During my Anthropology studies, I was always fascinated with “cargo cults”. They seemed such a fine metaphor, a perfect reflection of what our culture truly is. The worship of stuff, the hoarding of stuff. People don’t park their cars in their garage anymore - it’s for “stuff”. When we travel we fill our bags to bulging. We are the cargo people. Not everyone but most of us.
What is a “cargo cult”? The short version is that it is any group that performs rituals so that more stuff will come their way. Like say, buy lottery tickets or confess to your priest. Magical thinking.
There have been many epochs where cargo cults reigned. Most notably and recently, in Melanesia, the South Pacific during World War 2. Many islanders met western military men for the first time and ships would bring stuff, planes would drop stuff from the sky. The islanders started to worship this process and do things so that the ships and planes would return sooner - with goods, mana from the sky. We associate cargo cults with primitive religion - using Frazer’s “Law Of Sympathy” to magically affect the course of events. However, if you look at our society closely, we basically do the same. We are a cargo cult. No more modern, no less primitive.
Most people think a story like this one, is just so beautiful, so true, so right. Giving kids toys can’t be wrong, can it? Especially kids suffering from a natural disaster? I’m not so sure. Every year kids are threatened to “be nice” or they won’t get “stuff”. Every year, kids get new stuff. What happened to their stuff from last year? Why don’t kids take pleasure in playing with a stick and instead need the newest $34.94 lightsaber? Aren’t we teaching our kids that primitive magic and cargo cults are cool?
“We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”
- Emmanuel Kant
In this season of Christmas, we need to again return to the original message - that of spirit over materialism. The message of O’Henry’s Jim and Della and that of the Magi. Turn away from “stuff” which is basically time worship, turn away and live “now”. That’s my message this season to all. No more cargo cults.
Here And Now
Life is short.
Ask Maradona, ask Marilyn
Ask your dog, ask your cat.
Ask the mayflies on your window
or the mosquito you just smashed.
Ask the 1,000s of micro-organisms
thrown to their death
with each breath you exhale.
"It is what it is." - said the Capo.
It's a bloody holocaust out there.
Each and every second.
As much death as life.
Death is the dark matter of existence.
Nobody sees it.
We're all just a smudge
on the window of time.
Nobody talks about
the glue factory around the corner.
It's all pomp and pretense.
Self-help haikus and macrobiotics.
Puffed up purpose.
There IS NO PURPOSE.
What it all comes down to is
life is too short.
The best of us laugh and
get the joke,
tick-tock, tock-tick
waiting until the wet rag
runs across our chalkboard
and we are no more,
forgotten like Shakespeare,
Midas or Maradonna
and like this poem.
Here and now.