Talk:Cargo cult

Lead is super unhelpful

A person with no familiarity with cargo cults would not be too illuminated by the lead here. The section theoretically complicating the term is poorly-written and grammatically unclear—and also probably not really duly weighted for inclusion in the lead at all, let alone taking up >50% of it. The intro to the Britannica article on the topic is a good example of a helpful lead. Isthistwisted (talk) 02:49, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Maybe the lede could be better worded. It does however reflect what the academic sources we cite in the article have to say on the subject, unlike the unsourced nonsense you tried to replace it with. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:20, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Girl don’t get snippy with me Isthistwisted (talk) 07:30, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Read Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section. AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:33, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

“It should be written in a clear, accessible style” Isthistwisted (talk) 16:07, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Ok, feel free to propose a new lede that accurately reflects the article content, in such a style. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:28, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

You like it, hoss? Isthistwisted (talk) 02:24, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Yup. AndyTheGrump (talk) 10:07, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

The lead is still exceptionally academic and inaccessible. It needs to be simplified and clearly explain the origin of the term. Then later, by all means go deep into the anthropology and get technical. Carllottery (talk) 17:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Also, it’s lead not lede 2603:8001:7800:23C3:912D:DB61:A20:25E2 (talk) 17:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Agree with Carllotterry. Andy please stop fighting an edit war and discuss here. Wikipedia isn't a dictionary but it also isn't an anthroplogical encyclopaedia. This page should begin with a birds-eye view of the topic accessible to the general reader - right now it just gaslights the reader. Fastitocalons (talk) 14:36, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump As per your bio: "I think a fair number of people need to be kicked out of the project just for being lousy writers." Fastitocalons (talk) 14:37, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

I was quoting Jimbo Wales. As for 'gaslighting', read MOS:LEDE: the lede of an article is supposed to be a summary of the article body. And the article body absolutely does not support any suggestion that anthropology 'also' uses a 'colloquial term'. To the contrary, it was anthropology that introduced the term to the outside world, where it was subsequently misapplied. I suggest that before you edit the article further, you take the time to actually do a little research. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:45, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

According to the article the term largely isn't used by anthropologists anymore. So the introduction doesn't do a good job reflecting that either. As things stand the whole piece is totally incoherent. As another editor notes, the Caucasian race article begins: The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid, Europid, or Europoid) is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. It's obvious we need a similar approach here. Why do you disagree? Fastitocalons (talk) 14:51, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

I disagree because the purpose of an encyclopaedic article is to inform the reader as to the subject matter, based on what appropriate sources have to say about it. It is not a repository for random counter-factual gibberish about 'colloquial terms' somehow being taken up by anthropologists. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:55, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Well, at least now you're clearly advocating for a WP:POVFORK. There is no such thing as an "appropriate source", only WP:RS. You might benefit from rereading that again, as you've misinterpreted that policy multiple times on this talk page. TheMissingMuse (talk) 15:57, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

This article is based on actual sources - anthropological texts, metting WP:RS, and describing the subject matter - the only WP:POVFORK involved seems to be one that exists in some peoples heads, where they attempt to use this article to promote some imaginary alternative reality, where the sources actually describe something else. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:08, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikitionary can't be cited, and per WP:ISATERMFOR / WP:REFERS, Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Thank you for reverting Andy. Fastitocalons, there isn't anything strictly wrong in your most recent diff. We actually already say something similar later in the lede: The term has largely fallen out of favour and is now seldom used among anthropologists, though its use as a metaphor (in the sense of engaging in ritual action to obtain material goods) is widespread outside of anthropology in popular commentary and critique Since this article is about the topic of cargo cults (the movements themselves), that's what takes "front and center" stage. Other usage of the term "cargo cult" can be mentioned, but it's not the main topic. That's why it bothers Andy to say that the term is used colloquially one way, and also by anthropologists another way - that would make sense on Wikitionary, but not on Wikipedia. It has been discussed many times if we need some kind of page like Cargo cult (idiom), the closest we had was possibly Cargo cult science but that's been deleted, probably rightly so from what I gather. It's possible to have a Wikipedia page about a word/phrase itself, like how we have Orange (fruit), Orange (color), and Orange (word), but the word itself must be notable, and while there is a robust literature on cargo cults the topic, there is not so much on cargo cult the pop culture metaphor. And for what it's worth I agree with you in spirit that the lede should make more sense (WP:ONEDOWN), look near the bottom of this talk page and in the edit history, I'm working on it, but it needs to be solidly grounded in WP:RS. Leijurv (talk) 15:54, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

I've made an edit to try and clear up this confusion while still remaining fully grounded in sources, see here, and my explanation is here. Leijurv (talk) 17:59, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Context

It's hilarious the extent this article has been rewritten to ensure that no one can actually tell what a cargo cult was and how people use the term.

GPT-4o does a 50x better job:

A cargo cult is a social movement that arises when a less technologically advanced society encounters a more technologically advanced one and attempts to imitate the behaviors and practices of the latter, often in the belief that doing so will bring them similar material wealth ("cargo").

History of the Term:

The term originated during and after World War II in the South Pacific.

Indigenous Melanesian people observed the wealth and supplies (cargo) brought by Western military forces.

After the war, they tried to recreate the conditions they believed would bring back the cargo, building mock airstrips, planes, and military-style structures.

The term "cargo cult" was later used more broadly to describe any group or practice that imitates the outward form of something without understanding its underlying principles. 207.96.123.224 (talk) 13:04, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, if you want bullshit-bot regurgitation of third-hand just-so-stories 'cargo-cult' narratives paraphrased from ill-informed mass media, ChatGPT will do a splendid job. Wikipedia however has a policy against using factually incorrect computer-generated garbage. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:13, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

The term "cargo cult" hasn't been erased, but if it has, that's good, because as the article makes clear, the science says it should be erased. 2600:8801:BE12:6E00:306F:B513:EEE6:AB93 (talk) 13:44, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with criticizing how the term is commonly used, but this common definition needs to be provided before it can be criticized. The current article fails to do that. 73.186.114.128 (talk) 15:09, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

With respect, the current article reads like a GTP prompt, just a different one. It is sorely lacking in context. It seems you are emphasizing the inappropriateness of the "traditional" explanation/description of cargo cults. The literature offered in support of the article is consistent with this position, so it seems to be the best current understanding. However, the term itself is relevant because it reflect the chauvinistic misunderstanding, and therefore it is important that the underlying reality is, in fact, distinct from that term. The term doesn't suddenly become a discrete and reified entity just because researchers have learned earlier understandings were wrong. The first line of the article "Caucasian race" is "The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid, Europid, or Europoid) is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race." The article doesn't discuss only population demography based on current understanding; it acknowledges the problematic origin of the term. I'm not suggesting something similar for this article, but it seems the inclusion of some discussion of the analogous problematic history merits acknowledgment. Kenton M (talk) 14:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I'd be all for rewriting the article to cover this newer approach, but we need sources which cover those things, and that's what has been lacking so far. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 16:34, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I really wish this article was just a redirect to the excellent Open encyclopedia of anthropology article on the topic, which is really balanced about describing what "cargo cults" actually are. Ideally the article should be reworked to be closer to that article, though not to the point of basically just rephrasing it entirely. I think Peter Worsley's 1957 definition of cargo cults:

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

which is widely used in discussions regarding this topic, probably should be included somewhere. There are genuine commonalities with regard to some of the "cargo cult" movements, and perhaps the current article goes to far in the "cargo cult is a meaningless term" direction. (Full disclosure, I wrote the lead as it currently stands). Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:37, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I think the problem that I and a lot of other people have with the article is that if you're having a conversation with someone and they mention the term "cargo cult", and you go to Wikipedia to try to learn what they mean by that, you'll be completely lost. I totally understand that the actual social/religious movements are more complicated than the layperson's understanding, but I think there's room for expansion here.

Adding a sentence like "the term is based on the now-debunked theory that the departure of major powers from the Pacific theater after World War II led the native Melanesians to ritually mimic the actions of soldiers in an attempt to lure back the planes and ships carrying 'cargo' to the islands." could give the common definition while also noting that it's not accurate to our current understanding. Jokertyf (talk) 18:28, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

The 'theory' didn't need debunking. It wasn't even a theory. It was nothing but pop-cult facts-wrong story-telling. In this regard, our 'current understanding' differs in nuance only from that of the anthroplogists who first document these events (starting many decades earlier, it should be noted). At no time did academic sources support the patronising, and frankly sometimes racist, metaphor. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:35, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Okay fine, "mistaken idea" instead of "now-debunked theory". The point I'm trying to make is, this article needs something in the intro saying how the term is used in common parlance. It may be an incorrect understanding, but when the common meaning differs from the academic one, that is something that absolutely belongs in the article. Jokertyf (talk) 18:45, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

For that, we need a source. One that doesn't merely repeat the 'mistaken idea' as truthful. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

look, you wrote that it's understood to mean something it is not. Not only is that a lie, it's not supported by sources Demigord (talk) 09:28, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

If the point of the article is to avoid describing the "mistaken" pop-culture version of the term as fact, it does a bad job of this considering that the Postwar developments section refers explicitly to islanders "mimicking the day-to-day activities" of soldiers and building "life-size replicas of airplanes out of straw," etc, citing sources from the 50s-60s. PenguiN42 (talk) 20:01, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump

Dude if you want to clear up a misconception, EXPLAIN the misconception.

Explain the popular reference. Why its wrong etc. Thats fine. Be CLEAR. SIMPLE. CONCISE.

This is not academic writing. It's painfully obvious that people are trying to imitate academic writing. Journals turn away papers that obfuscate like this. Carllottery (talk) 15:05, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I'll echo @Kenton M. It reads just like a GPT with a "but make it sound like a grad student wrote it".

It really does read like an academic *in training* wrote it. Even if you're writing for a journal, you still want to make it clear, simple, and concise.

Get to the origin of the term immediately. Then jump off from there, debate the relevance etc later. Carllottery (talk) 17:18, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

the Wikipedia gods abhor anyone interested in editing the article “cargo cult” and have devised a severe punishment: editing the article “cargo cult” 2605:A601:A862:A200:3026:C662:9564:8EEC (talk) 20:28, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I’m sure we can all dial it back. Why doesn’t someone try rewriting the lead? ꧁Zanahary꧂ 20:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

The term "cargo cult" is vague and confusing. That's the whole locus of this dispute. There's no way write about cargo cults that doesn't get at the fact that the term is poorly defined. The confusion draws from the fundamental issues of the term, not the way the lead section of this article is written. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:16, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

No the lead is garbage. World-class awful attempt at imitation academic writing.

This is one sentence:

Although anthropologists have reported several groups desiring Western material goods, which were conceived by the villagers as being produced by ancestral spirits, the term "Cargo cult" has been used by anthropologists to "label almost any sort of organised, village-based social movement with religious and political aspirations" in Melanesia, regardless of whether they desired material goods or not. Carllottery (talk) 15:14, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Because you will be reverted Demigord (talk) 09:36, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Include link to simple Wikipedia?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Maybe we should just link to the simple Wikipedia page so readers will have some idea of want a cargo cult is.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult Joeletaylor (talk) 17:19, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

It is simple, certainly. As in so simplified as to be grossly misleading, where it isn't simply wrong. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:21, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump you do not seem to understand the purpose of Wikipedia. It’s to inform people. Not for you to be a pedantic show off. 2603:8001:7800:23C3:912D:DB61:A20:25E2 (talk) 17:30, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, the purpose of Wikipedia is to inform people. Not to misinform them, as the simple Wikipedia article does. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:37, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Simple Wikipedia is just repeating the way cargo cults are poorly understood by the general public. Wikipedia should be trying to reflect what the recent anthopological literature is saying about cargo cults (e.g. [1]). Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:40, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

piss-ant politics piffle

Recent anthropology is bullshit though 47.153.19.44 (talk) 17:46, 16 June 2024 (UTC) That sentence is enough to tell that your opinions are competely and utterly worthless. Wikipedia is not an anti-intellectual encyclopedia. Perhaps you should consider editing Conservapedia instead? Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC) I have more time and resources than you and will be re-editing this article infinite times per day until you and Andy are defeated. 47.153.19.44 (talk) 17:52, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Note, the article has now been semi-protected, making the above threat to edit-war factually incorrect material into Wikipedia null. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:03, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Sources

I just noticed that the 1993 academic book "Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond" is completely open-access on JSTOR. [2]. Looks like a good source to use to write the article. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:07, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

It is certainly a good source, and not that hard-going for non-anthropologists, which is a definite plus. We'd need to be a bit wary of representing it as a current work, or of over-emphasising Lindstrom's particular perspective (which may have been refined somewhat since), or of presenting the (very atypical) John Frum movement that Linstrom discusses in some depth as some sort of norm, but it covers the whole 'cargo-cult-as-metaphor' topic really well. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:39, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

A proposal

look i posted the epic maymay tpot image

To growing_daniel followers etc who are pissed off about whatever: maybe I can go epicly viral with a little esoteric illegible tweetfluencing of my own here. Cargo cults are an actual thing that happened in real life, so the Wikipedia article called "cargo cult" is primarily about them.

But the fact of the matter, as I understand it, is that (like most things which exist in real life) cargo cults are a thing that exist in real life, which necessarily have more depth than the kind of allegory that is referenced when the term is used in some guy's essay about Tailwind from the front page of HN lol. Yes? You're with me still?

It is of course true that software engineers from California (such as myself) often use the term to refer to a particular type of being stupid, and maybe we should have a hatnote to e.g. wikt:cargo cult for those who are at this article due to Paul Graham essays. It is also true that the lead of the article as it exists right now is kind of confusingly written, and maybe it should be improved. It is altogether good and proper to do this.

I propose we make a bargain: a bit less piss-and-moan sanctimonious preening from both the tweet rotators and the wikicels? Maybe we even try to write something good on the collaborative encyclopedia project? Yes? jp×g🗯️ 07:52, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

@JPxG: The problem is that the term "cargo cult" is by definition very vague. As The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology entry on Cargo Cults notes, the term is basically used for any sort of organised, village-based social movement with religious and political aspirations. Trying to write something coherent about collectively about what is ultimately, a bunch of quite different local spiritual/political movements is no easy task. I've tried to rewrite the article lead to something more understandable. Hemiauchenia (talk) 09:15, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Academic encyclopedia's should not be used ahead of more traditional tertiary sources. They are certainly appropriate for a section dealing with the anthropological background of the topic, but using academic sources above general sources is a red flag. TheMissingMuse (talk) 16:21, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Where the heck did you get the idea that "using academic sources above general sources is a red flag"? That is completely and utterly at odds with what WP:RS says. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:33, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Come on, this isn't that hard. From WP:DUE: Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources. TheMissingMuse (talk) 17:39, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Are you seriously trying to suggest that academics who have actually studied a topic in depth are less reliable than tertiary sources written by non-experts? And which 'viewpoints' are you referring to anyway? You seem to be suggesting there is some sort of serious debate over the 'cults'. Where is this debate occurring? AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:50, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm just quoting and applying policy. When determining how much weight to afford a particular framing of a topic, the best place to look is more general sources. What I'm seeing here is an assertion that some narrow academic sources be used instead of having the article represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources. TheMissingMuse (talk) 18:08, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

What viewpoints? AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:40, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

No, you are misinterpreting policy. When discussing an academic topic, academic sources are the best way to find cites.

