What Really Happens on The World's Strangest Island?

hey 42 here this video is sponsored by raycon more info at the end of the video in 1969 in the farthest corner of the world a strange branch of christianity was formed it was called gloriavale based deep in the south island of new zealand and it was about to shut itself off from the rest of the world gloria vale was a 500 strong community of devout worshippers who followed an oppressive and fundamentalist interpretation of the christian belief and stop me if you've heard this one before but here's some highlights women couldn't show any flesh to prevent male lust while simultaneously ordered to produce as many babies as they could i guess they were using the stalk method competitive games of all kinds were bans to prevent anyone developing pride there were violent unnecessary beatings for male teachers that went ignored and unpunished there were unfair working conditions that subjected members to excessive hours of labour there were forced isolation huts for use as punishment members had fraudulent bank accounts opened without their knowledge children were beaten in the name of god's love because well what could symbolize god's selfless love more than kicking the holy [ __ ] out of a child right members who left were cut off from the community prevented from contacting their family and because most if not all of their family were born and raised in glory avail that meant losing everyone they knew and loved and finally there were beatings psychological control forced marriages as well as whispers of an even darker side to the cult that was beginning to leak out into the wider world whispers that told of rape child abuse and unimaginable cruelty the cult had been formed by an enigmatic man with a mysterious past i know crazy right when does that ever happen he was named neville cooper and soon renamed himself to hopeful christian as you do he led the cult for more than 40 years and please restrain your surprise he was dogged by allegations of sexual assault and child abuse which he eventually served prison time for he was condemned by an ex-gloriavale member as a dirty old man a man of unbridled lust lies and absolute power and those were just the good parts he eventually died from cancer at the age of 92. the apologetics index which spends its time keeping its eye on christian cult indeed describes gloriavale as a cult stating that theologically this group is a cult of christianity as its theology as well as its practices based on that theology places it well outside the boundaries of the christian faith and whilst the main man from nazareth went around banging on about the importance of selfless love never hurting others and so on dangerous cults spawning out of christianity or any other religion for that matter are hardly a new phenomenon plonk a big ancient holy text in front of people and sometimes you get gandhi or jesus other times you get hopeful christian john africa jim jones or abu bakr al-baghdadi but we all know about the dangerous cults charles manson has had so many books tv series and movies made about him it's now impossible to separate fact from fiction if we're honest we've heard enough about these cults the long and short of it is a charismatic leader arrives weird stuff happens some or most of them get sexually assaulted almost everyone dies but rather refreshingly there is a cult out there that is mostly non-violent doesn't revolve around weird sex acts rape or ritual suicide yet it is in every way downright bizarre if you travel into the ocean a little further north of new zealand you'll discover a truly fascinating place melanesia an area of oceana stretching from new guinea island eastward towards tonga which is home to probably the strangest island cult in the world allow me to paint a picture for you imagine you come across an island white sand green palms crystal clear water and open cloudless blue sky thinking you've landed in paradise you move further inland and you discover something you can't quite explain there is a stretch of lands that looks like an airstrip only it doesn't look like any airstrip you've ever seen and instead of lights illuminating the way there are random burning fires there are piers for ships to dock at only they look like they've been reconstructed or built from random materials by someone who's never seen a real pier further down the airstrip you see a ramshackle control tower or rather a hut in which sits a native man ears clad in a wooden imitation headset operating wooden poles as if they were controls at the end of the airstrip you see a crowd of men marching in formation clad in western looking military uniforms and wielding long sticks as imitation rifles their drills and marches are exact but everything about them is fake and unusual you can't get your head around it everything in this utterly insane scene would appear to you as an imitation of american western structures and their military only they're just that strange imitations in the most unlikely place imaginable seeing this you'd rightly wonder what the [ __ ] what is going on is this some kind of festival this is a satanic pagan thing is austrian kutcher about to spring from the bushes and tell me i've been punked but searching the nearby fronds you find no sign of ashton nor of satan pagans or even festival goers you are left in complete amusement if not a skit for mtv who or what could this be approaching the native man or rather the air traffic