Cargo cult

• As anthropologist Kirk Huffman, who spent 17 years in Vanuatu, explains: “You get cargo cults when the outside world, with all its material wealth, suddenly descends on remote, indigenous tribes.” The locals don’t know where the foreigners’ endless supplies come from and so suspect they were summoned by magic, sent from the spirit world. To entice the Americans back after the war, islanders throughout the region constructed piers and carved airstrips from their fields. They prayed for ships and planes to once again come out of nowhere, bearing all kinds of treasures ... [1]

See also:

• Cargo cult science - similar twisted thinking critiqued by physicist Richard Feynmann
• Cargo cult programming - software development critique by Steve McConnell

External links

• Cargo cult - Columbia Encyclopedia
• Cargo cults - Encyclopædia Britannica
• The Last Cargo Cult - detailed history of how it all got started