The "black tax" stuff happens in indigenous communities across northern Australia as well. The stories I've heard are like - you make some money by selling paintings, you buy a new fridge, your cousin walks into the house and takes it. You can't stop him because you have deeply baked-in family obligations and your culture has never had enough material wealth to develop a meaningful concept of "theft".
I'm from Brisbane and I know a few people who've done various health or social work type jobs across far north Australia and PNG. Pretty sure we're still just as confused about each other as we were in the days of the missionaries. The question of how to bridge the gap between a basically Palaeolithic culture and fully modern industrial capitalism remains very much alive, and politically tricky, since you're not supposed to say things like "a basically Palaeolithic culture".
One book I like a lot about this topic is Bill Bunbury's "It's Not The Money, It's The Land", about the imposition of minimum wage laws on Aboriginal cattle stockmen in Western Australia. Might only be of interest to Australians but I think it's a great study of how difficult it is to reconcile the Australian system of industrial relations with indigenous concepts of land and property. Two radically different modes of production directly colliding without being able to understand each other at all.
I have seen the “black tax” in the indigenous people in my community of rural Canada as a tax on mental health. The emotionally and mentally well of the community are raising all the kids and advocating for their families and they honestly bear the responsibility way better than I would.
In Central Europe, the Gypsy (Roma) have the same problem - members of the community who work more and are more conscientious are immediately exploited by their less scrupulous relatives.
This pattern of societal relations was probably adaptive in pre-modern times, hence its frequency all around the world, but by now, it is only holding people back.
I am speechless after reading this. You make such an important point at the end. I will be thinking of this for a very long time. Thank you so much for writing this review.
The whole story, especially the end, hit me like a punch to the gut. I'll definitely be [re-]thinking about my epistemological assumptions moving forward. Incredibly sobering stuff.
It amazes me how confident they were about their cargo beliefs. The first interpretation of cargo is already zany, and it's remarkable that they keep doubling down on one zany interpretation after another. But then, the question is what zany things we're doubling down on!
I had a similar impression a while ago reading a report of a small-scale culture trying to conceptualize a different modern technology — books. It came from an English missionary visiting a Southern African tribe (Bechuanas) in the 19th century. When the Bechuanas saw Europeans reading books, they quickly generated a model of books that fit neatly in their culture. They saw books as divination tools. They assumed that you could ask the book a question about the future, and the text would arrange itself to deliver an answer. They didn't assume learning to read was an extensive process or a skill. They thought that someone could just be charmed with the ability to read, rub their eyes, and understand the text.
Books were formidable — clearly they were doing something important for the Europeans, but the Bechuanas were suspicious of how they would affect their tribesmen. They thought that books gave the Europeans great knowledge and power, but they also noticed that when their fellow tribesmen learned to read, their belief (or interest?) in their native rituals and ancestor-worship waned, and they usually converted to Christianity. Ultimately, books were viewed were seen as a sort of gateway out of their traditional epistemic worldview.
This is so well-observed. For me, the crux was the two paragraphs about the aliens. It’s only by flipping the scenario that we start to see what a world-view really is. Not just some cute customs and different words. But a different working model for the world, which can even re-use another model's language and stay intact, as you show.
The irony is that so much of our popular faith in science is really still a case of “keeping gods happy”. They’re just different gods (and the new gods of western scientistic culture seem remarkably Judeo-Christian still, with their capricious moral judgements, not just mere transactions as in “folk” religion. The language of divine judgement surrounds us, though we now get stuck when we try to investigate its basis — so we just don’t investigate it too hard).
All creation myths fall down when we ask who created the creator. Or how did consciousness arise. The explanation that consciousness originated in some collision of atoms seems just as solid as cargo beliefs. Coherent to a point only.
The misunderstanding between Westerners and New Guineans is just an exrteme example of something that happens constantly, especially between people of widely differing tacit beliefs. In conversations with peopleI have several times suddenly felt the "back away slowly" urge on learning that theywere a flat-earther or had some other bizarre delusion, even after knowing some of them for months. Everyone is projecting their own sanity onto everyone they meet. If people truly understood one another, they'd often be appalled.
This story is going to resonate with me for years. Watching US politics unfold over the last decade has made it clear that my world model was broken, but not left me with a confidently better replacement. This is a reminder that it’s not impossible to rebuild a world model, but tells me why it’s proven much, much harder than I expect. When I try, I’ll use Yali as my guide.
My wife loves "time loop" science fiction, in, I think, the same way that children love to spin themselves around and around to make themselves dizzy. "It does my head in", she says.
I love this essay in exactly that way. Thank you, Jane!
I couldn't help but notice a Biblical parallel, but maybe not the one you intended.
Was the prophet Moses the first cargo cult leader?
