So so
Speaker 1: with this literal idea of cargo, uh it's it's easy
Speaker 1: to see why many of these cults flared up and
Speaker 1: then died out right, because you can only build fake
Speaker 1: airplanes and landing strips and radio towers so long. You
Speaker 1: can only pray to these gods that people have seen
Speaker 1: so long before there it becomes apparent they're not coming
Speaker 1: back and you're not getting any of these material items. However,
Speaker 1: let's go back to that idea that there's very much
Speaker 1: a merger of ideas going on here, that these are
Speaker 1: people that had existing mythologies, that had an existing worldview,
Speaker 1: and they were impacted by the trauma of this outside
Speaker 1: context problem and not just completely reshaped by it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the way that Catholicism has affected
Speaker 1: some localities like mystical or supernatural beliefs, and they've sort
Speaker 1: of mixed together. Right. Um, I think the common one
Speaker 1: that a lot of people think of is like voodoo
Speaker 1: and hoo doo. It is. Actually somebody actually just wrote
Speaker 1: into us recently and asked us, asked us to do
Speaker 1: an episode on the difference between the two. And I
Speaker 1: don't really feel confident that in having done the research
Speaker 1: enough to explain it right here, but maybe we'll do
Speaker 1: something on that in the future. But like something like that,
Speaker 1: that merger of cultures is sort of what's going on here, right, Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So but it's like capital intersecting with religion. Yeah, yeah, indeed.
Speaker 1: I mean you end up with a sort of a
Speaker 1: metaphorical cargoism, where where cargo or or cago can also
Speaker 1: mean a number of things including return of dead ancestors,
Speaker 1: achievement of balanced exchange, relations with Europeans, um, you know,
Speaker 1: sense of honor and self worth, desire for political sovereignty,
Speaker 1: the transformation and transcendence of everyday reality. So so cargo,
Speaker 1: the thing you're you're asking for, becomes less about this
Speaker 1: material delivery and more of a spiritual delivery. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: so today the ones that survived, like we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: to you about John from uh, they maybe they're still
Speaker 1: cargo cults, or maybe they've stopped being cargo cults, and
Speaker 1: they've merged into becoming churches or what we recognized as
Speaker 1: a church, or even a political party or a business organization. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: I guess it's like their version of um, like an
Speaker 1: Elks lodge or something like that. Yeah, yeah, they are
Speaker 1: Knights of Columbus. I don't know. Sorry, that's like a
Speaker 1: New England reference. I don't know do they we're in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Do they have Knights of Columbus and Elks lodges down here?
Speaker 1: They have Elk lodges. I'm not totally certain about Knights
Speaker 1: of Columbus. Oh, that's probably not really our bag anyways.
Speaker 1: I don't know that we would necessarily know. Um well,
Speaker 1: I the Elks clubs were really big when I grew up,
Speaker 1: Like that was very much a too important part of
Speaker 1: the local community. Um So, some anthropologists argue that a
Speaker 1: lot of this boils down to the manner by which
Speaker 1: Melanesian cultures embrace a and this is a from anthropologist
Speaker 1: Lamont and Lyndstrom. That's an awesome name. He uh says
Speaker 1: that they embrace they quote constant background of imminent cargoism
Speaker 1: or expectation of sudden episodic change, which I really like
Speaker 1: that definition because it plays into nice nicely to this
Speaker 1: idea of the trauma of the outside context problem. And
Speaker 1: I have a few other just quick definitions of cargoism
Speaker 1: that come from a few of these from a few
Speaker 1: different sources we looked at, and I just want to
Speaker 1: roll through them just so we had just to make
Speaker 1: sure we have that firm grounding before we continue. UM.
Speaker 1: Christian Science Monitor correspondent Nick Squire's uh defined it as
Speaker 1: quote a highly complex reaction by bewildered Islanders to the
Speaker 1: influence of Western modernity. UH. Kirk Huffman, a British anthropologist
Speaker 1: who lived in Venatu for seventeen years. UH the defined
Speaker 1: it as quote a way for traditional people to come
Speaker 1: to terms with colonialism and Christianity. And Ralph Reagan Reagan AVU,
Speaker 1: director of the Vanatu Natural Cultural Council UM, says quote
Speaker 1: it's basically a cultural preservation movement and melds exposure to
Speaker 1: the West with old belief systems. It served people well uh.