If you're arguing to expand this article's focus beyond the academic, then that's whole different conversation. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:37, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah yes, the circular argument. "This is a purely academic topic because purely academic source are academic." Well played. TheMissingMuse (talk) 04:20, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

I think that if anybody on this talk page was willing to just say what the hell they actually thought instead of scoring epic dunks we might run some >1% risk of figuring out what to do about the article within the next hundred thousand words. jp×g🗯️ 06:01, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

I feel like every time I get a ping on this talk page, I lose brain cells. Okay, so here's my deal: look at the article Lemming. This is to all of you -- @AndyTheGrump, Hemiauchenia, and TheMissingMuse:. Do we all see how this article is structured? It mentions the very pervasive myth, to which "lemming" in colloquial usage nearly always refers, and then it mentions that this is not really the case. Is this something we could do here? Yes? No? jp×g🗯️ 06:04, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

I've no objection to that, though it needs to be properly sourced, and unambiguous. And not presenting the popcult myth as anything more than it is. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:19, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Certainly. As noted, I'll be editing the article in due course. Right now there's just too much activity from an over-invested editor to make it worth my time to try and improve things. At some point we'll be able to steer the article away from an overly jargon laden academic thesis review to an actual encyclopedic article. TheMissingMuse (talk) 18:15, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Please do not misinterpret my comment above as agreement with anything you have proposed. I was replying to JPxG, who understands the purpose and policies of Wikipedia, rather than to you, who appear not to. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:01, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

As illustrated several times in the discussion above, you're the one advocating against policy, not me. TheMissingMuse (talk) 16:57, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

The lede doesn't mean anything much at all

whoop whoop why does it try to obfuscate what a cargo cult is. Don't they worship Prince Phillip in one of those or something? Some dunce (talk) 08:05, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

it doesn't jp×g🗯️ 09:00, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

ok. read it, then use that to tell me what they did Demigord (talk) 09:17, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

it's actually really funny, because it says nothing, but continually tries to cover up the true meaning. It's a disgrace to wikipedia and anti-knowledge, but funnyDemigord (talk) 08:54, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

can you say where it does this and what it should say instead? this is the talk page not the vague page jp×g🗯️ 09:00, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

can I say where it says nothing? lol. Obviously that includes it all

It should honestly define the concept instead of waving vaguely at spiritual practices

But they won't do that Demigord (talk) 09:03, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

wait, there is this: "The term Cargo cult typically refers to movements of Melanesian villagers revolving around a charismatic prophet figure who foretold a coming great change in society"

which is a flaming lie. Everyone here knows that's not what it typically refers to Demigord (talk) 09:10, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Can I ask how 'everyone knows' this? AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:42, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

It’s true that that is not the typical concept referred to by the term "cargo cult". See Britannica and the Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology, which at least explain the typical and original meaning of the term. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 15:28, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I mean, looking at the definition of "cargo cult" given in Worsley's classic 1957 monograph The trumpet shall sound: 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 isn't far off from the definition currently in the intro is it? "a coming great change" is comparable to "imminence of the end of the world in a cataclysm which will destroy everything". Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:09, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

The monograph would be a good source for the history of the term. It's more than 60 years later. Tertiary sources like Britannica and Open Encyclopedia are more appropriate for contextualizing the term in the modern day. TheMissingMuse (talk) 16:13, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Britannica online is just not a good source for academic topics like this (nor should we be relying on a general encyclopedia to write other general encyclopedias really). I've been trying to rewrite the intro based on the Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology for a while, but it's hard to write something concrete when the topic is vague. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:28, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

You are asserting this is an academic topic, exclusive of general interest. You'll need sources supporting that claim. The Britannica source refutes that claim, so you're going to need some strong sourcing to establish this topic as purely academic. TheMissingMuse (talk) 16:33, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Have you ever read WP:RS? You appear not to. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:35, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Many times. Have you read WP:UNDUE? What we are seeing in this article is a focus on a specific academic perspective of the topic, instead of a broader composite that integrates the various academic perspectives on the topic in a clear and direct manner. TheMissingMuse (talk) 16:47, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

So, which other academic sources are you suggesting we cite, and what are you proposing we cite them for? AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:57, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

The practical recommendation would be to cut the lead down from two massive paragraphs to a clean and clear single paragraph of 3-5 sentences. For example, much of the first paragraph devolves into esoteric details more suited to a history of the term, before even mentioning the social context under which the term developed. Most of the first paragraph should be chopped, with elaboration occurring in the article body. It's filled with misplaced academic jargon, trivia and political buzzwords like: "religiopolitical", "kago", "colonial oppression", "moral salvation", "existential respect", "anti-colonial desire", "Western colonization".

• current: Cargo cult is an umbrella term used to denote various spiritual and political movements that arose among indigenous Melanesians following Western colonisation of the region in the late 19th century. The term Cargo cult typically described millenarian religiopolitical social movements of Melanesian villagers revolving around a charismatic prophet figure who sought to induce "ancestral spirits or other powerful beings" to provide them "cargo" through either reviving ancestral traditions or adopting new rituals, such as ecstatic dancing. Early accounts by anthropologists like Lucy Mair characterized these groups as motivated primarily by envy of Western material goods, although later researchers have tied them to pre-existing aspects of Melanesian culture, or to the disruption of local communities brought on by colonial oppression, or both. Cargo—kago in the Pidgin Englishes of the region—could therefore signify "moral salvation", "existential respect" or an "anti-colonial desire for political autonomy." Cargo cult as a term is now seldom used by anthropologists, although it has persisted in popular commentary and critique.
• direct: Cargo cult is a term used to describe a belief system in which adherents develop ritualistic practices for the purpose of inducing supernatural forces to deliver 'cargo' to the believers.

TheMissingMuse (talk) 17:23, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

This single sentence on its own is an inadequate summary of complex topic, if that's what you're planning to replace that entire paragraph with. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:22, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

It isn't even a summary. It is a regurgitation of the popcult version, and as such unsupported by the sources we cite in the article. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:00, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, as has been made clear multiple times, the sourcing being used is biased, and does not represent the broader cultural meaning of the word. The degree to which @Hemiauchenia is imposing WP:OWN on the article makes it a fools errand to try and improve the article without talk page consensus. Given that he's determined to impress his on WP:POV on the topic, with support from you, I don't see any consensus to cleaning up the mess any time soon. I'll go ahead and make some improving edits in the next week or three. TheMissingMuse (talk) 06:03, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Its pretty obvious that you've never tried to properly read any academic literature on cargo cults, and I really don't think you'll be able to do improve the article if you don't.

. I'm not trying to "impress [my] on [sic] WP:POV" on the topic, as you baselessly assert, but I am trying to reflect the complex, confusing reality of cargo cults in modern anthropological literature, rather than some inaccurate popular culture understanding of the topic. It's very funny that you bring up WP:OWN, because you seem to think that your opinion should override that of everybody else on this talkpage. Hemiauchenia (talk) 09:51, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your heaping dose of lack of WP:AGF. Again, your attempt to WP:OWN this article is a major red flag for anyone wanting to contribute constructively here. TheMissingMuse (talk) 18:04, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Wow -- inadequate regurgitation obvious never baselessly very funny heaping red flag!!!!! jp×g🗯️ 21:57, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

There are literally dozens of academic papers written about cargo cult groups. Obviously journalists and other non-academic writers wrote accounts of cargo cult groups, but these have problems with sensationalism. We should be looking to the academic literature to provide a truthful account of this topic. There is obviously a popular interest aspect about the way that "cargo cult" has become an idiom in wider western culture that is discussed in the Open Encyclopedia entry and should be discussed in this article, but that shouldn't distort the coverage of cargo cults as they actually existed in Melanesia. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:37, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Quite right. The current lede distorts coverage of cargo cults as they actually existed in Melanesia. It's academic word salad that reads like freshmen level copy-pasta. TheMissingMuse (talk) 16:50, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Okay, WP:SOFIXIT. Present the lede you'd prefer to see here and we can discuss it. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:38, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

...But only if you can provide the sources to back it up. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:54, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Feel free to comment on my proposed change above. TheMissingMuse (talk) 22:05, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I asked for sources. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:53, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

honestly: do you believe there is a 2% chance that if you asked someone what it meant and they had heard of it, what they would say is anything like the mush here?

Because I would happily bet at 50:1 odds they would not.

but I see the quote I was specifically referring to is gone Demigord (talk) 04:33, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a platform for the regurgitation of misinformation. The popcult version of 'cargo cults' is wrong. It has always been wrong. Just how difficult is that to understand? AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:18, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Have to agree with TheMissingMuse and Demigord. 'academic jargon, trivia and political buzzwords like: "religiopolitical", "kago", "colonial oppression", "moral salvation", "existential respect", "anti-colonial desire", "Western colonization"' have ruined this article. Allegedly "Reliable Sources" of academics don't help if they are not describing the meaning of the term as understood by 99% of the population. --15:58, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Please provide links to the Wikipedia policy that states that articles should contain misinformation just because '99% of the population' (or whatever imaginary statistics you can pull from your nether regions) believe it? AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:01, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Let me quote another editor from above: "There is nothing wrong with criticizing how the term is commonly used, but this common definition needs to be provided before it can be criticized. The current article fails to do that." 73.186.114.128 --Louis P. Boog (talk) 16:02, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Ok then, citing the necessary sources, suggest an update to the article. One that doesn't mislead readers into thinking that this 'definition' was ever correct. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:05, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Judging from the history of the article, either you or Hemiauchenia will delete it, your protests notwithstanding. Writing takes time, deleting a small fraction of it. --Louis P. Boog (talk) 16:19, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

That's right, we remove unsourced/badly sourced misinformation, and replace it with content sourced to material reflecting the long-standing consensus of subject-matter experts. That is how Wikipedia is supposed to operate. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:46, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

(He referring to his deletion of this example of a cargo cult from Xygalatas, Dimitris (20 October 2022). "What Cargo Cult Rituals Reveal About Human Nature". Sapiens. Retrieved 5 November 2023.) --Louis P. Boog (talk) 16:50, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Who is 'he'? AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:04, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Because the very lengthy quote doesn't make sense in context. It's the opening section of a magazine article, and it is very vague. Who is this group exactly? It's never specified. It's not even clear if this is actually a real event rather than something imagined by the author. If we are going to have quotes about cargo cult practices, then they should be from the anthropological literature and about clearly identified groups. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:35, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

The photo's are of the John Frum movement of Tanna, which started out as a 'cargo cult', back in 1940 (prior to the mass arrival of Allied forces on the island, it should be noted). As such, they weren't atypical in their early days, in that their millennialist activities revolved around a rejection of Western/colonial values, and Christianity in particular. A 'cargo cult' that seems at that point not to be particularly interested in 'cargo', though they were certainly concerned about fluctuating prices of copra, about low wages, and about more general inequalities with the 'whites'. What isn't typical is that a John Frum movement was still operating, 80-odd years later, as a mainstream part of the political/religious scene, and also available to be photographed and filmed by tourists etc (sometimes for a fee). It is grossly misreading to take this modern movement as representing what it was 80 years ago, never mind taking it as somehow representative of the cults as a whole. Which, needless to say, the piece cited isn't doing. It is making a general point about the meaningfulness of ritual to those that engage in it. Deprive the quote of its context, and you are left with the same old narrative about foolish 'natives'. You could do the same with Christians participating in the Eucharist, 'changing bread into their god through magic, and then consuming him'. Context, and an understanding of cultural context in particular, matters. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:22, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I kinda twigged that the quote was about John Frum, but thanks for clarifying. I agree the quote is problematic for a variety of reasons. This article obviously needs to discuss the John Frum movement and its practices in some detail given its prominence in cargo cult anthropological discourse, but this long block quote just isn' helpful and its presentation as a typical cargo cult ritual (if anything of the sort could be said to exist) is grossly misleading. I'm getting around to reading the the long chapter on the history of the John Frum movement in Lindstrom's 1991 book, so once I've done that I'll try to get around to writing a brief summary of the John Frum movement that doesn't overwhelm the rest of the article. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:38, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

The "cargo" in "cargo cult"

Having read the chapter Cargo cult culture in Lindstrom's 1991 book (freely accessible on JSTOR) and other anthropological literature on "cargo cults", the more confusing and ambiguous the term "cargo" seems. Obviously in early colonial and anthropological discourse, even predating the coining of the term during the 1930s and earlier, "cargo" is taken literally as Western material goods, with the individual desired items sometimes specified. Beginning in the late 1950s, some anthroplogists interpret the desire for "cargo" as instead representing a deeper desire for "equality, independence, salvation, identity, moral regeneration, and so on.", with some authors choosing to use the uppercase "Cargo" to refer to the whole complex of beliefs surrounding "cargo cults". Ultimately by the 1970s and 1980s it was increasingly being concluded that "cargo cults" weren't all that different from traditional Melanesian beliefs and social organisation. This is an incredibly tricky topic to write about given the widely differing interpretations of "Cargoism" in the anthropological literature, and I've been flip flopping on the emphasis and importance that should be placed on the idea that "cargo cults" desired literal "cargo" as Western material goods in the lede section. Feedback (from those actually willing to read the anthropological literature on this topic) would be appreciated. Hemiauchenia (talk) 12:14, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

There are maps in Peter Worsley's 1957 "The trumpet shall sound" showing documented occurrences of 'cults' within Melanesia. The maps indicate the multiple characteristics of each through symbols. The characteristics used for the classification are 'Myth of the return of the dead', 'Return to paganism, or transformation of traditional paganism', 'Use of various Christian elements', 'Myth of the cargo', 'Theme of cosmic cataclysm that will reverse the position of Whites and Blacks in the hierarchy of values', 'Messianic theme', 'Economic and political demands', 'Aggression and even violence toward European settlers, missionaries, and administrators', and 'Establishment of political unity transcending traditional divisions and linguistic differences'. I've not actually counted, but from a quick eyeballing, I'd say that well less than half of the 'cult' instances include the 'Myth of the cargo' element, and that the most common characteristic noted is 'Myth of the return of the dead'. Clearly this classification will have included an element of subjectivity, and no doubt it is incomplete, but it does indicate the complexity of the topic, as understood even back then.

