Talk:Cargo cult: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

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::::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. [[User:TheMissingMuse|TheMissingMuse]] ([[User talk: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. [[User:AndyTheGrump|AndyTheGrump]] ([[User talk:AndyTheGrump|talk]]) 16:04, 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 {{tqq|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. [[Special:Diff/1145015188|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 [[Special:Diff/1234163765|here]]: {{tqq|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. [[User:Leijurv|Leijurv]] ([[User talk:Leijurv|talk]]) 16:48, 9 September 2024 (UTC)