Speaker 1: And he he also describes it as kind of a
Speaker 1: rejection of fully packaged Christianity. So it all comes back
Speaker 1: around to this idea that cargo cults were kind of
Speaker 1: the middle ground survival method, and so that they you know,
Speaker 1: they they couldn't they couldn't do nothing but change. But
Speaker 1: this there was a way to change that didn't mean
Speaker 1: just completely giving in to what the colonials wanted you
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, which is I mean, I guess like
Speaker 1: we'll have to wait until the aliens show up and
Speaker 1: conquer us. But like that's kind of how I imagine
Speaker 1: it would go, right, unless it goes I mean, there's
Speaker 1: so many science fiction portrayals of first contact like that.
Speaker 1: But but I suppose the other option is that it
Speaker 1: could just be like utterly violent, you know. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we're about to take a break, but when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about two specific examples of cargo cults,
Speaker 1: the John From Movement and the Prince Philip Movement. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back, so let's get into John From. This is
Speaker 1: really like the it's really well laid out in this
Speaker 1: long form article in Smithsonian magazine. And uh I I
Speaker 1: was absolutely kind of enthralled by this story of I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't remember when the piece was written.
Speaker 1: It was relatively recent though, right, And this guy went
Speaker 1: and visited this cult and talk to all of them
Speaker 1: interviewed them, and it us cults almost doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: the right term to use, you know. Cargo cult is
Speaker 1: the term the anthropologist coined to describe this, but this
Speaker 1: one's been going for so long that it doesn't really
Speaker 1: feel like that. Yeah, and the Smithsonian article in question
Speaker 1: is in John they Trust, and we'll make sure there's
Speaker 1: a link to it on a landing page for this
Speaker 1: episode step to Blow your Mind dot com. But yeah,
Speaker 1: John From, Uh, who is John From? Well, John From
Speaker 1: is probably John from America that we think that's the
Speaker 1: supposed root of it. Nobody really knows who this guy is.
Speaker 1: There's a um, you know, record within their culture of him, obviously,
Speaker 1: but we don't know who John From was. Apparently it
Speaker 1: happened in like the nineteen thirties, right, Yeah, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it uh And it it ties in perfectly. It's it's
Speaker 1: basically the main example of CARGOI isom and it it
Speaker 1: ties into everything we've discussed so far. It entails the
Speaker 1: sort of paradoxical promise of both uh you know, returned
Speaker 1: and preserved customs uh and the alien materialism of the
Speaker 1: distant US, you know, engaging in both uh, both literal
Speaker 1: and metaphorical cargo. Uh. This has been very much the
Speaker 1: one on the model of cargoism where we see the
Speaker 1: construction of the fake airplanes and radio towers and landing strips,
Speaker 1: um and it's uh, it's still going. Uh. February is
Speaker 1: John From Day where the faithful celebrate um John From
Speaker 1: and continue to pray for his return. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: ideas you know, like like we've described with cargo cults before,
Speaker 1: in this episode, he's going to return one day. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is to clarify, this is in Venua to
Speaker 1: on the remote island of tana Um and he's going
Speaker 1: to show up, and he's gonna bring radios, TVs, trucks, boats, watches,
Speaker 1: ice box machines, medicine, Coca Cola, and many wonderful things.
Speaker 1: I'm glad Coca Cola made it in there because it
Speaker 1: is it's a pretty wonderful thing. Uh. I didn't in
Speaker 1: this episode, but yeah, like uh, it's just interesting. Basically
Speaker 1: the idea is, and you know, in the mythos of
Speaker 1: John From he's a white man who showed up, Uh
Speaker 1: told them, Hey, you don't need to go along with
Speaker 1: what these colonialists are telling you to do. Follow me
Speaker 1: and I'll be back. I'm gonna go away, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna come back and I'm gonna bring stuff to you.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm glad you mentioned the Coca Cola specifically,
Speaker 1: because if you if you want to get into the
Speaker 1: idea of of of of commercial globalization, realization has its
Speaker 1: own kind of religion and cult, visit the Coca Cola
Speaker 1: Museum here in Atlanta because it is light entering the
Speaker 1: spaceship temple of a of a of a consumerist church. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I say that without any you know, comment on
Speaker 1: the product itself. But it's like, it's like if John
Speaker 1: Draper at the end of of mad Men really did
Speaker 1: found his own religion in a way he did. I mean, really,
Speaker 1: if you're confused by the ending of the Madman series,
Speaker 1: go to the Coca Cola Museum because that is kind
Speaker 1: of the more sense. Yeah, that well, that everything will
Speaker 1: make sense. You're like, oh John John Hamm's Don Draper
Speaker 1: becomes God at the end of mad Man. I can
Speaker 1: definitely attest to the cult of Coca Cola in my
Speaker 1: international travels. I mean, it's everywhere obviously, and it uh,
Speaker 1: it tastes differently wherever you're going. In fact, I have
Speaker 1: never been to the Coca Cola Museum despite having lived
Speaker 1: here for ten years. But uh, I climbed the Great
Speaker 1: Wall of China when I was sixteen years old, and
Speaker 1: I remember, um, there was like a like sort of
Speaker 1: like a rest point, right, and you could buy snacks,
Speaker 1: and there are obviously snacks that were meant to be
Speaker 1: for Westerners who were going across the Great Wall of China.