Furthermore note that Worsley's classification is 'Myth of the Cargo'. Not 'Cargo'. The events he describes in his book absolutely do not support claims that the 'cults' saw the acquisition of Western material goods as a focus. Picking one at random, occurring in Milne Bay in 1893, Worsley notes (P52-54) how a Melanesian named Tokeriu had prophesised the coming of "a great storm", which would submerge the entire coast, and cause a new island to emerge. Tokeriu told his believers that to be saved, they had to discard the white mans goods, abandon their houses, and move inland. After the flood, the believers were told, "the the south-east wind, the wind of the pleasant harvest season, would blow continually. Then the land would prosper, and yams and taro multiply in the gardens. Besides these traditional attractions, a sail would be sighted on the horizon, heralding the coming of a huge ship with the spirits of the dead on board, and the faithful would then be reunited with their dead kinsmen. Tokeriu would form a government, and have at his disposal a steamer much larger than the government steamer, the Merrie England. Since food would be so abundant, all pigs were to be killed and eaten, and food in the gardens consumed. The people heeded his message..." There is a 'cargo' element here, certainly, but it is the cargo of the dead, a tale of abundance brought about (or returned to) through the rejection of 'white' rules, 'white' goods, and 'white' values. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:05, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Would you be able to provide page numbers of the relevant maps? I might be able to access the book via the Internet Archive (though the borrowing only appear to last 1 hour). Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:01, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

The pages don't seem to be numbered. I think they were in the front somewhere. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:03, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

The internet archive edition doesn't seem to have the maps unfortunately. Would you be able to provide a photo of the maps? Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:57, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

That's odd, since that was where I was looking at them. Try this link: [3] They are at the end of the 'Introduction to the second edition", and can be found a few pages back from the 'preface to the first edition' which is numbered page 9. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:16, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah okay. For whatever reason the internet archive has both copies of the first edition (which I was looking at) and the second edition. The first edition seems to lack the maps. Thanks for pointing me to the version with the maps. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:31, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I'd missed that. Shame it's only available an hour at a time... — Preceding unsigned comment added by AndyTheGrump (talk • contribs) 18:47, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I've been able to instantly renew every time its expired so far, probably due to the lack of demand for the book. The bigger concern is that the Internet Archive's library is likely to go away in the near-future due to them losing Hachette v. Internet Archive. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:19, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Hemiauchenia my understanding of that case is that it means they can't loan a scan from one copy to more than one borrower at a time—am I wrong? ꧁Zanahary꧂ 14:52, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

As I understand, the publishers are against the concept of controlled digital lending entirely, and it's already being forced to remove books [4]. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:34, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I think the article's lede should lay out the differing mainstream perspectives of the term, assuming the anthropological discussion of the meaning of "cargo" is a shorthand for the motives, goals and desires of these groups. As for cargo meaning "Western goods", Lindstrom's descriptions of two movements (Paliau and Mambu) in the Open Encyclopedia source do, on the surface level, show some focus on the acquisition of Western goods like tinned food, but its only one small aspect of broader social change; pages 180-185 of the book "Like Fire - The Paliau Movement and Millenarianism in Melanesia" detail a very drastic example of how cargo represented a much more radical vision of paradigm shifting transformation. Ohmsteader (talk) 09:26, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Which 'differing mainstream perspectives'? Clearly there are debates within anthropology over analytical approaches, and over some of the details. There is also a debate as to whether a whole lot of different events are being lumped together under a single term. Beyond anthropology, there isn't any 'mainstream perspective' to speak of. There is a popcult morality tale supposedly about them, but nothing remotely resembling a reliable source for it. There can't be, since nobody but anthropologists have actually studied the 'cults'. AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:32, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

To clarify, I mean mainstream perspectives within the anthropological literature, and/or the evolution of such perspectives. I was thinking specifically about this line from the Open Encyclopedia entry, "Anthropologists offered a variety of explanations for cargo cult outbreaks, within the broader context of global social transformations that the War had caused. Simple greed and cupidity, fundamental Melanesian cultural and religious belief systems, or colonial inequality and oppression variously accounted for cult outbreaks." I feel the entire section under Cargo cult explanation is relevant to this point as well. The current lede does a good job laying this out, but I do understand it may be lengthy for some readers. Ohmsteader (talk) 15:47, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd missed the bit about 'simple greed and cupidity' as an explanation, and frankly it surprises me. To be sure, Melanesians are just as capable of greed and cupidity as the rest of us, but as an anthropological explanation it doesn't get very far. Not if you are trying to explain the specifics of why it manifested itself the way it did. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:25, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Reverse Cargo Cults

THis article seems to be overly focused on Melanesian millennialist movements as they relate to cargo cults, rather than Cargo Cults themselves. Accordingly, I believe section discussing reverse cargo cults may be in order, and also may help clarify some of the problems we've been having with the article lately. Keep in mind, Richard Feynman gave a lecture years ago, discussing how cargo cults relate to primitives building airstrips and making control towers out of sticks and trees in an effort to attract airplanes, just as they had witnessed the US Army doing the same thing years ago. They were basically copying behavior they had observed earlier, in the hopes that it would result in aircraft bringing supplies. It's discussed in his book "Surely You're Joking Dr. Feynman!"

Ive got a couple ideas in terms of sources, but wanted to get some feedback first. 99.48.35.129 (talk) 20:33, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Richard Feynman was a physicist. He had absolutely no subject-matter expertise whatsoever regarding cargo cults, and nor did he at any point ever suggest that he did. We do not base article content on misinformed anecdotes. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:21, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but his book was a best-seller and I believe he was responsible for popular usage of the term. The WP article doesnt even discuss his contribution to the etymology. Also, the article is overly focused on recent academic anthropological literature which risks running afoul of WP:BIAS. I am not discounting that there are perhaps some useable tidbits in the anthropology encyclopedia, but I don't believe it should be a source that we heavily rely on. It's hurting the article. Someone who arrives here to find out what "cargo cult" means, is going to end up being confused or misinformed, as 99% of the general population probably thinks of the Feynman definition when they hear the term. If the Feynman definition is wrong, no problem, but the article should discuss why it is wrong, rather than ignoring it entirely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.48.35.129 (talk) 22:04, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Feynman made absolutely no contribution to the etymology, since the term was already in use when he gave the lecture. As for 'bias', anthropologists are the only people with any expertise in the topic matter. Wikipedia bases article content on sources that know what they are writing about, not those that don't. And as a general principle, Wikipedia prefers more recent academic sources to older ones, for reasons that I would have hoped would be obvious.

If you wish to make a concrete proposal regarding article content, do so. But only after reading Wikipedia:Reliable sources, and ensuring that you can provide the necessary sources to directly support your proposed text. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:19, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

OK like I said, let's tell people about Feynman and then tell them why it is inaccurate. As I mentioned above, wikipedia users arrive at this article looking for information. 99% of them will only be familiar with the Feynman definition. Don't we owe it to them to explain why his definition is incorrect??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.48.35.129 (talk) 22:44, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

If you wish to make a proposal, do so. Citing the necessary sources. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:02, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

So here are a couple of sources I found, but please feel free to add any that you may think are appropriate: https://netmind.net/en/the-opposite-of-agility-rituals-ceremonies-and-the-cargo-cult-en/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/life-after-facts-how-russian-state-media-defines-itself-through-negation/ Thank you for your help. I think if we can first explain the misconception about cargo cults, then we can go about dismantling that misconception. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.48.35.129 (talk) 23:37, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

The first source is worthless, since the author clearly has no subject-matter expertise regarding cargo cults. The second mentions so-called 'reverse cargo cults' in passing, and is of no use either. Wikipedia content can only contain content which is directly supported by the sources cited. Neither source says anything about misconceptions' regarding cargo cults, and accordingly could not be cited for any content regarding that subject. And that is all that needs to be said here, since this is not a forum, and contributors are under no obligation to repeat ourselves endlessly just because you fail to understand the purpose and policies of Wikipedia. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:51, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Wonderful. How constructive. So we will continue to confuse 99% of people who arrive at this article trying to determine what a cargo cult is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.48.35.129 (talk) 18:08, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Split the article?

I think the big debate here is between people who think Cargo cult is for academic anthropological discussion of a wide range of loosely-connected cults, versus people who think it should be about the metaphor that's in common use. And honestly, I think both of them are actually article-worthy. Academic analysis is certainly worthy, but common metaphors also frequently have pages of their own. I'd therefore propose that we make this a disambiguation page, where the current content is moved to (e.g.) Cargo cult (anthropology) and the @growing_daniel crowd gets Cargo cult (metaphor). That should neatly sidestep the edit wars, and avoid a sloppy half-and-half article, or one that simply omits one side of it or the other. Alsadius (talk) 14:57, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

What sources are you proposing should be used for the 'metaphor' article? AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:59, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Honestly, you could probably just use the article as it stood two years ago in that spot. It had quite a few references, most of which seem fairly legit to my eyes.

I know you were the one to do most of the changes since then, so I expect you will oppose this suggestion (since I'm sure you changed it for reasons that you believed to be good and sufficient), but I think the core disagreement you had with the old article was that it was about the metaphor, not the anthropology. The article you pushed towards did a much better job with the anthropology, which is good to have covered, but I don't think the metaphor should be lost in that change. Alsadius (talk) 15:10, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

No, just no. What you are proposing is a WP:POVFORK, which is entirely contrary to core Wikipedia policy, and has never been permitted. The old article didn't discuss cargo cults as a metaphor, it instead made claims about the actual 'cults' that weren't in accord with what appropriate sources (i.e. those from anthropology, the only field to have actually studied the topic) had to say on them. Any article on a metaphor must, per both Wikipedia policy and common sense, discuss it as a metaphor, rather than treating the metaphor as if it were reality. For that, we need sources discussing the cult metaphor as a metaphor. And the only sources I'm aware of that do that in any real depth are the writings of Lamont Lindstrom: an anthropologist who has noted the continuing interaction between the metaphor (which has taken a life of its own) and Melanesian culture and politics. Working from that, it would be very difficult to justify splitting the article at all. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:47, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Not at all. I don't think this is actually a POV difference, I think it just looks like one. "What were the cults actually like?" and "What does pop culture mean when using the phrase?" are wildly different questions. Trying to put them in the same article is a fundamental error, and the POV disputes are about which of the questions to emphasize answering, not about any actual disagreements on the content of either answer. But it's still an actual metaphor in common use, which is separately WP:N from the anthropology.

And yes, I think the metaphor is popular enough to warrant an article. This isn't the kind of reference one would put into a finished article, but here's a Google Ngrams plot of the term against four other common metaphors (and the first four I thought to check, no cherry-picking). All four of the others have Wikipedia articles (1, 2, 3, 4). "Cargo cult" is currently close to "have your cake", and several times more popular than the other three.

And those articles actually give good guidance on how one could write it, if you wanted to do a cleanup at the time of the fork. Boiling frog, for example, has a section on experimental evidence, concluding that it's not a real phenomenon. And by all means, include a "Modern scholarly consensus is that the metaphor is a misunderstanding of the cults" note on the metaphor article. But Boiling Frog still gets an "as a metaphor" section, with examples from mass literature and pop culture. Remember, the metaphor article should not be written from an academic POV, because other Wikipedia articles about metaphors are not written from an academic POV. That perspective is fitting for an article about an academic theory, but not for an article about an idiom. As such, your proper references for such an articles would be mostly mass-media references, not academic ones - there's no shortage of those. The Feynman example given above would actually be a valid reference in a section like that, for example, because it's a popular and influential work that explains and uses the metaphor. Alsadius (talk) 16:22, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

What you are proposing would violate Wikipedia:No original research. We can't do our own analysis of say Feynman, giving it as an example of 'cargo cults as a metaphor'. We need secondary sources that analyse Feynman's speech that way - as metaphor. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:30, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Here's the relevant bit from the nutshell of that policy: All material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source. Articles must not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that reaches or implies a conclusion not clearly stated by the sources themselves.

I don't have a copy of the book handy, but here's a speech he gave on the topic, and the book's version is adapted from that speech: I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call Cargo Cult Science. 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.

He's clearly stating it to be a metaphor. If you want me to dig up someone else quoting him and doing that analysis, that can be arranged (there's a reference of this sort in the book's article, for example), but I don't think that's actually what NOR demands here. Judging by the structure of similar pages, simply giving examples of the metaphor in common usage is fine, no meta-textual analysis needed. Again, see the various links to other WP pages which I gave above. Alsadius (talk) 18:15, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I know what Feynman said. And no, he isn't stating that cargo cults are a metaphor. He's using what he thinks he knows about cargo cults as a metaphor. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

But that's my whole point! The metaphor stands apart from the reality of the cults, much like how the boiling frog metaphor stands apart from the reality of frogs actually jumping out of the pot. People still use the metaphor, whether it's accurate or not, and that usage is noteworthy in its own right. This is exactly why I'm saying that there's two completely different articles here. One's about actual beliefs among South Pacific islanders, and the other is a figure of speech people use to discuss those who ape the form of something without understanding the content. Alsadius (talk) 18:29, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Articles need sources. Sources directly discussing the article topic. Not sources we can select our own examples from. This is how Wikipedia does things. Per policy. Per WP:NOR. Per WP:RS. Per WP:NPOV. Find the sources. Sources discussing 'cargo cults as a metaphor'. Or 'cargo cults as a figure of speech'. Not sources using metaphors. Sources analysing them as such. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:35, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

So can I expect to see you in Talk:Boiling frog arguing that they need to remove the "as a metaphor" section, and just leave it as an animal behaviour article? Remove the joke that started Spherical cow, and also the pop culture references, and leave it as "This was the name of a Linux distribution from 2013"? I don't see how those articles are distinguishable from this one, according to the rules you're suggesting here. And if a large number of long-established articles aren't following your rules, then I'd suggest you misunderstand the rules.

Can you find me even a single example of an article about a metaphor that follows the rules as you're outlining them here? I just went through a dozen more to double-check myself here, and none of the ones I looked at came close - several discuss the underlying fact pattern in varying levels of detail, but and a couple with single references to works of literary analysis, but none do the meta-textual analysis as the core of the article, or the most common category of references. All of the articles on metaphors have far more pop culture references than analytical ones. Alsadius (talk) 01:15, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

So far you have failed to provide any analytical sources at all. And please read WP:OTHERCONTENT. Not that the other articles are really comparable anyway, given that boiling frogs, slippery slopes etc are immediately recognised as metaphors, used in common parlance in contexts where nobody can take them literally. This plainly isn't the case with cargo cults, where it is readily apparent that a significant number of people aren't treating the PopCult version as a metaphor at all - they clearly believe it to be historical fact, around which they can then construct metaphors. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:24, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

If you're genuinely interested in writing about "cargo cults as metaphor", then the book Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond (freely accessible on JSTOR) is a good place to start, though perhaps somewhat heavy-going for the non-anthropologically inclined. Hemiauchenia (talk) 04:05, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

@Hemiauchenia:

So, okay, to kind of bring things back around, here is where we are at.

