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Less than five years ago, this term was used to describe what my team was doing. The criticism was correct, and my team did change its ways. At the time, I was unaware of this term, and the explanation given to me was the "misunderstood" one, as explained in the article. Since that incident, I, too, have pointed out patterns of "cargo culting" as/when I identified them. Not too many, but definitely more than a couple. More than once, I've repeated the same explanation. I've even used the "misunderstood" explanation as a fun anecdote to share at gatherings (both work, and social). While I don't think less of the original person for referring to my team as a cargo cult (they were sincere in their criticism), the article will definitely stop me from using the misunderstood version of events as the "true" origin of the term. It will change the way I speak about it, even if I refer to this term in the future. For that, I am grateful. |
Cargo cults exist(ed), and like most religious systems throughout history they hinged on a belief that performing certain rituals would have effects on the real world. Some of them did, in fact, see the trappings of the European colonizers as a form of ritual and attempt to recreate the techno-rituals by creating effigies of the European technology.
Nothing in that story is fundamentally disagreed with in TFA. So while it's really helpful to be able to give more life to a previously glib anecdote, the metaphor is still very apt.
The main takeaway for me is that cargo cults were really not any different than most polytheistic religions (and therefore most religions) throughout history in viewing ritual as essentially a technology through which to access good things [0]. But I'm afraid that any new term derived from that insight would be even more problematic for trying to distill an even larger swath of human experience into a single phrase.
[0] See Bret Devereaux's Practical Polytheism series: https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polythei...