Speaker 1: And they had something called Choca Cola and it was
Speaker 1: designed to look exactly like a you know, a red
Speaker 1: and white Coca Cola design, but it tasted kind of
Speaker 1: like if you mixed hot coca cola with you who
Speaker 1: and and uh and it was flat. And I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: like this isn't what I was expecting, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's kind of like reached. It's a it's
Speaker 1: the specter of consumerist or the hydra of consumerist products. Right.
Speaker 1: It's tentacles are everywhere. So one of my favorite parts
Speaker 1: about this John from America article was that the the
Speaker 1: guy who wrote it mentioned in particular how he spoke
Speaker 1: to the various leaders because they actually divided into two
Speaker 1: separate and there was almost like a civil war between them.
Speaker 1: I think they actually ended up having like a battle
Speaker 1: with axes or something like that that's described at one
Speaker 1: point it sounded awful, but um, one of the leaders
Speaker 1: had been to America and had spent time in California,
Speaker 1: and he was like, so you've been, You've seen where
Speaker 1: the cargo comes from. Why do you still, you know,
Speaker 1: espouses beliefs And he says. The guy's response was, well,
Speaker 1: you know, you Americans have been waiting for Christ to
Speaker 1: come back for two thousand years. How's it any different? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that really kind of hit me and went, oh yeah, okay, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's it's also worth worth noting you mentioned, like
Speaker 1: this individual has been to the to the US and
Speaker 1: what there are certain individuals in any of these movements
Speaker 1: that have they they they they have had the experience
Speaker 1: of of greater contact with the outside world. But most
Speaker 1: of the people who follow these the belief systems, they
Speaker 1: do not. They live in very um, very rural areas
Speaker 1: with very limited access to any of the modern communication
Speaker 1: infrastructure that we take for granted. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: Prince Philip. That's the other one. Uh, And it's again
Speaker 1: like another one that's that's uh, you know, highly connected
Speaker 1: to Western culture sort of infiltrating these societies. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Prince Philip movement, they venerate Britain's Prince Philip, husband to
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth the second born as of this recording, still kicking, uh,
Speaker 1: still kicking at the age. Uh. They cherished portraits of
Speaker 1: Prince Philip. They hold the feasts on his birthday, and
Speaker 1: they say things like, this is a quote he is
Speaker 1: he is a god, not a man. Sometimes we hear
Speaker 1: his voice, but we can't see him. So uh. This
Speaker 1: on the surface also sounds like just it's easy to
Speaker 1: take a very black and white view with this. You
Speaker 1: just imagine, uh, you know, the indigenous people they see
Speaker 1: this esteemed royal individual from uh, you know, a modern society,
Speaker 1: and they decide, this is a god, let's worship him.
Speaker 1: But it's a little more complicated than that. Um. The
Speaker 1: same thing ended up happening during World War Two with
Speaker 1: with Roosevelt. One of the cargo cults referred to him
Speaker 1: as Russa Fell, the friendly King of America, and he was,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the deities that they thought would
Speaker 1: bring them this sort of paradise. Yeah. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: and it The thing is it ends up it ties
Speaker 1: into traditional beliefs that they already had, including an ancient
Speaker 1: prophecy that the son of a mountain spirit would venture
Speaker 1: far away in search of a powerful woman to marry.