1. There is a popular and widely-used idiom referring to a phenomenon believed to happen in this region.
2. This figure of speech comes from the mid-20th century, and is based on a somewhat simplistic and reductionist understanding of cultural practices.
3. These cultural practices are in fact pretty detailed and complicated and they go far beyond the thing referred to by the idiom.
4. The guys who threw up a viral Twitter post to piss and moan that this article was obtusely stuffed full of academic mumbo-jumbo for the sake of political grandstanding were mostly correct.
5. The guy who threw up a Wikipediocracy thread to piss and moan that those guys were saying a bunch of whiny shit about the wokies for the sake of political grandstanding was mostly correct.

I understand it's annoying when dumbasses are racist online, and to have to listen to people say "Did you know that there's this island where people are so dumb they made headphones out of bamboo to make planes drop supplies there" (based on, evidently based on the sources, a cheap gonzo documentray from Italy in 1970 where everything else in it was obviously made-up??) and that it is fun to tell people "Actually did you know that if you boiled a real frog it would just jump out of the pot?", but I feel like once the "unsubtly bragging about having JSTOR access" Rubicon has been crossed, it's time to get on with it. Is there an actual, serious reason not to just split the article? There is a set of religious practices in Melanesia, and then there is a term used in colloquial English to refer to doing dumb shit by rote due to inadequate understanding of complex systems. The first source from this article, which has 15 citations, even says this outright:

Anthropologists have invented or cultivated a number of important keywords, including ‘culture’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘worldview’, ‘socialization’, ‘ethnography’, and ‘rite of passage’. Among these terms is ‘cargo cult’ which, although more particular in scope, has enjoyed surprising popularity both inside the discipline and beyond. Peter Worsley, who compiled an early overview of cargo cults in The trumpet shall sound (1957), offered what had already become the standard definition. 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 (1957: 11).

In the Melanesian islands of the southwest Pacific, ‘cargo cult’ provided a handy label which could encompass a variety of forms of social unrest that ethnographers elsewhere tagged millenarian, messianic, nativistic, vitalistic, revivalistic, or culture-contact or adjustment movements. After the Second World War, anthropological attention (including Worsley’s) had shifted from functionalist accounts of simpler social systems to issues of social change, and how to describe and explain that change. The label presumed that these Melanesian movements typically focused on the acquisition of ‘cargo’ or kago (supplies, goods) in the Pidgin Englishes of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides). Anthropologists offered a variety of explanations for cargo cult outbreaks, within the broader context of global social transformations that the War had caused. Simple greed and cupidity, fundamental Melanesian cultural and religious belief systems, or colonial inequality and oppression variously accounted for cult outbreaks. The term fell out of anthropological favor by the 1970s when Melanesian colonies obtained national independence (Fiji in 1970; Papua New Guinea in 1975; Solomon Islands in 1978; and Vanuatu in 1980). Active social movements continue, however, in colonised West Papua, the western half of New Guinea that Indonesia annexed in 1962. Some have tagged these anti-Indonesian liberation movements as cargoistic (e.g., Giay & Godschalk 1993; Timmer 2000), but caution is warranted insofar as the label undercuts the political gravity and legitimacy of organised liberation efforts. Although most anthropologists have abandoned ‘cargo cult’ as misleading, and even embarrassing (although, see Otto 2009 and Tabani 2013, who defend the label’s merits), the term enjoys a post-ethnographic afterlife and continues to pop up frequently in popular commentary and critique.

Like, the very first source here explicitly says that "most anthropologists have abandoned" the term as misleading -- is this untrue? This one says that there's a "strong tendency in recent studies of Melanesian religious and political movements that want to discard the term 'cargo cult' for reasons of analytical—and ethical—inadequacy". If this is true, it sounds to me like a pretty darn good reason to write about Melanesian religious movements at an article about Melanesian religious movements, rather than shoehorning them into a different article, under a name that apparently is not used by the field, and instead let that one be about the idea of a "cargo cult" at the article about the phrase "cargo cult". I realize this offers fewer opportunities for point-scoring, but I really do think it would result in a better article. In fact, two of them. Yes? jp×g🗯️ 22:27, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Like I (and Andy) have previously said, the idea of "cargo cult" and "cargo cult as metaphor" are really intimately connected to the point that I don't think they are really separable into two distinct articles, and readers are probably looking for both in the same article. Probably the best source for "cargo cult as metaphor" I've found so far is probably [5] Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:41, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

I think it makes sense to cover "cargo cult as popular metaphor" in the current "cargo cult" article, as the two topics are intimately connected. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:17, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, provided it is properly sourced. Which is the issue really. As I've noted, nobody beyond Lindstrom and maybe a few other anthropologists seem to have said much of consequence on the PopCult metaphor as a metaphor. Beyond that, it just gets used - generally by people who seem to take it as fact. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:23, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm not averse to that solution, if the article can be written well. It seems like the more difficult path of the two (which is why I suggested the split), but if you think they need to be taken as a pair, then the one-article solution might be the better option overall. Alsadius (talk) 01:18, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Article still a hot mess

Currently, the article is still a hot mess of WP:SYNTH and WP:OR, with extensive misuse of sourcing. I don't expect that to change until the editor that's deeply invested in the article steps back. Reviewing the sourcing for the sentence: "Anthropologists have described cargo cults as rooted in pre-existing aspects of Melanesian society, as a reaction to colonial oppression and inequality disrupting traditional village life, or both", it's clear that context has been stripped from the original article which attributes that characterization to "Those with a more critical perspective ...". There is no reason to represent a critical cohort of anthropologists as representative of the field in the lede of the article. Twisting sources like this suggest there is some WP:POV laundering going on. I could go into deeper detail for most of the other changes to the article, but for now it's clear that trying to move the article to a more neutral place isn't worth the effort right now. TheMissingMuse (talk) 16:53, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Confusing definition

So based on this article, a Cargo Cult is "just like any other cult, but located in Melanesia". I'm having a hard time finding anything in the article that explains why a different terminology is warranted for Melanesian cults specifically, when the definition could apply to any other cults operating anywhere else on the planet, aside from "this term has been used to refer to one very specific but nebulously defined phenomenon connected to Melanesia, so this now just the name for cults that pop up in that area". Am I missing something? 46.97.170.182 (talk) 11:10, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

You're missing the fact that the article is just a mess. It's been taken over by someone with a specific POV. This is evident from the fact that the introduction is laden with academic jargon, and elides the fundamental definition of what a cargo cult is. I don't expect this to change any time soon. TheMissingMuse (talk) 22:04, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I was just reading through this article by chance a month or two ago and noticed the same thing. I think the problem is pretty clear just in the lede itself. Simply put, I have no doubt it precisely passes WP:V and very carefully says exactly what the highest quality academic sources say. But it's a pretty clear violation of WP:ONEDOWN and WP:DUE (specifically WP:COATRACK). Firstly, WP:ONEDOWN. It simply is not comprehensible. Cargo cult is a term used to denote various spiritual and political movements ... the term "cargo cult" has been used by anthropologists to "label almost any sort of organised, village-based social movement with religious and political aspirations" What I honestly get from this is a feeling of vague confusion. Sure, I hear that there was some phenomenon that occurred in Melanesia after Western colonization, but what was it, and what did it have to do with the Western contact? Only once we get to Some groups foretold the coming of a bounty of Western goods or money as part of their prophecy do we actually get a glimmer of why this article is called "cargo cult". But it's only implied and nothing is said explicitly, and we are immediately expertly whisked away from any actual meaning being conveyed since the rest of the sentence is although this was not a universal feature of such movements, with other prophets telling their followers to abandon Western goods which undermines the entire idea and brings the reader back to having no idea what we're talking about. This leads into the second concern, WP:COATRACK. This isn't the "Summary of Melanesian spiritual movements in the mid 20th century" article. It's the "Cargo cult" article. Hence, this lede reads to me like a WP:COATRACK where we begin with "Cargo cult is a term..." and wander all around a broader topic for a while, barely touch back onto how it has anything to do with Western contact or "cargo" at all, then immediately undermine that by implying it didn't really happen that much, and wander away. The same coatracking issue happens in the body of the article itself. It's one thing to explain what else was going on with Pacific Islander cults at the time as background, it's another to make that the topic of the article with the cargo cults being a subnote of "oh and some of the cults were about cargo and some weren't". Again, this is the cargo cult article so it should be about the cargo cults specifically. So, I feel like a little bit of explanation could go a long way here. For instance, how about a simple straightforward sentence of what exactly is meant by the term "cargo cult"? I understand that the term has fallen out of favor, and that reality is always more complicated than the simplified one sentence sound bite that people colloquially use the phrase "cargo cult" to mean; you hear that usage all the time in the online world (and I am definitely not saying that should be brought up any more than it is). But assuming that I'm reading the article correctly, the crux to me is that this is really a thing that happened. It's not like "with a modern critical look, we don't think there were cults that promised a return of WW2 cargo", quite the opposite. I would sort of understand if the lede ended up having to say something like: "'Cargo cult' is a term for something that we thought happened in Melanesia but it didn't really", but that's not the case. Even with all the modern critical analysis, we aren't actually doubting the literal reality of how World War II cargo planes affected the Melanesian people and how cults sprung up around that. The lede reads as though we're gritting our teeth and trying our absolute hardest to obfuscate and not actually explain what "cargo cult" means, while nominally sticking to the letter of WP:V and MOS:LEDE. Is it really so hard to plainly say what the topic of the article is? So, getting into the specifics. I have no problem with the second paragraph of the lede, I think it adequately explains the more recent usage of the term on a meta level. The first paragraph though, simply does not explain the term. I should be able to read the first paragraph and understand what's going on with "cargo" and the "cult"s in specifically the mid 20th century in specifically Melanesia. That is an extremely easy low bar for an article on "cargo cult" but it currently fails to meet it. Leijurv (talk) 06:56, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Follow-up. Here's a humorous example of what I'm talking about. Imagine you went on the article "London" and the lede said something like this: "London" is a term used to denote various groupings, localities, and identities among peoples that emerged over the last few thousand years in the British Isles. Although the term "London" has been used by geographers to "label almost any sort of large, river-based settlement with commercial and political aspirations", features common to most London-like areas include the presence of prominent architectural structures, although this was not a universal feature of such areas, and claims made about these structures varied greatly from era to era. Some scholars posit that these areas may be associated with a body of water, potentially a river, while others have suggested that their relationship with rivers is more symbolic than geographical, pointing to the fluidity of urban spaces in general. The notion that London exists within the geopolitical construct known as "England" has gained traction among certain academic circles, though dissenting voices argue for a more fluid interpretation of its spatial and cultural boundaries. Given the multiplicity of conflicting viewpoints and the inherent ambiguity surrounding the concept of "London," it becomes increasingly challenging to assert any definitive statements about its characteristics, location, or even its fundamental existence. Leijurv (talk) 07:21, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are based on published reliable sources. The only such sources which have written anything of substance on this topic are those from anthropology. This article summarises what they have to say on the topic. Facile analogies and walls of text don't substitute for sources, and if some ill-informed people on this talk page have difficulty in understanding that what they think they know about the subject is wrong (e.g. this obsession with WW2 aircraft, for a phenomenon dating back to the 19th century, for a start), that isn't our problem. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:24, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

"The only such sources which have written anything of substance on this topic are those from anthropology" This is clearly untrue. I'm surprised to see such a blatant attempt at POV pushing from you @AndyTheGrump. TheMissingMuse (talk) 14:46, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

So, beyond anthropology, what WP:RS sources have written anything of substance on the topic of this article? Provide citations. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:06, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

• https://books.google.com/books?id=jmC8DAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22cargo+cult%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-s9-D77aIAxWiODQIHZkvBZkQ6AF6BAgKEAI#v=onepage&q&f=false
• https://books.google.com/books?id=_gA_DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=cargo+cult+science&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiPzvDb8raIAxWcLTQIHatRALYQ6AF6BAgMEAI#v=onepage&q&f=false
• https://books.google.com/books?id=RUamiiUdE1MC&pg=PA74&dq=%22cargo+cult%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjy8JeW8baIAxXHLTQIHftLAFA4FBDoAXoECAsQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false
• https://books.google.com/books?id=bRRTSMf5cO4C&pg=PA250&dq=%22cargo+cult%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwinpqTd8baIAxVwODQIHeS2FIk4KBDoAXoECBQQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false
• https://books.google.com/books?id=ckuvPmt9wMIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22cargo+cult+science%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjqs_uR8raIAxXCITQIHS5DI7oQ6AF6BAgIEAI#v=onepage&q&f=false
• https://books.google.com/books?id=BwX9rPAVYQIC&pg=PA89&dq=%22cargo+cult+science%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj856iF8raIAxWEHjQIHVznBqYQ6AF6BAgJEAI#v=onepage&q&f=false
• https://books.google.com/books?id=EWCsDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22cargo+cult%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjX0Z7I87aIAxWLDzQIHXxDAb84FBDoAXoECAkQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false
• https://books.google.com/books?id=xAaW3bJXNNYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22cargo+cult%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjX0Z7I87aIAxWLDzQIHXxDAb84FBDoAXoECBYQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

Let me know if you need another half dozen. TheMissingMuse (talk) 22:27, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I asked for WP:RS sources which have written anything of substance on the topic. Not the results of Google-mining the phrase 'cargo cult'. And please, if you are going to Google-mine, at least take the time to look at the titles of the crap you are proposing to cite. [6] AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:38, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Aha, so now you are going to arbitrarily select one source that you determine doesn't meet your personal bar, instead of using policy as a guide. I appreciate that you are trying, in good faith, to do something. What you are trying is not as clear. TheMissingMuse (talk) 23:29, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

If you sincerely think that 'Sekret Machines: Gods: An official investigation of the UFO phenomenon' is a valid source on the subject of Melanesian ethnography, I can only suggest that you take another look at WP:RS policy. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:21, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump I then take you view the other sources as legitimate, correct? TheMissingMuse (talk) 02:52, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I've read this thread, and can't see any sign of anyone saying your sources are valid. Maybe you replied in the wrong place TheMissingMuse? 12.75.41.46 (talk) 18:41, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I put them forward as valid sources. Only one source was identified as being less than ideal. TheMissingMuse (talk) 18:51, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

And no statements about the others, but you made a pointed assumption? Why? Do you really believe that if someone gives you an example of your data being very bad, it's a sign they agree with everything else? If yes, please read WP:CIR before continuing to edit. 12.75.41.46 (talk) 18:59, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

You've lost me here. Are you suggesting that the sources are not valid. Instead of drifting off into epistemic territory it's better to be clear. Note that I asked a clarifying question, and didn't take it for red that my understanding was necessarily correct. TheMissingMuse (talk) 20:47, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not going to put more time into the sources than you did. It was demonstrated that you linked random junk about UFOs. Propose a change to the article, and provide a reliable source to back it up. Don't spam the talk page with random search results. Don't make dishonest statements about other editors agreeing with you because they didn't waste more time on your sources. These are disruptive actions. 12.75.41.46 (talk) 21:39, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I spent over an hour reading and reviewing sources. Was that comprehensive, no? But it was certainly a good faith effort. Let us know when you are ready to contribute to the project. Cheers! TheMissingMuse (talk) 22:33, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

