Adieu John Frum

Ok, so I’ve been ragging on John Frum and Vanuatu a bit during November. This is in honor of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the John Frum Movement. John Frum is a messiah figure in the local cargo cult. Although an apparition of John Frum first appeared to village elders in the 1930’s, the cult was reinforced by the appearance of American troops during WWII and the huge amounts of cargo the Americans brought with them.

One of the original teachings of John Frum was that the natives (or whatever the p.c. term is these days) should trust in their own customs instead of blindly following the ways of the modern world (or whatever the p.c. term is for us). This works for me as long as the local customs don’t include ex-gay ministries, concentration camps, precision bombing, or George W. Bush.

Now many people think that the good people of Vanuatu are a bit backward because they have these funny ideas about ‘cargo.’ For example, since the cargo came on American aircraft during the war, cultists build wooden airport towers and wooden airplanes so as to entice cargo to appear. In the West we call this sympathetic magic. We think it’s quaint or superstitious or silly, but we don’t think we do it.

After all, we would never do anything like that. No, we don’t use wood; we write laws. For example, if the educational system is not working we pass a law and call it No Child Left Behind. This will cause the teachers to teach better, the students to learn better and the politicians to get reelected. Here’s another example: The government does not have enough revenue so we cut taxes (revenue) so that the invisible hand of the market will cause people to buy more, thus increasing the GDP, thus providing the revenue (cargo?) for all of us.

Anyway, we think that the cargo cultists are a bit off the mark. I mean, they think this cargo is sent to them by “the ancestors.” In the modern world we have given up this idea of ancestors providing for us. Instead, we cut taxes, increase spending, have wars that we don’t pay for and we are going to let our descendants pay for it all.

This is a much more rational way to look at things because we’ve got a growing economy, a lot of credit, and Paris Hilton. So what if we’ve also got a growing underclass and declining standards of living and there are only three people left in the U.S. who know who Aldous Huxley is.

Well that’s it for John Frum November at obscurebeat.blogspot.com. I promise to lay off third world messiahs during December. (But Jesus, the Pope, and George W. Bush are still fair game.)