Speaker 1: When this ties in particularly to UH to Prince Philip
Speaker 1: movement here. So anyway, they have this idea of the
Speaker 1: mountain spirit marrying a powerful woman. So then they get
Speaker 1: Christian missionaries that that visit with tales of Christ. They
Speaker 1: blend some of that in. Then the locals began to
Speaker 1: see all the esteem that was afforded to Queen Elizabeth
Speaker 1: the Second UH and combined the ideas of their son
Speaker 1: of a mountain spirit with q E two's royal consort
Speaker 1: here UH and this would have been the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: or sixties, and Polife were bolted even more when the
Speaker 1: royal couple actually visited Vanato in nineteen seventy four. And
Speaker 1: there's apparently been an exchange of photographs and tribal icons
Speaker 1: and honors. I think like a club was sent UH
Speaker 1: to Prince Philip. UH. They don't hang out together, but
Speaker 1: they have sort of a limited exchange, but there's a
Speaker 1: kind of So for me, there's an interesting like, I
Speaker 1: don't know how to put it, Like I guess that
Speaker 1: we in America don't do so as much, but I
Speaker 1: know in Great Britain that there is like this weird
Speaker 1: celebrity slash deification reverence for the royal family, right. And
Speaker 1: so if you're in the royal family, if you're Queen Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: you're already fairly used to that, right, like that's been
Speaker 1: most of your life. Then when you go to this
Speaker 1: far away place and these people literally revere you as
Speaker 1: a god, Um, I wonder like if there's impact to that.
Speaker 1: It's it's weird. It reminds me a lot of the
Speaker 1: Rastafari movement. Of course, um believe that that highly Selassie,
Speaker 1: the former Emperor of of the Ethiopia, was the Messiah
Speaker 1: and uh, and so you had this situation where during
Speaker 1: his life time, you know, he's in Ethiopia, but in
Speaker 1: Jamaica there is this growing number of people who believe
Speaker 1: that he is divine. And then how does he deal
Speaker 1: with that? I mean, because he you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: not polite to completely, you know, squash their ideas. But
Speaker 1: then to what extent can you play along with it
Speaker 1: without you know, becoming delusional. Yeah, I guess I suppose
Speaker 1: like we'd like to think that somebody like Queen Elizabeth is,
Speaker 1: even though she's royal, that she's also decent enough to
Speaker 1: sort of not allow people to think that she's actually
Speaker 1: like a supernatural entity. Right, Well she's not, but her husband,
Speaker 1: but her husband is. I guess that's fair. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I actually I am not certain exactly
Speaker 1: what they think of her. But surely if she's the
Speaker 1: the queen and there, and if she's the spouse of
Speaker 1: a god, then then she's at least the Dammi God. Right.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's fascinating, especially since it's occurring with people
Speaker 1: who who were already we in what we think of
Speaker 1: as being modern and better and not primitive, right, are
Speaker 1: already revering these people in a way that's bordering on religious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then but then also to what extent you know, again,
Speaker 1: it's the melding too. So are they taking an existing
Speaker 1: belief system and sore just wrapping it in the skin
Speaker 1: Prince Philip, or or are they trying to understand these
Speaker 1: distant British royal figures by wrapping them in the myth
Speaker 1: or maybe it's a little bit of both. Yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear if anybody out there has a little
Speaker 1: bit more of a connection to this. I wonder if
Speaker 1: maybe this is something that our British listeners are a
Speaker 1: little bit more familiar with. Also, when you say wrapping
Speaker 1: them in the skin of Prince Philip, immediately think that, like,
Speaker 1: that's going to be the eli Roth version of this, right,
Speaker 1: Like he'll make some torture porn movie about a cargo cult,
Speaker 1: but they actually take the royal skin and just wrap
Speaker 1: it around the cargo at the end of the movie. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see that happening. Alright. Well, let perfect segue
Speaker 1: to talk about cargo cult science. Yeah, yeah, cargo cult
Speaker 1: science and UH. As we mentioned already, this idea comes
Speaker 1: to us from American theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen through UH and particularly he laid this out
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventy four cal Tech commencement speech, which
Speaker 1: is available online and it's also published in some of
Speaker 1: his books. Um, but he uses cargo cults as a
Speaker 1: metaphor for the public's interest in pseudo science. In particular,
Speaker 1: he invoked the cargoist use of landing strips, etcetera. In
Speaker 1: the John From movement, and his main targets worse when
Speaker 1: he was going after stuff like esp UFOs, natural medicines, um,
Speaker 1: these things that often seem scientific or their cloaked in science,
Speaker 1: but there's something missing. As you quoted him earlier, the
Speaker 1: planes don't land. Yeah, and Feineman. Uh. You know, he
Speaker 1: basically took it from looking at quote unquote pseudoscience, which
Speaker 1: doing a show like Stuptable in your mind. We both
Speaker 1: investigate and here that term thrown around a lot. Um.