The hour would have been better employed reading Wikipedia:Reliable sources, since you clearly don't understand Wikipedia sourcing requirements. And please note that linking Google search results is highly inadvisable, regardless of the source found, since they are subject to rapid link-rot, and very frequently stop working within a day or two. A proper citation, even for a talk page discussion, needs at minimum to include the title and author(s), if it is to be of any long-term benefit. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:51, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I've read it many times. I understand it fine. Repeatedly claiming I don't is not helpful. Please stick to the content issues and stop trying to make it personal. Still waiting for you weigh in on the clear content issues raised in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cargo_cult#Article_still_a_hot_mess. TheMissingMuse (talk) 18:18, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

The definition of "cargo cult" is vague and confusing, even to anthropologists, the IP is exactly right, which is why modern anthropologists avoid the term. Wikipedia is not going to be able to provide a unambiguous definition of the term where none exists. Leijurv, comparing "cargo cult", a term which anthropologists have long understand to have a vague definition, with "London", a well-defined geographical location is an absurd and frankly stupid apples to oranges comparison. Hemiauchenia (talk) 14:15, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Well thank goodness you have made the article vague and confusing. Honestly, this has to be one of the biggest butchering jobs I've seen on WP in the last 18 years. TheMissingMuse (talk) 14:48, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Human behaviour is complex. Observing it as an outsider, from a very different cultural background, makes it appear even more so. If you would prefer an encyclopaedia that ignores describing such complexity, and instead bases article on silly just-so stories told about dark-skinned people by other people who don't know what they are talking about, you are free to go found one. Meanwhile, this article is based on published sources. None of the complaints here about the article have offered any valid sources to back up their alternative proposals - not that much in the way of concrete proposals have been offered. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:04, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd be happy to contribute if I didn't think the article was being held hostage. See the section above Talk:Cargo cult#Article still a hot mess for a clear example of awful POV sourcing that is still in the article. TheMissingMuse (talk) 22:31, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

(outdent) As I said, it's totally possible that I'm ill informed. Perhaps I should simply ask: in your reading of these sources, do you think that the "pop culture understanding" is something that didn't actually happen in real life? I really want to cut through the BS here. When I read this article, or John Frum, I don't get the impression that the pop culture understanding didn't actually happen. For instance, the article says In a form of sympathetic magic, many built life-size replicas of airplanes out of straw and cut new military-style landing strips out of the jungle, hoping to attract more airplanes. This is written in the article, yet you've called me ill informed and "obsessed" with WW2 aircraft. So did this happen or not? When you say that it dates back to the 19th century, yes, that's the problem with coatracking the article. You act as though this is the "Melanesian millenarian movements" article (e.g. here), but it's not, it's the "cargo cult" article. If we write about the general idea of Melanesian cults, yes absolutely you can make fun of me for even bringing up WW2 airplanes bringing cargo, yes absolutely the topic is so much broader and they had cults beforehand and afterward and some of the cults had nothing to do with cargo. But that's only because your coatracking of this article to that topic has been so successful for quite some time now. I agree with JPxG here: write about Melanesian religious movements at an article about Melanesian religious movements, rather than shoehorning them into a different article, under a name that apparently is not used by the field, and instead let that one be about the idea of a "cargo cult" at the article about the phrase "cargo cult" And for the comparison to London, yes I was having a bit of fun, but it seems very defeatist to imply that we can't give really any definition at all. I think the problem here is extremely clear: this article is titled "cargo cult" but it's written about a much broader topic, and this allows for endless fun opportunities to nitpick and hide behind that broadening of scope, such as making fun of me for bringing up airplanes at all while in reality airplanes are core to "cargo cult". And again, if you have WP:RS showing that the pop culture understanding of "WW2 logistics arriving and departing leaving cults in their wake" is not something that actually happened, that would be great to see, but it doesn't seem like that's the case. Andy asks for a concrete proposal, and at great peril of putting my foot in my mouth, I'll try and summarize based on what's currently in this article, John Frum, etc.

Cargo cult is a term that refers to an oversimplified view of the cults and religious movements that sprung up around and reacted to World War II logistics and cargo colonizing and then abandoning Melanesia. Anthropologists generally discourage the use of this term, as it greatly oversimplifies these religious movements, many of which existed long before WW2, and some of which foretold the exact opposite (to abandon Western goods). The term was popularized by anthropologists in the 60s, but popular commentary and critique has retained an oversimplified stereotyped view of "primitive and confused people who use irrational means to pursue rational ends"

So there's my shot at it. I have tried to clearly state exactly what happened, yet still explain why the term is oversimplified and these cults are not anywhere near as simple as they're made out to be. Leijurv (talk) 16:48, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

No, you aren't stating 'exactly what happened'. You are instead attempting to impose your own personal entirely unsourced personal definition of 'a term' on an article about actual events. As for the John Frum movement, we don't cite Wikipedia for very good reasons. And as a matter of simple historical fact, the movement doesn't even fit your definition, given that it's origins pre-date WW2, and the arrival of 'World War II logistics' in Vanuatu.

As for accusations of 'coatracking', that is utterly ridiculous: the article does nothing but summarise sources written by people with topic-matter expertise. Sources which you seem averse to for no better reason than that they actually describe real events in detail, rather than regurgitating popcult myths. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:20, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

The London analogy could work if there was a widespread misconception that the city was built by Merlin and a highly skilled team of friendly dragons in hardhats and people kept coming to Wikipedia to insist the article be focused around this popular myth.Dan Murphy (talk) 17:23, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I pose to you the same question, what exactly is the myth? As I said, And again, if you have WP:RS showing that the pop culture understanding of "WW2 logistics arriving and departing leaving cults in their wake" is not something that actually happened, that would be great to see, but it doesn't seem like that's the case. Leijurv (talk) 17:46, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Hm, where specifically is that suggested lede wrong about the facts? "the movement doesn't fit your definition" I feel as though this is a nitpick, not a meaningful critique. I said "that sprung up around and reacted to" to cover how some cults had already existed and only adopted beliefs about cargo. So it does fit the definition. Especially given that the next sentence says many of which existed long before WW2. For coatracking being "ridiculous", you didn't actually reply to the concern. The concern is that you've coatracked the article so successfully that an attempt to actually define "cargo cult" in any real way is met with incredulity from you. It suppose it's obvious to you that this article isn't really about cargo cults, but rather about the broader topic of Melanesian cults - that's exactly my accusation, that's exactly what coatracking is. And finally, "popcult myth" - I agree that there are myths and oversimplifications, can you share what precisely is a myth in what I wrote (given the correction that it does cover preexisting movements)? Leijurv (talk) 17:46, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

How many times does it need to be explained to you that articles aren't constructed around a particular contributors' own idea of what the topic is? This article is about the 'cargo cults' - Melanesian millennialist movements, as extensively described in academic sources. It isn't about some arbitrary subset of them that you think meet your own personal definition of what you think the article ought to be about. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:08, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Ironically, this is exactly what you and Hemiauchenia are doing. The article was not strictly about the Melanesian millennialist movements until Hemiauchenia came in and decided that's what it should be about. And despite that more narrow focus, the quality of the article has plummeted. e.g. the content discussed in Talk:Cargo cult#Article still a hot mess. TheMissingMuse (talk) 23:31, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree, TheMissingMuse. It's quite ironic. If I were to take the same tone in the other direction, I might say to Andy: How many times does it need to be explained to you that articles aren't constructed around a particular contributors' own idea of what the topic is? This article is about the 'cargo cults', as extensively described in academic sources. It isn't about some arbitrary supersubset of them that you think meet your own personal definition of what you think the article ought to be about. Plainly cargo cults are a real topic, he's acting like there's some source somewhere that says there is actually no such thing, and "cargo cult" is a semantic redirect to "melanesian millennialist movement". I haven't seen such a source. And Lindstrom for instance has no trouble giving actual specific statements in the abstract, that cargo cults were typically about ritual action in pursuit of cargo. Leijurv (talk) 01:34, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

(outdent) Given that the lede is supposed to summarize the article (MOS:CITELEDE), and given that what I'm suggesting is just a rewrite of the first paragraph of the lede, I hoped not to delve into sources. But it seems as though the replies I'm getting are reliant on appeals to those sources. For example, now you're claiming that per the sources, "cargo cult"s don't relate to cargo or cults, the term actually means "Melanesian millennialist movement"? It really doesn't. This is not supported by the cited source at all actually. Look at the abstract: ... 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. Ethnographers suggested that ‘cargo’ was often Western commercial goods and money, but it could also signify moral salvation, existential respect, or proto-nationalistic, anti-colonial desire for political autonomy. ... Would you look at that, Lindstrom actually gives a fairly clear definition of what specifically is the prototypical "cargo cult", as differentiated from the general idea of a new religious movement. It's in pursuit of cargo, through ritual action, and the cargo was often Western goods. This is basically everything that you seem to imply is a myth, but it's stated plainly in the abstract of the cited source??

So I'll write essentially two responses here, firstly on how the current lede fails, secondly on how it could be rewritten, and I'll go into Lindstrom.

Problems with current lede

First sentence Cargo cult is a term used to denote various spiritual and political movements that arose among indigenous Melanesians following Western colonisation of the region in the late 19th century I think this is a bit vague because it doesn't clearly say that the movements were about cargo. Also slightly nitpicking, but I think the timeframe of late 19th century is misleading, as some may have started then, but the bulk of the contact in question was in the mid 20th century. Other than that, it's all right as a first sentence. It clearly states that the term refers to how Melanesian religious movements reacted to and were affected by Western colonization - that's great, exactly right for an article about cargo cults. It just needs to go one step further and mention what's going on with "cargo".

Second and third sentences Although the term "cargo cult" has been used by anthropologists to "label almost any sort of organised, village-based social movement with religious and political aspirations", features common to most cargo cult groups include the presence of charismatic prophet figures foretelling an imminent cataclysm and/or a coming utopia for followers—a worldview known as millenarianism.[1][2] Claims made by these prophets varied greatly from movement to movement, with some predicting the return of the dead or an abundance of food.[3] Now we're being extremely misleading. Firstly, that quote. The issue here is that, paraphrasing, the cited source tells us that many people such as journalists have used the term in a broad way. That is not the same as what the lede says. The lede says the term "cargo cult" has been used by anthropologists to "label almost any sort of organised ... (emphasis added). The problem here is that "used by anthropologists" adds undue weight to this overly broad definition, it makes it seem as though that's "the" definition. The cited source actually says 'Cargo cult' quickly spread through Australian academia and beyond as anthropologists and journalists borrowed the term to label almost any sort of organised .... The interesting part here to me is that Australians "borrowed the term", in that it clearly states that this is an overgeneralized usage of "cargo cult". In short, the cited source says that the term was used sloppily to label many different things... but that same cited source also tells us a clear definition, we just need to look to the abstract about the "modal cargo cult". Why did we take the broadest definition and quote it out of context? Why not use the abstract? Then, in features common to most cargo cult groups we again have the issue of not actually talking about cargo at all. Did most cargo cult groups have charismatic prophet figured foretelling cataclysm or utopia? Sure! I'm not saying that can't be mentioned, I'm saying it's highly misleading if it's the only thing that's mentioned. Yeah, basically any cult will have charismatic prophet figures. And finally, that their claims varied greatly. I'm sure they did, and that would be a reasonable thing to say in the lede of a "Melanesian religious movements" article. But it is not WP:DUE in this lede. This lede is about cargo cults, and when speaking about cargo cults we're not just allowed to, we actually SHOULD explicitly say what the claims were in cargo cults to set them apart from any old cult.

Fourth and fifth sentences Some movements sought to appease "ancestral spirits or other powerful beings" by either reviving ancestral traditions or adopting new rituals, such as ecstatic dancing or imitating the actions of colonists and military personnel.[1] Some groups foretold the coming of a bounty of Western goods or money as part of their prophecy,[1][4] although this was not a universal feature of such movements, with other prophets telling their followers to abandon Western goods.[3 I think it's fine to say that the rituals were targeted at ancestral spirits or other powerful beings. It's probably too complicated for the lede to get into the exact nature of where they thought the cargo was coming from. But it's again misleading to completely fail to mention the connection to Western cargo. although this was not a universal feature of such movements, with other prophets telling their followers to abandon Western goods. This is plainly ridiculous at this point. I already talked about it previous points, but just come on. This is nearly exactly a classic example of failing WP:NPOV, in which you hedge with "some people did X, but others didn't". I leave this sentence with basically no new information. Here's the key point: sure, I have no doubt some other Melanesian religious movements at the time had nothing to do with cargo of any kind. Those movements were therefore not cargo cults. In the lede of the article about cargo cults, we are explicitly talking about the ones that were in pursuit of 'cargo' (Lindstrom). So, I'm asking for a rephrasing here. To make my point clear by paraphrasing: This is fine on a Melanesian religious movements article but doesn't belong on cargo cult: Some Melanesian religious movements foretold Western goods, but some didn't. This is so misleading it's essentially an incorrect definition: Some cargo cults foretold Western goods, but some didn't This matches the cited source: Cargo cults foretold Western goods. Do we even need to mention that not everybody was in such a cult? Perhaps we could also say, later in the article, Obviously, not everybody in Melanesia was in a cargo cult. but this is so obvious I don't think it needs to go in the lede at all.

Sixth sentence Anthropologists have described cargo cults as rooted in pre-existing aspects of Melanesian society,[2] as a reaction to colonial oppression and inequality disrupting traditional village life, or both.[1] The first cited source says Those with a more critical perspective rooted cargo cults in post-war political and economic relationships. Rather than pointing at Melanesians and Melanesian culture for cargo culting, cults erupted because of insufferable social conditions. and the second says Burridge (1993) observes that there is general agreement among scholars that cargo (and similar) movements are rooted in disharmonies in social and cultural conditions that are “generated when a traditional economy is faced with mod- ernization and the urgencies of money, commerce and industry” So, I can't quite call this sentence "wrong", because obviously any religious movement will be rooted in pre-existing aspects of the society. And clearly it was a reaction to colonization severely disrupting the village life and economy. I'm hesitant but I think this sentence is mostly fine, although I'm having a hard time grasping exactly where in which sources it's drawing from, so it needs to be supported in the body of the article in order to stay.