- Born as an oppressed minority, but educated in the ways of the dominant culture: ✅
- Sent by God to rescue his people: ✅
- Taught his people the proper rituals for how to follow God so that they would reach the Promised Land, which most followers understood in terms of material blessing: ✅✅
As a devout Christian myself, I think we have to conclude that the ancient Israelites struggled precisely because they were "assuming the novel thing you’ve just encountered fits a paradigm with which you’re already familiar."
Perhaps we can give them some credit that the ways of YHWH are even more unfathomable than the workings of modern capitalism.
But I'm more interested in explaining the fact that the Jewish people today are culturally far removed from New Guineans. What changed?
I mean, I would think that "being enslaved" was more of an obstacle to Israelite advancement than "not knowing the ways of the dominant culture." Learning the Egyptian way of farming is not going to stop them from throwing your sons into the Nile!
(And before the new Pharaoh arose, the Israelites were explicitly noted as having a separate culture and mode of production from the Egyptians - they were herders instead of farmers, hence why they settled in Goshen. And they continued herding after the Exodus, since, you know, you can't farm while wandering in the desert for 40 years.)
As for how the Jewish people evolved culturally after that, I like the "middleman minority" model - they got pushed into trade and banking due to the dominant culture not letting them into most other jobs, and that led to a culture that valued intelligence and education, which paid dividends once people stopped being so prejudiced against Jews.
Great review. But Diamond is right to focus on the resources that existed in some places but not others, and to ignore the cargo cult beliefs. It is not at all the case that all societies in Eurasia had the right beliefs. Only very few did, but those that did were able to outcompete the others. It is likely that if New Guinea had the right resources then eventually, some of the hundreds or thousands of different isolated groups would have developed the right beliefs to take advantage of them. In fact, we know they did this when they invented agriculture independently of other cultures. So if they had iron, they would presumably have learned to use it. Beliefs can only limit progress in environments that lack competition, as arguably was the case in Ming China (also a Diamond argument), but not in Europe. New Guinea, being incredibly mountainous and having very many independent societies did not lack competition. They lacked resources.
The "black tax" stuff happens in indigenous communities across northern Australia as well. The stories I've heard are like - you make some money by selling paintings, you buy a new fridge, your cousin walks into the house and takes it. You can't stop him because you have deeply baked-in family obligations and your culture has never had enough material wealth to develop a meaningful concept of "theft".
I'm from Brisbane and I know a few people who've done various health or social work type jobs across far north Australia and PNG. Pretty sure we're still just as confused about each other as we were in the days of the missionaries. The question of how to bridge the gap between a basically Palaeolithic culture and fully modern industrial capitalism remains very much alive, and politically tricky, since you're not supposed to say things like "a basically Palaeolithic culture".
One book I like a lot about this topic is Bill Bunbury's "It's Not The Money, It's The Land", about the imposition of minimum wage laws on Aboriginal cattle stockmen in Western Australia. Might only be of interest to Australians but I think it's a great study of how difficult it is to reconcile the Australian system of industrial relations with indigenous concepts of land and property. Two radically different modes of production directly colliding without being able to understand each other at all.
I have seen the “black tax” in the indigenous people in my community of rural Canada as a tax on mental health. The emotionally and mentally well of the community are raising all the kids and advocating for their families and they honestly bear the responsibility way better than I would.
In Central Europe, the Gypsy (Roma) have the same problem - members of the community who work more and are more conscientious are immediately exploited by their less scrupulous relatives.
This pattern of societal relations was probably adaptive in pre-modern times, hence its frequency all around the world, but by now, it is only holding people back.
I am speechless after reading this. You make such an important point at the end. I will be thinking of this for a very long time. Thank you so much for writing this review.
Honestly, these days it seems that the median voter's understanding of where his 'cargo' comes from is not much better than the New Guineans'.
Great, great review [&context] as always.
The whole story, especially the end, hit me like a punch to the gut. I'll definitely be [re-]thinking about my epistemological assumptions moving forward. Incredibly sobering stuff.
Thank you for writing this!
It amazes me how confident they were about their cargo beliefs. The first interpretation of cargo is already zany, and it's remarkable that they keep doubling down on one zany interpretation after another. But then, the question is what zany things we're doubling down on!
I had a similar impression a while ago reading a report of a small-scale culture trying to conceptualize a different modern technology — books. It came from an English missionary visiting a Southern African tribe (Bechuanas) in the 19th century. When the Bechuanas saw Europeans reading books, they quickly generated a model of books that fit neatly in their culture. They saw books as divination tools. They assumed that you could ask the book a question about the future, and the text would arrange itself to deliver an answer. They didn't assume learning to read was an extensive process or a skill. They thought that someone could just be charmed with the ability to read, rub their eyes, and understand the text.