Speaker 1: But he determined that actually, like even outside of pseudo science,
Speaker 1: we don't really live in a scientific world. We like
Speaker 1: to think that we do, but we don't. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. Like he was investigating mysticism, things like isolation
Speaker 1: tanks and John C. Lily, which we've covered recently. Even psychotherapy.
Speaker 1: He was convinced that a lot of psychotherapy was all
Speaker 1: similar to cargo cultism. Uh. And I love this story
Speaker 1: that was in this article that we looked at for
Speaker 1: this UM. He went to the famed I don't know
Speaker 1: what you call it as it is. It at slin
Speaker 1: It's I believe it's in California. It's like one of
Speaker 1: those sort of resort slash um body mind therapy places,
Speaker 1: and he was there. The story goes that he was
Speaker 1: there investigating and he was hanging out in a hot
Speaker 1: tub and there was a guy and a girl next
Speaker 1: to him in the hot tub, and the guy says
Speaker 1: to the girl, Hey, can I practice my massage techniques
Speaker 1: on you? And she says yeah, sure, okay, and uh
Speaker 1: he starts rubbing her feet in the bathtub in front
Speaker 1: of Richard Feynman and he goes, I think I think
Speaker 1: I'm on your pituitary gland right now, And Fineman goes, uh,
Speaker 1: you're pretty far away from it, buddy, and realizes like that,
Speaker 1: actually this guy was a reflexology student there at the
Speaker 1: Center and had been studying the science of reflexology, which
Speaker 1: is something I'd love to cover for the show. Um
Speaker 1: and but but he like had no basic principal understanding
Speaker 1: of where things were in the body and thought the
Speaker 1: pituitary gland was in your foot. Yeah, that's that's one
Speaker 1: of Fineman is one of these guys who in all
Speaker 1: of his writings, he's he's always throwing out these interesting
Speaker 1: little stories about himself. Uh that you know that they're
Speaker 1: often amusing. Uh there, here's a quote from this particular speech.
Speaker 1: He said that kind of sums up a lot about
Speaker 1: what we're talking. Says, So, I call these things cargo
Speaker 1: cult science because they follow all the apparent precepts and
Speaker 1: forms of science of investigation, but they're missing something essential
Speaker 1: because the planes don't land. So the form is perfect,
Speaker 1: it looks like it did before, but it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's form over function. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: it's a surface level understanding and deification of a thing
Speaker 1: without understanding how it actually works. There's something missing and
Speaker 1: what is that? Yeah, and so, like I said, like,
Speaker 1: he extrapolates that outwards later on from the pseudoscience world
Speaker 1: to the reality that he's working within in uh scientific academia,
Speaker 1: and he basically comes to the collusion that our science
Speaker 1: is basically to us is well, just give all the
Speaker 1: information that you've looked at to other people and that
Speaker 1: will help them judge the value of your contribution. Right.
Speaker 1: That's essentially how he viewed peer view uh science and um.
Speaker 1: But then he said, what about all these revelations in
Speaker 1: the past where like we've done scientific experiments, they have
Speaker 1: been published articles we've accepted them is fact, and then
Speaker 1: twenty fifty a hundred years later, we look back and
Speaker 1: we go, oh, they carried the two wrong on that equation.
Speaker 1: We've been totally wrong about this the whole time, and
Speaker 1: we reassess it and then realize, well, that that scientific
Speaker 1: system didn't really work, but this time it will. You know. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think and that it gets I mean, you know, ultimately,
Speaker 1: what he's arguing is missing in these these models of
Speaker 1: cargo cult sciences, scientific integrity and strict adherence to the
Speaker 1: scientific method. So in a way, what we're talking about
Speaker 1: here is realizing that scientific knowledge itself can have errors
Speaker 1: in it, but it's the but the scientific method that
Speaker 1: is the path where we by which we continue to
Speaker 1: change our scientific understanding of the world. We continue to
Speaker 1: evolve it and and realize where we've made mistakes. Uh,
Speaker 1: where past theories were inaccurate. Uh. And you know, to
Speaker 1: his point, you have to be ready to fail. You
Speaker 1: have to make your material um readily avail well so
Speaker 1: that individuals can point out that critics can point out
Speaker 1: where you may have gone wrong as well as read
Speaker 1: you know, where you think you went right. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: there's a point sort of towards the end of this
Speaker 1: article that we read where Fineman starts talking about sort
Speaker 1: of you know, if you've worked in the public sector
Speaker 1: or well, I guess it's not necessarily a public sector.