How it could be rewritten

Let's use only the first source, which is already cited in the lede, Lindstrom 2018. Firstly, what is "cargo cult" on a meta level? Where should the lede fall on the use-mention distinction? Are we writing about an anthopological term, or are we writing about the events that the term refers to? I think it'll have to be a bit of both, similar to how the lede is now. And I think it'll be important to say this clearly later in the lede. Secondly, the real level. While this Lindstrom source is academic and wordy, I think it's better than Wikipedia's lede. This is already a problem, since per MOS:INTRO Wikipedia should be more accessible and comprehensible than its sources, not less. So, the source says: ... 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. Ethnographers suggested that ‘cargo’ was often Western commercial goods and money, but it could also signify moral salvation, existential respect, or proto-nationalistic, anti-colonial desire for political autonomy. ... Here's why this text, in and of itself, is already better. First, it clearly says what happened. It was a ritual action in pursuit of cargo. Secondly, it says that the cargo was generally Western goods (but not always). This is interesting for me to read, because upon looking at this article's lede I imagined "oh gosh, I bet the cited source will be even more detailed-yet-vague, technical, nonspecific, etc". But upon reading the actual cited source, it pretty clearly states what the prototypical cargo cult is. Why can't we say this? Why didn't the lede already say this? How strange.

My updated suggestion for the first sentence: 'Cargo cult' is a term that refers to an oversimplified view of Melanesian religious movements taking up new rituals in pursuit of cargo as a reaction to Western colonization then abandonment of Melanesia. (Lindstrom 2018) Leijurv (talk) 21:32, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

This isn't an article about a term. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:48, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I somewhat agree. The article should be about cargo cults (the phoenomenom that happened in real life), and perhaps it could also mention the history of the term as a term (misuse, overly broad use, etc). The problem I see is that the lede isn't written about cargo cults, it's written about something a bit broader, about Melanesian religious movements in general. But that's really not what the term means, and it's not my random opinion, it's based on the sources. For instance, in the second source cited in the lede, Otto (2009), we have As far as Melanesia is concerned, the cargo cult concept highlights a range of millenarian ideas, cults, and movements that originated in the wake of Western colonization and, more often than not, involved a strong concern with the acquisition of Western goods—the cargo. again supporting the idea that cargo cults were about cargo (generally Western goods). And we also have In spite of the enormous variety of phenomena that have been branded as cargo cult in Melanesia, from the early beginnings to the present, it is pos- sible to identify a number of elements that are present in most of them in various combinations (Burridge 1993; T. Schwartz 1976; Steinbauer 1979). In particular, I would mention the following: the development of a certain myth-dream (Burridge 1960), a synthesis of various indigenous and foreign narrative elements and religious concepts; the expectation of the help and/or return of the ancestors; the emergence of leaders with special experiences and/or knowledge; and a strong belief in the appearance of an abundance of goods. These characteristics give a fair picture of the prominent aspects of most cargo cults, but they do not describe the moral and social crises that were the fertile ground on which the cults developed and to which they were a possible answer. This is again, fairly clear. There was ritual, there was a leader, it synthesized indigenous and foreign elements... and most of all a "strong" belief that it would result in the appearance of goods.

Here's the way I see it. I was self-doubting earlier, wondering if the whole cargo cult story was blown out of proportion and never really happened, and so I asked if there was a source saying that. But now that I look at these sources, is there really any disagreement that this happened? I think the lede is engaged in some quite strange rhetorical sleight of hand. This is the cargo cult article, so it pulls in scholarly sources about cargo cults. But instead of taking the overall summary / abstract at face value, the lede pulls out some quotes deeply out of context (e.g. how Australian journalists use the term, versus what the term actually refers to in real life). And now, you're arguing that based on those quotes, the cargo cult article's subject is actually so broad and vague that the lede doesn't need to really mention cargo at all? Let's bring it back to concrete reality please, for instance the abstract of Lindstrom or these quotes from Otto. Cargo cults were about ritual action in pursuit of cargo. Leijurv (talk) 21:58, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

You are still trying to concoct an article out of your own personal preferred subset of events described in the literature. We don't do that. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:03, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Untrue, please reread. I am clearly grounding it in the passages from Otto (2009) and most importantly the abstract of Lindstrom (2018): ... 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. Ethnographers suggested that ‘cargo’ was often Western commercial goods and money, but it could also signify moral salvation, existential respect, or proto-nationalistic, anti-colonial desire for political autonomy. ... Leijurv (talk) 22:04, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

(outdent) Here's a proposal for the first paragraph that's real, concrete, good-faith, and sourced. The changes are entirely cited to Lindstrom (2018), like how most of the lede already is. The main change is to make the lede more comprehensible by reducing the undue vagueness and unneeded detail, and adding more clarity on what most cargo cults were. The lede already says features common to most cargo cult groups include, meaning we're already fine with giving the broad strokes of the idea—let's just list a few more things under that header. And let's remove the obfuscation, such as the fence-sitting about whether cargo cults foretold cargo or not, fence-sitting about whether cargo cults arose because of colonization or not, and the quote that implies "cargo cult" can mean basically anything (we'll leave that detail for the body of the article).

−

Cargo cult is a term used to denote various spiritual and political movements that arose among indigenous Melanesians following Western colonisation of the region in the late 19th century. Although the term "cargo cult" has been used by anthropologists to "label almost any sort of organised, village-based social movement with religious and political aspirations", features common to most cargo cult groups include the presence of charismatic prophet figures foretelling an imminent cataclysm and/or a coming utopia for followers—a worldview known as millenarianism. Claims made by these prophets varied greatly from movement to movement, with some predicting the return of the dead or an abundance of food. Some movements sought to appease "ancestral spirits or other powerful beings" by either reviving ancestral traditions or adopting new rituals, such as ecstatic dancing or imitating the actions of colonists and military personnel. Some groups foretold the coming of a bounty of Western goods or money as part of their prophecy, although this was not a universal feature of such movements, with other prophets telling their followers to abandon Western goods. Anthropologists have described cargo cults as rooted in pre-existing aspects of Melanesian society, as a reaction to colonial oppression and inequality disrupting traditional village life, or both.

+

Cargo cult is a term used to denote various spiritual and political movements that arose among indigenous Melanesians following Western colonisation of the region. Features common to most cargo cult groups include charismatic prophet figures foretelling an imminent cataclysm and/or a coming utopia for followers, and the revival of ancestral traditions or adoption of new rituals, such as ecstatic dancing or imitating the actions of colonists and military personnel, in pursuit of a coming bounty of Western goods or money. Anthropologists have described cargo cults as a reaction to colonial oppression and inequality disrupting traditional village life.

I believe this is a compromise because it preserves lots of the existing phrasing and tone, and uses the existing source. Leijurv (talk) 00:57, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

No, cherry-picking sources to suit your own particular narrative is in no way a 'compromise'. In no way does 'imitating the actions of colonists and military personnel' typify the cults. And as has been explained umpteen times, neither does 'pursuit of a coming bounty of Western goods or money'. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:30, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

This is getting silly. Cherry-picking sources I used the existing sources from the lede. Do you not agree that Lindstrom (2018) is a good source? It's already cited six times in the current lede and another ten times in the body. Also, imitating the actions of colonists and military personnel is already in the lede, I didn't change that phrase, which you can clearly see in the diff. And the lede currently says some groups foretold the coming of a bounty of Western goods or money. Finally, the ritual being in "pursuit" of cargo is directly taken from the abstract of Lindstrom: ... 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. Ethnographers suggested that ‘cargo’ was often Western commercial goods and money, but it could also signify moral salvation, existential respect, or proto-nationalistic, anti-colonial desire for political autonomy. ... Emphasis mine. And it's also supported by these passages from Otto (2009). Leijurv (talk) 02:40, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump there is extensive cherry picking of sources in the article as it currently exists. If you have a problem with that, then you should address the issue raised in the section above: Talk:Cargo cult#Article still a hot mess. I understand you (Andy) are trying to make the article better. We all are. TheMissingMuse (talk) 02:49, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that section raises one of the issues that I also am bothered with - the cited source says "Those with a critical perspective", but the lede deletes that part and quotes the rest in a generic fence-sitting "some people say X, but others say Y", which is a classic WP:NPOV violation. In general, this lede is riddled with WP:OR and WP:UNDUE, as I've explained above in exhaustive phrase-by-phrase detail. My version removes the useless undue fence-sitting and is well supported by the abstract of Lindstrom's article, which is a high-quality well-sourced summary written by a lifelong subject matter expert. When you actually read Lindstrom's abstract it doesn't support the generic wishy washy "cargo cults can be anything" non-definitions currently in the lede. Leijurv (talk) 03:05, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm coming into this discussion almost completely blind, but something I noticed immediately is that your version completely cuts out the hedging the original does. No more "varies wildly", to name one example. I think that creates a probably incorrect impression that these movements were at least relatively uniform in nature. --Licks-rocks (talk) 17:41, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

The removal of hedging is intentional, yes. I understand the concern of uniformity too, and I'm totally willing to compromise on phrasing, e.g. should it be described as "most" cargo cults, the "typical" cargo cult, or something else entirely. The part that I feel needs to change is hedging-to-the-point-of-meaninglessness. If you look at the abstract of the cited source you'll see that it describes attributes of the "typical" cargo cult, here's one sentence: 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. Hence, I feel as though our lede could say something similar. I feel as though "cargo cults typically foretold cargo as a result of ritual action" is supported by sources, while "cargo cults sometimes foretold cargo and sometimes didn't" is misleading (WP:UNDUE). Leijurv (talk) 17:47, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

@Licks-rocks: Would this be better in your view?

−

Cargo cult is a term used to denote various spiritual and political movements that arose among indigenous Melanesians following Western colonisation of the region in the late 19th century. Although the term "cargo cult" has been used by anthropologists to "label almost any sort of organised, village-based social movement with religious and political aspirations", features common to most cargo cult groups include the presence of charismatic prophet figures foretelling an imminent cataclysm and/or a coming utopia for followers—a worldview known as millenarianism. Claims made by these prophets varied greatly from movement to movement, with some predicting the return of the dead or an abundance of food. Some movements sought to appease "ancestral spirits or other powerful beings" by either reviving ancestral traditions or adopting new rituals, such as ecstatic dancing or imitating the actions of colonists and military personnel. Some groups foretold the coming of a bounty of Western goods or money as part of their prophecy, although this was not a universal feature of such movements, with other prophets telling their followers to abandon Western goods. Anthropologists have described cargo cults as rooted in pre-existing aspects of Melanesian society, as a reaction to colonial oppression and inequality disrupting traditional village life, or both.

+

Cargo cult is a term used to denote various spiritual and political movements that arose among indigenous Melanesians following Western colonisation of the region. Features common to most cargo cult groups include charismatic prophet figures foretelling an imminent cataclysm and/or a coming utopia for followers. Claims made by these prophets varied greatly from movement to movement, but most foretold that the revival of ancestral traditions or adoption of new rituals, such as ecstatic dancing or imitating the actions of colonists and military personnel, would lead followers to a coming bounty of Western goods or money. Anthropologists have described cargo cults as a reaction to colonial oppression and inequality disrupting traditional village life.

(I've added back that claims "varied greatly from movement to movement") Leijurv (talk) 17:54, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

For reference, I'm noting that Hemiauchenia has brought this up at Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Cargo_cult, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Religion#Dispute_at_Cargo_cult, and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Religion/New_religious_movements_work_group#Dispute_at_Cargo_cult Leijurv (talk) 18:25, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Andy, I think you've been pretty disrespectful and unkind to me but I'm going to continue try to work with you anyway. I think Facile analogies and walls of text don't substitute for sources, and if some ill-informed people on this talk page have difficulty in understanding that what they think they know about the subject is wrong (e.g. this obsession with WW2 aircraft, for a phenomenon dating back to the 19th century, for a start), that isn't our problem. was unkind. You said None of the complaints here about the article have offered any valid sources to back up their alternative proposals and the article does nothing but summarise sources written by people with topic-matter expertise. Sources which you seem averse to for no better reason than that they actually describe real events in detail, rather than regurgitating popcult myths and How many times does it need to be explained to you that articles aren't constructed around a particular contributors' own idea of what the topic is? This article is about the 'cargo cults' - Melanesian millennialist movements, as extensively described in academic sources. It isn't about some arbitrary subset of them that you think meet your own personal definition of what you think the article ought to be about.. I think that it's disrespectful to essentially ignore me when I genuinely respond to your challenge to provide concrete proposal that cites subject matter experts. I explained in detail how I think we could collaboratively improve this article, and you still are responding with dismissiveness, with You are still trying to concoct an article out of your own personal preferred subset of events described in the literature. We don't do that. even though I fully explained how what I said was based on the main source of this article (Lindstrom). And now on top of all that, you're calling Lindstrom a "cherry-picked source" (I didn't pick it!), and you're criticizing the phrases that are already in the lede, which you can clearly see since I used the textdiff template to show you, and which are directly and straightforwardly supported by Lindstrom's abstract? I really don't understand what's going on here, genuinely. I am going to continue trying to propose ways to improve this lede to address the "insufficient context" maintenance template and improve the encyclopedia, but I really think you're making it difficult and uncollegial. Leijurv (talk) 04:43, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

(outdent) Moving back from WP:FTN#Cargo_cult (permalink). My summary:

• Hemiauchenia consults with Austroneiser. Their reply reminds me of WP:DTTC. Hemiauchenia defends the current lede using quotes from Lindstrom (2018), I reply clarifying that I agree the source is reliable but I think the quotes are missing important context, also referencing Otto (2009), now awaiting further reply.
• Hemiauchenia presents more sources to support early accounts being highly biased (no disagreement from me on that front), agrees with Andy that "Cargo cult" if taken at its broadest can mean any new religious movement in Melanesia, but also agrees that ritual action for material goods actually happened. I reply, agreeing that that is the broadest definition, but disagreeing that we should be so broad, and I respond to the particular doubts about source bias, such as by mentioning that Lindstrom wrote both sources, and that he was more concerned in his 1993 book with Western reactions rather than Melanesian realities.
• Fiveby cites a new source, Vivanco (2018) in Oxford University Press's "A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology", which I believe we'll agree is reliable. This source says native prophets promised the imminent arrival of ‘cargo’, or manufactured goods and money. Their edit summary was what popular misconception? which I agree with - a big issue in this conversation is throwing around phrases like "myth" or "just-plain-wrong" or "popular misconception" or similar, while not clearly and explicitly stating what part you're claiming is myth versus fact. If you look at my earliest posts, I openly struggled, and still struggle now, to understand what exact parts of the story we're saying are debunked, versus misleading, versus myth, ...?
• Lots of mostly unproductive back-and-forth between Andy and I, not saying much beyond what you can already see on this page ^. The loop was basically, paraphrasing:

  1. Andy: This is a complicated topic and you're perpetuating misleading, ill-informed, and offensive myths, my position is supported by the literature on the topic, which you need to read more of.

  2. Me: I have quotes from various sources that we agree are reliable to support my position, you have not quoted anything.

  3. Return to step 1 and repeat.

  Andy did bring up two sources, "A Melanesian Millennium" (Burridge 1960) and "The Trumpet Shall Sound" (Worsley 1957), which I am perusing. He didn't quote anything, but he did identify a nice map in Worsley to show me that only about half of the cargo cults had the "myth of the cargo", I located the map and confirmed this is accurate (it was just above half), however, this did end up supporting my position that this was "more often than not" (quoted from Otto (2009)).