controller you'd ask what is this place what are you doing here to which he replies i'm waiting for jon from he's coming back with the cargo to which you'd reply who the hell is jon from well to explain we have to go way back to world war ii to a very odd moment in history you see during the u.s campaign against japan american troops leapfrogged across the pacific islands as part of their island hopping strategy to establish strategically valuable positions on unguarded small islands this strategy allowed the u.s to move its forces towards japan gain a potent stranglehold on the pacific and circumvents the more fortified japanese positions along the way makes sense so far right well this island strategy had an unintended side effect indigenous tribes native to the island were suddenly experiencing their first contact with the outside world in the form of the united states war machine in all its mechanized capitalist fueled glory enormous crusaders to length of fields destroyers were fierce and fire sprouting guns huge broad-winged bombers descending from the clouds uniformed gi's of all races marching in strict formation with portable cures for any ailment advanced unintelligible weaponry that made men fall dead without touching them strange new languages and customs and perhaps most importantly of all precious cargo that rained gifts down from the sky too many civilizations at the time all of this would have been remarkable but explainable it was a technologically advanced military passing through a regular occurrence throughout world history but to these indigenous tribes of melanesians this was entirely unexplainable as the great science fiction author arthur c clarke put it any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and that's exactly what these tribes thought it was magic it wasn't long before cults began to emerge worshipping this ostensibly magical advanced civilization and the goods they brought with them even though some of the islanders had been exposed to the west before in the form of the british and missionaries they'd never experienced first hand the wonders of the modern world's mass-produced goods and all-powerful technology on one such island like tana the awestruck populace began to blend their previous beliefs and experiences such as volcano gods and murdering their disobedient wives yes they did that with their reverence for the western world its soldiers and their mass-produced goods thus the john frum cult began to take root not understanding where these foreigners gained access to such enormous wealth gods and industrial power they believed them to be a product of the spirit world something beyond the reach of mortal men perhaps gifts from a god after all these were not things that man could make themselves john frum was one such god a messianic figure said to have walked out of the sea or to have lived inside a volcano who was destined to return with countless goods and cargo for the people in many incarnations he is an american gi with the name john frum being a version of john from america in another he is none other than prince philip duke of edinburgh who met one of the natives during a commonwealth tour stop-off in vanuatu in 1947. rumors spread that prince philip was indeed the living incarnation of the divine being john frum safe to say they don't know him like we do when world war ii came to its horrifying nuclear finale and the japanese surrendered the americans packed up and left leaving amongst the locals only legends of the men from across the ocean who had all the goods technology and power in the known world and so the john from worshipers which researchers have called cargo cults because of their desire for cargo became cemented in the various melanesian cultures and ontana the american flag itself is now a religious symbol hoisted onto a flagpole every morning and worshiped replica runways airplanes jetties control towers weaponry and soldiers were all created alongside complex rituals in the hope of bringing john from or specific western figures like lyndon johnson back to the island bearing gifts johnson in particular was predicted to land on top of a mountain in papua new guinea unbelievably he never did at its core the ideology of cargo cults is that their ancestral gods gave all the technologically advanced goods or cargo to westerners by mistake and so by reenacting these rituals the gods or a divine american figure who is the physical embodiment of john from such as prince philip will recognize the tribe natural right to have these gods instead and thus remove them from the hands of the westerners and dropped them onto their mock runways just as they fell from the sky during world war ii over the years the rituals and praying continued but the gods or americans bringing with them boats cars motorcycles canned food medicine and so on never arrived there was just the long empty stretch of ocean and silence the only americans who did return were either overweight socks and sandals wearing tourists or veterans looking to revisit the islands in which they spent their youth so little by little the number of these cults dwindled and only the john frum cult remained with followers praying to and waiting for a man none of them have ever seen or spoken to outside of ritual induced hallucinations this strange amalgam of primitive myth-making and culture shock leading to a belief in things that will never occur has been lampooned in western culture famed physicist richard feynman