Speaker 1: If you've just worked in academia, especially doing science, you
Speaker 1: know that for some particular reasons, there's there's dirty financial
Speaker 1: realities behind it, right, And he said, you know, if
Speaker 1: we are only publishing the results that make us look good,
Speaker 1: that's dishonest. And he had a bunch of contemporaries that
Speaker 1: we're doing. You know, they would say, well, these results
Speaker 1: didn't come out the way that we need them too
Speaker 1: for us to get funding to do the thing we
Speaker 1: want to do, So we're not going to share them
Speaker 1: with the world. Now here's where I'm going to take
Speaker 1: it a little bit step further. And I imagine that
Speaker 1: there's some people out in the audience who are going
Speaker 1: to disagree with me strongly, So uh, send those angry
Speaker 1: tweets or hate mail to uh blow the mind at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com. I thought you're gonna give
Speaker 1: Joe's address, Oh yeah, at Joe McCormick. No, Uh, I
Speaker 1: would say, if if Fineman was you know still looking
Speaker 1: at this today in modern society, we're looking at science
Speaker 1: to provide us with the cargo and to bring us
Speaker 1: the paradise, the same way that we look down on
Speaker 1: the Melanese for doing so right. We think of without
Speaker 1: really understanding it too. We think of science is sort
Speaker 1: of the religion that's going to bring us the thing eventually. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I see this especially in science entertainment, both on
Speaker 1: television and social media and yes podcasts. Uh And and
Speaker 1: you know some of our peers out there that there's
Speaker 1: sort of just a like, wow, isn't science great? Look
Speaker 1: at this? Look at this thing that we found out
Speaker 1: about science? Weird? Huh cool. Look, it's defining the world
Speaker 1: for you, but there's no like real understanding of what
Speaker 1: it actually means. It's just taking like another sort of
Speaker 1: framework and substituting it for cargo cultism. Yeah. It's just
Speaker 1: the sort of the deification of of a science effigy, loving,
Speaker 1: loving the form, loving the things that it's given us,
Speaker 1: but not really necessarily involving a deep understanding of how
Speaker 1: it works and how it has brought us these things,
Speaker 1: and being able to properly extrapolate what it can realistically
Speaker 1: give us in the future. I mean, this is the
Speaker 1: thing that I feel like a lot of us fall
Speaker 1: into at varying levels. So I'm not saying that everybody
Speaker 1: necessarily has this sort of yea science bumper sticker level
Speaker 1: of understanding, you know, an appreciation for science. But but
Speaker 1: even just you know, the average person, you can sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, subconsciously decide, Hey, you know, I don't really
Speaker 1: need to worry about my life, my quality of life
Speaker 1: in twenty forty years because science will surely figure that out.
Speaker 1: I don't have to worry about this particular um ecological
Speaker 1: cold problem. I don't have to worry about climate change
Speaker 1: because the sciences is there. We can figure it out.
Speaker 1: I don't need to worry about um, you know, like
Speaker 1: a comet or meteorite and crashing into the Earth because
Speaker 1: the sciences is coming together on that. Science is going
Speaker 1: to reach its divine hand in and snatch that planetary
Speaker 1: body away before it can destroy me. Yeah. We almost
Speaker 1: see that in a lot of our like a sort
Speaker 1: of tent pole, big blockbuster apocalyptic movies, right Like a
Speaker 1: lot of times now, the hero who solves the problem,
Speaker 1: whether it's the comet coming at Earth or it's aliens
Speaker 1: showing up on our doorsteps. Yeah, I mean Independence Day
Speaker 1: like that is that is total cargo cult science, cargo
Speaker 1: cult computer science. I guess where it's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: don't worry, science has got this computer hacker comes in
Speaker 1: and then it just all taken care of and awards
Speaker 1: off a complete outside context problem that really would it
Speaker 1: should have just wiped out everybody. And yeah, it's silly,
Speaker 1: but we also just sort of accept it because science,
Speaker 1: it's is somewhat of a religion for us. Now. Um.