• Fiveby returns and comments on Lindstrom and other sources, suggests to move discussion back to this page, and suggests to expand the article body. Hemiauchenia and Andy generally agree.

That's my summary. I would agree that my dynamic with Andy simply isn't working. Fiveby (talk · contribs) suggests to instead update the article body accordingly. I do believe the article body contains sufficient detail, however, it fails to summarize the movement, and it fails to explain the contradiction inherent in the term. Particularly, the issue we face in discussion, about to what extent this really happened and what exactly is a myth about it, is not really addressed well in the article. Sure, the article presents Lindstrom's perspective, with attribution to Lindstrom, but then in the "Causes, beliefs, and practices" and "Examples" sections, the article dives right in and makes clear unafraid statements that characterize the common attributes of cargo cults, with examples (which is great!). But now we've presented the reader with two perspectives, with no connective tissue. Is this a made-up Western term that doesn't really correspond to reality? The article makes me suspect so... but then I read the next few sections and it's back to sounding like something that (at least in some cases (I'd say most cases)) happened. What do we think should be done about this? Leijurv (talk) 18:20, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

From reading through the source that Andy recommended me, I found one of the quotes used in the article. The quote was cut off before it mentioned "cargo", so I've extended it in this edit. Leijurv (talk) 18:45, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Up next I'll look at the last paragraph of the "Origin of the term and definitions" section. I think this is a good place to start since it's plainly just summarizing what Lindstrom (2018) has to say, so there's no challenge in sourcing, just summarization. Overall I think this paragraph's quotes provide an interesting and relevant perspective (and my edit doesn't remove any), but some of the connector words and framing of the quotes goes a bit beyond Lindstrom's actual claims. Pinging @Hemiauchenia: as I'm taking (slight) issue with what you wrote. First: Anthropologist Lamont Lindstrom has written that the term "bundles together diverse and particular uprisings, disturbances, and movements that may have little in common" My issue is that when reading the sentence in context, it's in a paragraph that compares usage of the term on a meta level. The previous sentence was Others have deconstructed cargo cult as a misleading analytical artifice, an observer’s false category. and the rest of the paragraph considers the other side. For example, imagine I wrote Lindstrom has written that the term is "ethnographically useful", quoting from later in the same paragraph, this would be poor WP:NPOV in the other direction, because I pulled that out from another sentence and removed the part where Lindstrom again has hedged by saying that this is only the opinion of some anthropologists. Then, the next quote is label almost any sort of organised, village-based social movement with religious and political aspirations. The full quote in the source is ‘Cargo cult’ quickly spread through Australian academia and beyond as anthropologists and journalists borrowed the term to label ... aspirations. I brought up my concern with this quote here, but to reiterate, if some writers "borrowed the term", that doesn't mean that their usage should be cited or even implied as definition. To again give an example in the other direction, imagine I had a source that said something like 'Cargo cult' quickly spread through pop culture, as scientists borrowed the term to mean following the form of someone else's scientific advances without understanding the substance, and then imagine I cut off the first part of that sentence and just wrote in the article The term 'cargo cult' has been used by scientists to label "following the form of someone else's scientific advances without understanding the substance", which obviously be highly misleading. As you can see, if we delete the part of the source that qualifies this definition as a "borrowing" ("misuse"?) of the term, we can end up saying misleading things about what the term actually means in general. For the next quote, encompass a variety of ... movements, it's again a fine quote, but slightly misleadingly framed. The source says In the Melanesian islands of the southwest Pacific, ‘cargo cult’ provided a handy label which could encompass a variety of ... movements. Again the problem is that Lindstrom is describing that the term was used this way by some anthropologists, but our article as-written implies that Lindstrom is claiming that that is what actually happened, because the hedging around the quote ("handy label which could") is not included. Then, the second sentence, Lindstrom writes that many anthropologists suggest that "cargo" does not necessarily signifiy literal material goods, but can also reflect desires for "moral salvation, existential respect, or proto-nationalistic, anti-colonial desire for political autonomy" Again, this is fine content, but the framing is slightly misleading. The source says Ethnographers suggested that ‘cargo’ was often Western commercial goods and money, but it could also signify moral salvation, existential respect, or proto-nationalistic, anti-colonial desire for political autonomy. This paraphrasing has lost the core claim that the cargo was often physical goods, instead it simply says that it wasn't necessarily physical goods, leaving it unsaid how often that was true in Lindstrom's perspective.

Here's my edit:

−

Anthropologist Lamont Lindstrom has written that the term "bundles together diverse and particular uprisings, disturbances, and movements that may have little in common", with the term used to "label almost any sort of organised, village-based social movement with religious and political aspirations" which "encompass a variety of forms of social unrest that ethnographers elsewhere tagged millenarian, messianic, nativistic, vitalistic, revivalistic, or culture-contact or adjustment movements". Lindstrom writes that many anthropologists suggest that "cargo" does not necessarily signifiy literal material goods, but can also reflect desires for "moral salvation, existential respect, or proto-nationalistic, anti-colonial desire for political autonomy".

+

Anthropologist Lamont Lindstrom has written that some anthropologists consider the term to be a "false category" because it "bundles together diverse and particular uprisings, disturbances, and movements that may have little in common". Lindstrom also writes that "anthropologists and journalists borrowed the term to label almost any sort of organised, village-based social movement with religious and political aspirations", and that their usage of the term "could encompass a variety of forms of social unrest that ethnographers elsewhere tagged millenarian, messianic, nativistic, vitalistic, revivalistic, or culture-contact or adjustment movements". Lindstrom writes that many anthropologists suggest that while "cargo" often signified literal material goods, it could also reflect desires for "moral salvation, existential respect, or proto-nationalistic, anti-colonial desire for political autonomy".

As you can see, I've pulled in additional context and framing, but kept the quotes. I believe that in the broader scheme of the article, it's very necessary to convey their perspective, that "cargo cult" has been used overbroadly, which is why I don't think the paragraph should be removed, just reframed. Leijurv (talk) 21:42, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

• I'm having issues identifying a source for this sentence: More recent work has debated the suitability of the term cargo cult arguing that it does not refer to an identifiable empirical reality, and that the emphasis on "cargo" says more about Western ideological bias than it does about the movements concerned. I would ping the original author but it looks like they haven't edited in a decade. The citation is to Otto (2009), but I'm unable to find support for the sentence. Within Otto, I think this is the section being paraphrased, based on it being the only usage of phrases identifiable empirical reality and Western ideological bias, on page 86: Perhaps the most central debate concerns the suit- ability of the term itself, which has been critically assessed from a number of different perspectives. These stances can be summarized by the following questions: Does the term ‘cargo cult’ refer to an identifiable empirical reality? To what extent does it contain a Western ideological bias? Does the use of the term incur ethical and political problems? Do we need the term at all? but that's a vastly different tone and a deeply slanted retelling. Otto phrases these as questions. The next paragraph goes into whether it's an empirical reality with Starting with the first and perhaps most challenging question and continues The existence of cargo cults before the invention of the term may be rightly doubted, but they are now an established part of the academic and indigenous discourse and therefore a social reality. ¶ While the existence of the term ‘cargo cult’ and its continuous use is an undeniable fact, some have doubted its value as an analytical and comparative concept. and continues to defend the term (pages 87-88). Later on page 88, Otto brings up Lindstrom's analysis of "cargoism" (the his work deals only with texts and not with Melanesian realities that I mentioned earlier), but continues to defend the term even though I accept the assumption of a Western predilection to cargoist discourse, I argue that we need to include an analysis of historical and ethnographic realities, which makes it necessary to have a term for doing this—‘cargo cult’, for example. So, Otto argues against the critical view on these questions, leaving us with no support to the sentence in the article (which implies that this critical perspective is seen across "more recent work", while actually it appears to me to be a hypothetical question that Otto brings up in order to soundly reject). Unless there's something I'm missing here, I am highly skeptical of this sentence and its text-source integrity, and as such I would totally rewrite it. Leijurv (talk) 22:18, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

  I've let this sit for a full week, and I think the conclusion is pretty clear: this sentence is a slanted misread of the source. See this previous post ^^ for my initial take. In this section of the source, Otto is bringing up potential objections to his case, then explaining why he disagrees. For example, Otto writes To what extent does it contain a Western ideological bias? whereas our article says More recent work has ... [argued] ... that the emphasis on "cargo" says more about Western ideological bias than it does about the movements concerned. These are absolutely miles apart from each other, and we're well into WP:OR. I'm also skeptical of the entire framing - Otto is bringing up the critical side of the literature and arguing against it. Otto writes: The most forceful attack on the term was launched by Nancy McDowell ... So, he's clearly bringing up specifically the most critical views on the term (most forceful attack), rather than a summary of the literature. Therefore, to be frank, this is essentially as slanted as you could possibly imagine for a place to quote from. So it's absurd to write in our article that More recent work has debated/[argued] ... when Otto is explicitly, in his own admission, bringing up the most extreme examples of critical opposition to the term. We shouldn't summarize that under the generic label of "More recent work", because that creates to the reader an implication of broad applicability that is very much not there in the cited source.

  Now, all that being said, I am not sure it would be neutral to remove this paragraph entirely. Per WP:DUE, we should mention minority viewpoints, properly attributed. The rest of the paragraph about McDowell is a bit mushy / nonsensical (as evidenced by the "clarification needed" maintenance template), so I'll rewrite that. The next paragraph about Lindstrom and Kaplan is also pulling from the same pages of the same source, so I'll combine this all into one paragraph summarizing Otto pages 86 through 89. Leijurv (talk) 23:28, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

  I've made that edit here. Leijurv (talk) 23:31, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

• I noticed a WP:COPYVIO sentence: In recent decades, anthropology has distanced itself from the term "cargo cult", which is now seen as having been reductively applied to many different complicated and disparate social and religious movements that arose from the stress and trauma of colonialism, and sought to attain much more varied and amorphous goals—things like self-determination—than material cargo. I initially removed it, noting as such, but I saw the same source was paraphrased into another article, so I added it back with the copyright violation replaced with a paraphrase. Leijurv (talk) 22:30, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
• I believe the sentence about how political movements "must take care to deny explicitly" being a cargo cult is a bit of synthesis, especially how it was written with the "However", which I've removed in this edit. There are some implications I could see. 1. It could imply there are more modern cargo cult movements than listed on the previous bullet list, because they have to deny it. and/or 2. It could imply that the previous bullet list contains some movements that deny being cargo cults, but they really are, it's just that they have to deny it. The problem is that all of that is WP:SYNTH. The cited source doesn't say any of that, and it certainly can't support either of those implications, because it doesn't mention any of those bulleted movements. Therefore I've added the synthesis maintenance template, and unless I or someone else can find some specific examples I think it's improper juxtaposition. The cited source does give one example, saying that there's a movement that allegedly still awaits the coming of Lyndon B Johnson but denies it, and names themselves Tutukuval Isukal Association. I am just saying it's WP:SYNTH to apply this comment to arbitrary other examples that Lindstrom didn't talk about. Leijurv (talk) 22:58, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
• For these claims: These leaders claimed that the goods were intended for the local indigenous people, but the foreigners had unfairly gained control of these objects through malice or mistake.[10] Thus, a characteristic feature of cargo cults was the belief that spiritual agents would, at some future time, give much valuable cargo and desirable manufactured products to the cult members.[10] I had some trouble piecing together the exact support from the source, it strikes me as having strayed slightly into WP:SYNTH, but I think it's plainly true and supported by other sources too, so I'm not worried. Also, on page 134 of that source, I found this to be relevant to the article and I think it could be a good high-level explanation for how cargo beliefs changed over time (and reacted to eras of Western colonization): Waiting for ships or planes to bring dead ancestors and cargo began a long time ago. In the earliest cults the coastal people watched for a big canoe. Later, they watched for sails. In 1919, cult leaders searched the horizon for traces of smoke from steamships. After World War II, ancestors were expected in LST's, troop carriers, and Liberator bombers. Now they're coming in "flying houses" that rise higher than airplanes. then The cargo itself has also undergone modernization. In the earliest days, matches, steel tools, and bolts of calico accounted for most of the phantom cargo. Later, it was sacks of rice, shoes, cannet meat and sardines, rifles, knives, ammunition, and tobacco. Recently, phantom fleets have been seen carrying automobiles, radius, and motorcycles. Some Wset Irian cargo prophets are predicting steamships that will disgorge whole factories and steel mills. Then, I believe the best support for the article's current text is next, on page 135: A precise inventory of cargo would be misleading. The natives are waiting for a total upgrading of their lives. The phantom ships and planes will bring the beginning of a whole new epoch. The dead and living will be reunited, the white man thrown out or subordinated, drudgery abolished; there will be no shortages of anything. The arrival of the cargo, in other words, will mark the beginning of heaven on earth. This vision differs from Western descriptions of the millennium only beacuse of the bizarre prominence of industrial products. Jet planes and ancestors; motorcycles and miracles; radios and ghosts. Our own traditions prepare us for salvation, resurrection, immortality—but with airplanes, cars, and radios? No phantom ships for us. We know where such things come from. Or do we? ¶ Missionaries and government administrators tell the natives that hard work and machines make the cornucopias of industrialism release their rivers of wealth. But the prophets of cargo hold to other theories. They insist that the material wealth of the industrial age is really created in some distant place not by human but by supernatural means. Missionaries, traders, and government officials know how to get consignments of this wealth sent to them by plane or ship—they possess the "secret of cargo." Native cargo prophets rise or fall on their ability to penetrate this secret and to deliver cargo into the hands of their followers. The remaining problem I see is that I don't know where the through malice or mistake phrase came from, WP:OR? (note: I typed these quotes manually, beware of typos) Leijurv (talk) 04:34, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

  I've paraphrased these quotes into the article here. Leijurv (talk) 16:44, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

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• I'd like to make the first paragraph of the lede a bit more specific. I am hopeful for the following reasons. 1. Hemiauchenia wrote substantially all of it in June. 2. In this diff, Hemiauchenia praises the Lindstrom (2018) source, and praises Worsley (1957)'s definition too; I also like both of these sources. And: There are genuine commonalities with regard to some of the "cargo cult" movements, and perhaps the current article goes to far in the "cargo cult is a meaningless term" direction. Therefore, Hemiauchenia, I think we can find common ground.

To start, I will "test the waters" by a slight reduction in "meaningless term"-ness, in a way that I believe is on a totally solid concrete foundation in the existing cited sources.

First, the sentence Some movements sought to appease "ancestral spirits or other powerful beings" by either reviving ancestral traditions or adopting new rituals. The sources are completely clear and adamant that this happened. Lindstrom says 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 (which is clearly what you were paraphrasing). Worsley says 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. Lawrence (1964) says A cargo belief (myth) described how European goods were invented by a cargo deity and indicated how men could get them from him via their ancestors by following a cargo prophet or leader. Therefore, I propose to change Some movements sought to appease ancestral ... to The movements usually sought to appease ancestral ...