Books were formidable — clearly they were doing something important for the Europeans, but the Bechuanas were suspicious of how they would affect their tribesmen. They thought that books gave the Europeans great knowledge and power, but they also noticed that when their fellow tribesmen learned to read, their belief (or interest?) in their native rituals and ancestor-worship waned, and they usually converted to Christianity. Ultimately, books were viewed were seen as a sort of gateway out of their traditional epistemic worldview.
This is so well-observed. For me, the crux was the two paragraphs about the aliens. It’s only by flipping the scenario that we start to see what a world-view really is. Not just some cute customs and different words. But a different working model for the world, which can even re-use another model's language and stay intact, as you show.
The irony is that so much of our popular faith in science is really still a case of “keeping gods happy”. They’re just different gods (and the new gods of western scientistic culture seem remarkably Judeo-Christian still, with their capricious moral judgements, not just mere transactions as in “folk” religion. The language of divine judgement surrounds us, though we now get stuck when we try to investigate its basis — so we just don’t investigate it too hard).
All creation myths fall down when we ask who created the creator. Or how did consciousness arise. The explanation that consciousness originated in some collision of atoms seems just as solid as cargo beliefs. Coherent to a point only.
Yes, I'd love to read a scifi book with this conceit. "Shaman from the Stars!"
The misunderstanding between Westerners and New Guineans is just an exrteme example of something that happens constantly, especially between people of widely differing tacit beliefs. In conversations with peopleI have several times suddenly felt the "back away slowly" urge on learning that theywere a flat-earther or had some other bizarre delusion, even after knowing some of them for months. Everyone is projecting their own sanity onto everyone they meet. If people truly understood one another, they'd often be appalled.
Wonderful review! I am continually impressed by the consistently exceptional quality of both your and your husbands reviews.
This story is going to resonate with me for years. Watching US politics unfold over the last decade has made it clear that my world model was broken, but not left me with a confidently better replacement. This is a reminder that it’s not impossible to rebuild a world model, but tells me why it’s proven much, much harder than I expect. When I try, I’ll use Yali as my guide.
My wife loves "time loop" science fiction, in, I think, the same way that children love to spin themselves around and around to make themselves dizzy. "It does my head in", she says.
I love this essay in exactly that way. Thank you, Jane!
'Dream Park' by Niven and Barnes is pretty good, and uses cargo cults as a setting.
This is fantastic, thanks so much
Fascinating. This blog is really great, thanks for keeping it up.
Very very good. Thanks
I couldn't help but notice a Biblical parallel, but maybe not the one you intended.
Was the prophet Moses the first cargo cult leader?
- Born as an oppressed minority, but educated in the ways of the dominant culture: ✅
- Sent by God to rescue his people: ✅
- Taught his people the proper rituals for how to follow God so that they would reach the Promised Land, which most followers understood in terms of material blessing: ✅✅
As a devout Christian myself, I think we have to conclude that the ancient Israelites struggled precisely because they were "assuming the novel thing you’ve just encountered fits a paradigm with which you’re already familiar."
Perhaps we can give them some credit that the ways of YHWH are even more unfathomable than the workings of modern capitalism.
But I'm more interested in explaining the fact that the Jewish people today are culturally far removed from New Guineans. What changed?
I mean, I would think that "being enslaved" was more of an obstacle to Israelite advancement than "not knowing the ways of the dominant culture." Learning the Egyptian way of farming is not going to stop them from throwing your sons into the Nile!
(And before the new Pharaoh arose, the Israelites were explicitly noted as having a separate culture and mode of production from the Egyptians - they were herders instead of farmers, hence why they settled in Goshen. And they continued herding after the Exodus, since, you know, you can't farm while wandering in the desert for 40 years.)
As for how the Jewish people evolved culturally after that, I like the "middleman minority" model - they got pushed into trade and banking due to the dominant culture not letting them into most other jobs, and that led to a culture that valued intelligence and education, which paid dividends once people stopped being so prejudiced against Jews.
Great review. But Diamond is right to focus on the resources that existed in some places but not others, and to ignore the cargo cult beliefs. It is not at all the case that all societies in Eurasia had the right beliefs. Only very few did, but those that did were able to outcompete the others. It is likely that if New Guinea had the right resources then eventually, some of the hundreds or thousands of different isolated groups would have developed the right beliefs to take advantage of them. In fact, we know they did this when they invented agriculture independently of other cultures. So if they had iron, they would presumably have learned to use it. Beliefs can only limit progress in environments that lack competition, as arguably was the case in Ming China (also a Diamond argument), but not in Europe. New Guinea, being incredibly mountainous and having very many independent societies did not lack competition. They lacked resources.