Speaker 1: Feynman had a quote about this. He said, science is
Speaker 1: the belief in the ignorance of experts. And I like
Speaker 1: that especially um. And he also said that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's up to all of us to assess the premises
Speaker 1: and conclusions that are presented to us by scientific research.
Speaker 1: It's not just we shouldn't just accept some panel of invisible,
Speaker 1: peer reviewed people telling us this is good, this, this
Speaker 1: will do it. Um. And I'd like to think, you know,
Speaker 1: this applies to our show. We try to do that
Speaker 1: in the research and uh, but I think also, as
Speaker 1: we suggested in that Wicked Problems episode that we did,
Speaker 1: that it's up to all of us to participate. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe and I can sit here and relay
Speaker 1: all these facts and papers to you, but don't just
Speaker 1: take it as you know, the religious fact, right, Like,
Speaker 1: go out there and get involved yourself. Look at some
Speaker 1: of the stuff yourself. I think you'll find some stuff
Speaker 1: between the lines that we're not necessarily picking up on.
Speaker 1: Everybody approaches this different indeed. All right, So this brings
Speaker 1: us to the idea of cargo cult programming UM. And
Speaker 1: this was coined by software engineer Steve McConnell in two
Speaker 1: thousand and He was very much playing off Feynman's definition
Speaker 1: of cargo cult science, even quoting him in the intro.
Speaker 1: And this again harkins to the notion of fake airfields,
Speaker 1: meant to invoke the return of cargo UM, the idea
Speaker 1: that the cargoists understood the form but not the content. Likewise,
Speaker 1: some programmers, according to McDonald right that they think that
Speaker 1: they know what code does, they know how it, but
Speaker 1: they don't know how it does it. They can't make
Speaker 1: meaningful changes to the code. They can only tinker and
Speaker 1: toy with the pre existing form. Yeah, this is UM
Speaker 1: an extended argument in UM. Are you familiar with Douglas Rushkov, No,
Speaker 1: I don't believe so. He's a he's a really interesting
Speaker 1: media theorist, and he had this book came out a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago called Programmer, Be Programmed. The essential
Speaker 1: argument was, you know, all of us in modern days
Speaker 1: society are interacting with our phones or interacting with our computers.
Speaker 1: We get how the operating system works. Some of us.
Speaker 1: We we get that, right, Like we we know how
Speaker 1: to like make it do the things we wanted to do,
Speaker 1: but we don't understand it beneath that layer. And that subsequently,
Speaker 1: that kind of misunderstanding can lead to us being uh
Speaker 1: co opted or manipulated in some ways. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think largely his argument is like economically, but uh, that's
Speaker 1: kind of the same thing here, right, it's like, understand
Speaker 1: it just a little bit deeper. I don't think like
Speaker 1: these guys are making the argument that we should all
Speaker 1: become like professional level coders here, but sort of understand
Speaker 1: how things work under the hood a little bit so
Speaker 1: that those who do aren't able to take advantage of you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and in in a sense too, it also gets
Speaker 1: into the idea, you know, standing on the shoulders of giants, right,
Speaker 1: where you have this accumulated system and no, no one
Speaker 1: really understands everything about it, so all we can do
Speaker 1: is just tinker with it and change it a little
Speaker 1: bit without really creating any kind of perhaps necessary drastic
Speaker 1: changes that would actually improve the product. So McConnell says
Speaker 1: that the cargo cult programmers refused to acknowledge the tradeoffs
Speaker 1: involved in either process oriented or commitment oriented development. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the difference they're being like a process oriented um
Speaker 1: development involves like, you know, strict adherence to this is
Speaker 1: how we create things. And then the commitment oriented is
Speaker 1: like everybody here really knows their stuff, give them the
Speaker 1: freedom in the space they need to do it. This
Speaker 1: is like another application of again like these are cargo cultism,
Speaker 1: I think, and wicked problems are highly connected. Because McConnell
Speaker 1: sort of lays out look like those are two theories
Speaker 1: of running an organization. But there are impostor organizations out there, right,
Speaker 1: and so he calls like the process impostor organizations are
Speaker 1: the ones that they see a successful company and they go, well,
Speaker 1: how are they succes sessful? They're generating a lot of
Speaker 1: documents and they have a lot of meetings so we
Speaker 1: should do the same things, will generate a lot of documents,
Speaker 1: and we'll have a bunch of meetings. But then they
Speaker 1: don't understand that this is that's not what makes the
Speaker 1: other people successful, right, That's not what's responsible for it.
