Do you still believe that by writing mock checks and performing sacred rituals of immitating millionaires will make you rich one day? Why don’t you ask these guys from Tanna Island if it worked for them.
(They worked real HARD at this Law of Attraction thing. And they definitely took it more seriously than you.)
Cargo cults have mostly died out by today, even though there are very few active ones still around.
There were several cargo cults throughout the world, but some of the famous ones include the John Frum cult and Tom Navy cult from Tanna Island (Vanuatu).
The Vanuatu island group (Melanesians) lies northeast of Australia and southeast of Malaysia and the Philippines.
Prior to contact with Europeans and other advanced nations, the people who lived here were primitive tribal societies.
While their history dates back to the 19th century, the cargo cult activity increased massively during and after the Second World War.
The rural Melanesian population observed, right before their eyes, the largest war ever fought between two technologically advanced countries. First, the Japanese arrived with a great amount of supplies, and later the American forces likewise.
Both sides airdropped massive supplies and troops at the airstrips on these islands. The islanders, having never seen outsiders or even travelled out of the island before, were shocked and surprised.
Clothes, can foods, tents, modern medicine, weapons, and various other goods arrived in massive supplies airdropped for the soldiers from both sides; both Japanese and American soldiers have shared some of their supplies with the rural islanders for a brief time.
Due to language barrier, soldiers from neither side could communicate with the islanders, leaving the rural people to only wonder and imagine.
Ultimately, the Melanesians concluded that these advanced nations obtained their material wealth (the “cargo”) through magic, religious rituals and practices. And as evidenced from what they saw, their wealth came from the heavens by their ancestors and deities (the “airplanes”).
After the end of World War II, the military abandoned the airbases and stopped dropping cargo. Charismatic individuals developed cults among the remote Melanesian populations and promised to bestow on their followers deliveries of food, arms, jeeps, etc.
The cult leaders explained that the cargo would be gifts from their own ancestors and deities, just like it did with the outsiders, the Americans and the Japanese.
In attempts to obtain these ‘material wealth’, the primitive islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers used.
The Cult mimicked the day-to-day activities and dressed as close to US soldiers as possible. They performed parade ground drills with wooden sticks for rifles.
They carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in control towers made from wood.
They also built life-size replicas of airplanes out of straw and landing strips out of the jungle, and then make signal waves hoping to attract more airplanes.
The Cult members believed that the ‘foreigners’ had some special connection to the Gods and ancestors, who were the only beings powerful enough to produce such material riches from the sky.
Of course, you know what happened. Or to be exact, what DIDN’T happen.
The Cargo Cult has dissipated greatly today, even though few remain in rural parts of the world.
While they may be less active now, a new kind of cult has evolved today – it is called the Law of Attraction.
Popularized by books and movies like The Secret, the premise of this ‘law’ is that if you know what you want, just ask the Universe for it, visualize it being yours, and be open to receiving it and you will get what you want.
When you look at the claims and strong arguments made by The Secret, it is easy to understand why many people have been taken into this idea that the Law of Attraction is the real deal.
Like the charismatic cult leaders that convinced the Melanesian islanders that there is an ancient God or ancestors that will drop wealth from the sky, books and movies like The Secret has convinced the modern day person that these wealth will come to you if you ask the Universe for it and visualize it hard enough.
Just that instead of charismatic cult leaders, it’s now Self Improvement and seminar gurus pitching this idea to everyone.
And just as the rural people thought that the Americans and Japanese were bestowed gifts from the Gods through magic and ritualistic practices, the modern day folk thinks that the richest people in the world are exceptionally gifted or performs some form of Law of Attraction practice.
If you think that the islanders mimicking the US ground parade and building fake airplanes and airstrips from wood is laughable, people a hundred years from now will in turn laugh at you for writing mock checks to yourself and immittating rich people by performing rituals at a self help seminar.
Do you think you can attract wealth this way? Well, you already know the Melanesians didn’t get theirs… and they visualized it a lot harder than you did!
Seriously man. Nothing substitutes smart work. You will have a better chance at wealth that way.
Hot on JVZoo!