even tore the sciences to shreds by calling scientists who performed experiments that were science in name only not method cargo cult scientists this was a dig at a certain type of scientist who did everything he thought would produce a certain desired result but the result he actually needed empirical evidence never materialized because the logic underpinning his science is faulty culturally cargo cults make a lot of sense indigenous melanesian societies were typically dominated by big men who use gifts and wealth to gain prestige the more wealth he could give to his people the more influence he had and the more power he had the men who couldn't match this were known as rubbish men and so when faced with a foreign or in many respects alien civilization with access to endless material wealth and goods is it any surprise that many indigenous melanesian cultures turned into cargo cults after all who could be a bigger big man than these all-powerful americans compared to the americans the previous big men of the tribe amounted to nothing they were like insects compared to gods and embarrassment to their people from there it is a short step to worship and the false hope that their ancestral strength will return one day their belief extends even into the incorporation of christian symbols in military activity crosses are used on grave markers and believers even stage complex marches and drills with imitation firearms made out of sticks western military insignias and national symbols painted on their bodies all for the express purpose of attracting the cargo and its herald john from but it's been a long time since the americans left the islands during world war ii so why do cargo cults still exist today and their belief persist in such a connected world one cynical view is that the cults were set up and persist through the power of maligned big men who are running a scam on the vulnerable and susceptible population this theory would hold weight when compared to the general trends of cults around the world this theory is also ramified by the fact that most cargo cults exist outside of authorities and developed towns meaning information contrary to the cult's teachings is prohibitively difficult to access another view is that these cults are a result of relative deprivation where one society has far less than another when confronted with a society that had access to such enormous wealth and prosperity the indigenous people focused on these goods particularly cargo which reigned from the sky as the truest expression of power prestige personhood and freedom perhaps the most compelling reason the cults exist though is the sense of community they develop however strange they may seem to western eyes the rituals customs and collective prayer bring people together in a way which is greatly satisfying to them and to human beings as a whole whether or not john frum is real he definitely isn't the human need for connection is powerful unbinding and if collective worship helps satiate that need then the cult will endure this is something modern analysis has tried to address the label cargo cults itself has become burdened with connotations of primitive thinking or backwards-ness as it describes a group that attempts to manifest a real and tangible outcome cargo through illogical means worship and rituals in truth the behavior of the indigenous melanesians is far more in common with creating developing and renewing deep cultural and social relationships between people especially as they are under threat by a changing world when you don't understand why the world around you is changing in the way it is with such frightening speed and you don't have the knowledge or resources to keep up what more can one do than pray and hope when one writer for the smithsonian asked what john frum did for the people one individual replied that he helps them to get their traditional customs dancing and community back after it had been taken and deliberately destroyed by the colonial government and missionaries some even claimed john frum told them that this was his express aim to get them dancing drinking cover a psychoactive tea drunk in place of alcohol and simply being themselves once again when the same smithsonian writer asked what it was the worshipers wanted in return for their prayers one individual responded that all he wanted was a 25 horsepower motor for the village boats so everyone could catch more fish and have a better life and isn't that just wonderfully endearing and with that i can only hope that wherever he is jon from hears them i'm always listening to audiobooks on the go and around the house and i've always been disappointed by the wireless earbud offerings on the market especially the extortionately high prices that was until i found raycon i like beautiful things and these are beautiful just look at that raycon earbuds started about half the price of other premium wireless earbuds on 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Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 1,708,897

Rating: 4.8905478 out of 5

Keywords: cargo cult, cargo, melenisia, island, island cult, islands, asia, mysterious, creepy, tribe, tribes, tribal, john frum, cargo cults, cult, john frum cargo cult, john frum movement, vanuatu, culture, religion, cults, jon frum cargo cult, tanna

Id: GFpKnHpQMU8

Length: 20min 16sec (1216 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/pleasureincontempt]

The real link. https://youtu.be/GFpKnHpQMU8