Cargo Cult Philosophy

For some reason I've been thinking about the cargo cult lately. You know, Pacific islanders observing Westerns and Japanese cutting down trees and receiving gifts from the big Iron bird and then imitating the act in hope of receiving gifts themselves. People use the term as a pejorative for somebody imitating something they don't really understand and for superstitious behavior. I think that's foolish and tells something about two types of people there are on the planet.

Group A seems to think more in lines of "if I don't fully understand it, it's useless and won't work" whereas group B seems to think "if it works for somebody, it just might work for me too". Occasionally you get group B building radios out of coconuts and signaling to airplanes with palm leaves  - but at least as often you get group A complaining about how the others must be cheating because they are doing better in some sense and the group A just can't figure why would the stupid habits of group B help to produce all that wealth. 

Quite often the iron bird actually lands and delivers so you just might want to give it all the chances to do so. After all, it can only land in the clearing, not in the jungle.