Second, the sentence Some groups foretold the coming of a bounty of Western goods or money as part of their prophecy, although this was not a universal feature of such movements, with other prophets telling their followers to abandon Western goods. See the same quotes from Lindstrom, Worsley, and Lawrence as the previous point ^. Also, Otto (2009) says the cargo cult concept highlights a range of millenarian ideas, cults, and movements that originated in the wake of Western colonization and, more often than not, involved a strong concern with the acquisition of Western goods—the cargo. and In spite of the enormous variety of phenomena that have been branded as cargo cult in Melanesia, from the early beginnings to the present, it is pos- sible to identify a number of elements that are present in most of them in various combinations. In particular, I would mention the following: the development of a certain myth-dream, a synthesis of various indigenous and foreign narrative elements and religious concepts; the expectation of the help and/or return of the ancestors; the emergence of leaders with special experiences and/or knowledge; and a strong belief in the appearance of an abundance of goods. These characteristics give a fair picture of the prominent aspects of most cargo cults ... Therefore, I propose to change Some groups foretold the coming of a bounty ... to Most groups foretold the coming of a bounty ...

So, to start, I'm just making two changes of basically one word each, keeping all the existing phrases and sticking to existing sourcing, but having it actually say something about the movements. I believe this is well-supported by the sources, and by the body of the article. What do we think? Leijurv (talk) 02:45, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Other sources that are already in the article. Schwartz (1974) says the following on page 160: Although no two cargo cults were exactly alike, a number of basic beliefs recurred in most. The ancestors would return. The dead would be reunited with the living on a given day, suddenly and totally. The ancestors, when they returned, would bring with them a 'cargo' consisting of the goods and wealth of the Europeans as well as the bounty of land and sea. In almost every instance, one or more prophets appeared who had received revelations from God, christ, or the dead themselves. Prophets were able to describe the magico-ritual means to be employed to ensure the coming of the cargo. Schwartz (2021) says the following on page 7: The villagers were not, however, trying to cure illness. They were trying to open a way for the dead to return, bringing with them virtually unlimited quantities of Western manufactured goods, from food and clothing to construction materials and machinery. [...] Anthropologists used to routinely call this kind of thing a cargo cult. Some now object to this term... Schwartz then goes on in much more depth on pages 16 and 17: The name cargo cult stuck, but many anthropologists have promoted interpretations of the phenomenon that de-emphasise the overt obsession with material goods. ... We can speak with full confidence only of the cargo cult episodes within the Paliau Movement, but the facts of the Paliau Movement case suggest that discounting too vigorously participants’ interest in material cargo—from canned goods to automobiles—seriously distorts participants’ own understanding of their aims. ... There is a case for interpreting the more specific object of their yearnings—material goods—as a symbol. But our data indicate that material goods in themselves were critical. In a phrase anthropologist Paula Levin suggests (personal communication, July 2017), material cargo was sufficient for some cult participants and necessary for all. ... But we still insist that, whatever else they may have sought, cargo was fundamental to the visions of a perfect world that moved participants in the cults we will describe. Many who joined them hoped they would bring not only cargo but also reunification with their ancestors. Otto/Jebens (2004) says In classic Melanesian cargo cults, collective rituals were performed to accelerate the arrival of the desired goods, and “false” rituals were often made responsible when the ancestors and their cargo-laden ships did not come. ... Bumbita cargo beliefs arise out of one central tenet: the conviction that the ancestors, or spirits of the dead, will bring the cargo and bestow it upon the living. ... Coinciding with the beginning of the Paliau movement were a number of cargo cults in a restricted sense: strongly emotional episodes in villages in which people destroyed their own property and waited for their ancestors to come with Western goods. Harris (1974) says Waiting for ships or planes to bring dead ancestors and cargo began a long time ago. ... and the rest of the quote is above (see here). These are all existing article sources. I think the overall shape of typical cargo cults is quite clear and reasonably consistent across the sources that are already cited, which is why I think my edits should be uncontroversial. Cargo movements usually foretold that ritual could bring cargo from their ancestors. Leijurv (talk) 03:38, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

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• In the spirit of the above discussion about "cargo cult" the term versus cargo cult the movement, I think that the first part of our second sentence strays too far into talking about the term. I've discussed this particular quote several times, see 1 2 3, the summary is that the full quote says that Australian anthropologists and journalists borrowed the term. We are writing about the topic, not about how the term was borrowed then used overly broadly by Australian journalists. To give an example that we'll all clearly agree on, imagine if a source said "Feynmann borrowed the term to mean X Y Z". It would be ridiculous, we would agree, to put in the second sentence of the lede Although the term "cargo cult" has been used by scientists to mean "X Y Z", ... because that's WP:UNDUE in an article about the topic, and especially in the second sentence of the lede, where we're only just beginning to introduce the topic to the reader. It could be WP:DUE in an article about the term like Cargo cult (idiom), but that's not the article we're writing. I think this improves the lede by focusing it in on the features and characteristics of the topic, by reducing the hedging in the direction of "meaningless term". Now, to address concerns that the diversity of the movements is no longer conveyed. I'm also proposing changing the first "various" to "diverse", which is a similar word, but it better conveys that idea. The lede still says claims made by these prophets varied greatly a few sentences later. And, most importantly, this quote remains in the body of the article, properly contextualized and attributed (edit here, explained here). Leijurv (talk) 17:57, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

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• There's just one last instance of some remaining in the first paragraph of the lede. I believe this one should be the least controversial. Claims made by these prophets varied greatly from movement to movement, with some predicting the return of the dead or an abundance of food. The return of ancestors bringing goods such as food is universal to all sources I've read. It's in all three of our quoted definitions, Bird (1945) ... ‘cargo’ had been sent by the ancestor of the native ..., Worsley (1957) ... ancestors will return, or God, or some other liberating power, will appear, bringing all the goods the people desire ..., Lawrence (1964) ... men could get [goods] from him via their ancestors by following a cargo prophet or leader. Cargo ritual was any religious activity designed to produce goods in this way .... Lindstrom (2018) states ... 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. Otto (2009) lists four characteristic elements of cargo cults, two of them are the expectation of the help and/or return of the ancestors and strong belief in the appearance of an abundance of goods. I have more sources listed in these posts too. Therefore, I propose to change the sentence to: While the specific claims made by these prophets varied greatly from movement to movement, most of them predicted the return of dead ancestors bringing an abundance of food and goods. So I still think it's okay to keep in the lede that the claims varied wildly overall, but we also need to say what they typically had in common. So, this is just another case of changing "some" to "most", supported by the sources (I added page numbers and an additional citation to the sentence too). And I tweaked the next sentence to clarify that "these" ancestral spirits are who the movements are appealing to.

Overall, I think this brings the lede to a place where we should consider removing the "insufficient context" maintenance template. When I compare to the revision that added the tag, I believe the current version is significantly more clear and less vague. Leijurv (talk) 22:43, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

• @AndyTheGrump: what are your thoughts about Leijurv's recent changes to the lead? I'm definitely ambivalent about them. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:38, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

• I'm not keen on it either. I've not currently got access to the Otto article, but from what I remember of Worsley, he was keen to emphasise differences amongst the prophecies etc. As are most studies that discuss multiple 'cults'. I really don't see the necessity to make assertions about what 'most of them predicted' in such an emphatic manner - and what does 'most' mean, anyway? 52%? 99%? Or 'it depends on how you define things'?. It reads a little too much like an attempt to shoehorn diverse data into a convenient stereotypical description. This is exactly what motivates much of recent anthropological criticism of the way the topic has been handled. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:11, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

  You can find a freely accessible copy of the Otto article here. Another interesting article I've been reading recently on the topic of Cargo cullts is What’s the Matter with Cargo Cults Today? (open access) from 2013 by Marc Tabani. The article is decidely less critical of the "cargo cult" concept than some anthropologists, and provides interesting qualifying criteria for "cargo cults". A big problem is that there is that there are seemingly two uses of the term "cargo cult", the broad (sensu lato) use for basically every Melanesian new religious movement, and a more narrow (sensu stricto) definition based around prophecies to obtain Western material goods. Obviously depending on how you define "cargo cult" is going to change whether Western material goods are a characteristic feature. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:54, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback Hemiauchenia! I'd know how to read "ambivalent", but what does "definitely ambivalent" mean? Like you feel strongly that they neither help nor hurt? In my previous posts ^ I provided the relevant quotes that I'm using from the various sources, I am happy to provide more quotes e.g. keyword searches if either of you would like. I'll take a look at Tabani (2013) now.

I understand the concern about "most", but I feel the same way about "some". I see it as an issue of WP:DUE weight. For instance, in my most recent edit, which I believe is the most defensible, I found that literally every source I've read agreed that ancestral spirits were involved in the belief system. I can admit there are certain exceptions that make specific phrasing difficult though. I am extremely willing to compromise on phrasing. For instance, Tokeriu's prophecy, as mentioned by Andy earlier, on page 52 of Worsley, did appeal to ancestors through ritual, and did believe that the ancestors would return on a ship, and did believe that a great abundance of food would result, however they believed that the food would grow and be harvested rather than physically arrive on the ship. How could we phrase the general idea to avoid this confusion? For instance, the current phrasing I could see either way. I wrote ancestors bringing an abundance of food, which you could interpret to mean that the ancestors would bring an abundance of food literally physically on the ship (not accurate to this case), or that the appeal to the ancestors would bring about an abundance of food by some other means (accurate).

But rather than getting into the specifics, speaking broadly, I'm okay with qualifying statements like "claims made by these prophets varied greatly from movement to movement". And at the same time I think it's appropriate to, for example, mention things like veneration of the dead and millenarianism "front and center", because that lines up with the definitions given in reliable sources, even though it will be disappointing to a reader who is expecting to hear the pop culture understanding. I think my previous posts have explained clearly how I've grounded each change in the sources. I'm totally open to discussing any/all of them. Leijurv (talk) 21:13, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

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@Hemiauchenia: With respect to making the lede of the article understandable to a broad audience (MOS:LEDE, WP:ONEDOWN) and addressing the "insufficient context" maintenance template, I believe your edit is moving in a counterproductive direction. Although the fortelling of the coming of a bounty of Western goods or money as part of their prophecy has often been considered a defining feature of cargo cults, this was not a universal feature of movements that have been included under the label, with other prophets telling their followers to abandon Western goods. This is incredibly wordy and awkward and I don't really understand why you made this edit, since you didn't use an edit summary and didn't explain on the talk page. What were you going for? To my read, it conveys essentially the same meaning in a much more convoluted way.

For what it's worth, I thought the previous phrasing (Most groups foretold the coming of a bounty of Western goods or money as part of their prophecy, although this was not a universal feature of such movements, with other prophets telling their followers to abandon Western goods.) was already a little convoluted, but I didn't really touch it because you and Andy seem to really want to say that some cargo cults rejected Western goods. I would agree that there's nuance here, most pertinently in the misattribution of goods as having come from ancestral spirits when they were truly of Western make. But I don't think this phrasing in the lede helps the reader with that nuance, at all. In particular, I take issue with has often been considered a defining feature since the WP:INTEXT attribution is superfluous, and I take issue with the Although since it's WP:SYNTH to imply a tension/contradiction when it isn't stated in the source. And I also take issue with movements that have been included under the label, which is a perfect example of adding convoluted phrasing that hurts understanding. In the lede, we're talking about cargo cults, and we use shorthand like the movements or the groups. There's no need to "backtrack" and retreat into using phrases like movements that some anthropologists have included under the label of "cargo cult" in every sentence. We can just say such movements, like the rest of the lede does. Leijurv (talk) 21:26, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump: for his take. It's obvious that most historic definitions of "cargo cult" include the prophecy for a bounty of Western material goods as part of the definition, even if a number of the movements covered in the works that use these definitions don't necessarily actually prophesise this. Out of the sources you've used to say that "most cargo cults phrophesised the coming of Western material goods", I'm unclear about what sources say this explicitly. From my reading of the literature they either take the prophecies for Western material goods as foundational to the definition of "cargo cult" or in the modern revisionist school, reject the validity of the concept entirely. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:47, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

@Hemiauchenia: Thank you for the clarification! Restating your position to ensure I understand. You contend that: while most sources do agree that Western goods were foretold by cargo cults, we need sources that explicitly say that "most" cargo cults foretold Western goods. Is that right?

I'm unclear about what sources say this explicitly I can clear up the skepticism through these sources to support my phrasing:

1. Lindstrom (2018) Ethnographers suggested that ‘cargo’ was often Western commercial goods and money I read this as "According to ethnographers, the "cargo" that the cults desired was often Western goods".

2. Otto (2009) the cargo cult concept highlights a range of millenarian ideas, cults, and movements that originated in the wake of Western colonization and, more often than not, involved a strong concern with the acquisition of Western goods—the cargo Otto plainly says more often than not.

3. Otto (2009) In spite of the enormous variety of phenomena that have been branded as cargo cult in Melanesia, from the early beginnings to the present, it is pos- sible to identify a number of elements that are present in most of them in various combinations. In particular, I would mention the following: the development of a certain myth-dream, a synthesis of various indigenous and foreign narrative elements and religious concepts; the expectation of the help and/or return of the ancestors; the emergence of leaders with special experiences and/or knowledge; and a strong belief in the appearance of an abundance of goods. These characteristics give a fair picture of the prominent aspects of most cargo cults ... Otto says that these beliefs, such as appearance of goods, are present in most cargo cults.

4. Schwartz (1974) Although no two cargo cults were exactly alike, a number of basic beliefs recurred in most. The ancestors would return. The dead would be reunited with the living on a given day, suddenly and totally. The ancestors, when they returned, would bring with them a 'cargo' consisting of the goods and wealth of the Europeans as well as the bounty of land and sea. This source, again, says most cargo cults had these basic beliefs.

5. Steinbauer (1979) as referenced in Otto (2009): Using such a comparative perspective, Steinbauer (1979), for example, can state that about two-thirds of all the cargo cults he has found in the literature have as their main aim the attainment of material wealth and that they use “magical practices” to this end

And you could arguably even include Macintyre (2010) as referenced in Tabani (2013), which you yourself added to the article today They entail beliefs in the return of ancestors bringing wealth in the form of money, European goods etc –‘cargo’. The source calls these a cluster of attributes or a blend of elements that is typical of similar movements in Papua New Guinea. So it doesn't say that "all" cargo cults had all of these traits, simply that these are typical characteristic of cargo cults, which I think supports "most".

Overall, there are several reliable sources that directly state that "most" cargo cults foretold Western goods, as you requested. I'm sure I can find more if you like. Additionally, we have many reliable sources that go even further, saying that prophecies of Western goods are definitional to cargo cults, as you mentioned. Therefore, I feel very comfortable with the phrasing that "most" cargo cults foretold a coming abundance of goods. Leijurv (talk) 22:08, 7 October 2024 (UTC)