Speaker 1: And likewise the commitment one. There's impostors as well, where
Speaker 1: they say, well, that organization, I think Microsoft was the
Speaker 1: example he used at the time, was that organization. They
Speaker 1: don't generate a lot of documents. They offer stock options
Speaker 1: to their employees, and they expect that their employees will
Speaker 1: work a lot of overtime, So we should do the
Speaker 1: same thing. Uh, we should do that, And they don't
Speaker 1: realize that's not what leads to success. The reason why
Speaker 1: people are working the overtime is because they love their jobs.
Speaker 1: They love what they're doing, and that's what's leading to
Speaker 1: the success. Yeah. Yeah, And certainly I think there are
Speaker 1: their applications for this and pretty much any discipline in
Speaker 1: any business, Like to what extent does an individual or
Speaker 1: an organization really understand the business or the product in
Speaker 1: which they are engaged into. What extent are they just
Speaker 1: they build those airplane effigies? Are they just creating the
Speaker 1: things that seem to be to line up with success
Speaker 1: and hoping that the cargo comes alright. So the final
Speaker 1: idea I want to mention, and we've, as with all these,
Speaker 1: we've kind of touched on some of this already is
Speaker 1: the idea of cargo cult sustainability. And this is another
Speaker 1: idea that came out of the seventies, UH, from this
Speaker 1: time from sociologist William R. Caton Jr. In his paper
Speaker 1: Environmental Optimism Cargo Cults in Modern Society from we assume
Speaker 1: that our technological advancement will save us as it seemingly
Speaker 1: has in the past, without really backing that idea up
Speaker 1: very well. Instead, quote runaway world technology reduces rather than
Speaker 1: enhances the habitats carrying capacity. All forms of human organization
Speaker 1: and behavior that are based on the obsolete assumption of
Speaker 1: limitlessness will necessarily change somehow to forms that are combatible
Speaker 1: with finite limits of the world ecosystem. Um. Here's another quote.
Speaker 1: This is from Overshoot, which was one of the books
Speaker 1: by William R. Katon Jr. Said, quote the type two
Speaker 1: cargo cult which we're talking about here, Uh belief held
Speaker 1: that great technological breakthroughs would inevitably occur in the near
Speaker 1: future and would enable man to continue indefinitely expanding the
Speaker 1: world's human caring capacity. This was a mere faith in
Speaker 1: a faith like stock market speculation. It had no firmer
Speaker 1: basis than naive statistical extrapolation, the uncritical supposition that past
Speaker 1: technological advances could be taken as representative samples of an
Speaker 1: inherently unending series of comparable achievements. And I think that
Speaker 1: that nicely sums it up. He he ends up breaking
Speaker 1: it down even in an even greater detail, talking about
Speaker 1: our our belief that they'll be unlimited food, unlimited alternatives,
Speaker 1: unlimited energy that will be able to you know fully
Speaker 1: harness the Sun's power, um that there'll be other technological escapes,
Speaker 1: and even ideological escape will prevent themselves. So get from
Speaker 1: the idea that we think the technology will come and
Speaker 1: we think that we can change and that in our
Speaker 1: ascension we can change the rules of the game that
Speaker 1: we are losing. You know what that sounds like to me?
Speaker 1: Uh the like inherent optimism of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek
Speaker 1: vision that like, eventually we're going to get to a
Speaker 1: point where like we can just uh print food, you know,
Speaker 1: and we don't need to worry about food, and we
Speaker 1: don't need to worry about energy. Uh, and we won't
Speaker 1: need to worry about war on Earth. Uh. It'll be
Speaker 1: the you know, exploring the rest of the universe that
Speaker 1: that brings about those problems again. Yeah, we just have
Speaker 1: faith that the cargo will come and we don't think
Speaker 1: about all the steps necessary mechanisms responsible for that happening. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: All right, So there you have it. I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna leave it there. Um, you know, we hope this
Speaker 1: one will be a great topic to just stir up
Speaker 1: conversation about, you know, about where we are now, about
Speaker 1: where we've been in the past, and where we're going
Speaker 1: to go in the future, both in reality and in
Speaker 1: our various science science fiction models out there. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: if you have insights to add to this, or maybe
Speaker 1: you had some kind of epiphany while you're listening to this,
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