Cargo Cults: The Worship of Objects

I came across this interesting and somewhat disturbing interview with monologuist Mike Daisey in last week's TimeOut New York. Here's the link to the whole article:
http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/theater/81093/mike-daisey-qa#ixzz0ZJiXBqTs

In it, he discusses his new piece, The Last Cargo Cult. I'd never heard of a cargo cult, and was shocked to find out what it is:

What exactly is a cargo cult?
During World War II, the United States set up military bases on islands far away from the conflict. That meant that some islands that had very little contact with the outside world abruptly had airfields and U.S. airmen on them and chocolate and cigarettes and refrigerators and radios and all this magical awesome shit. When the Americans left, religions sprang up that worshipped America—or, more specifically, the objects of America. What they want is cargo, which we often infantilize as, like, iPods and tissue paper and jewelry. But cargo is medicine and guns and knives: It’s tools. They want power. And they want that power explicitly to preserve their way of life.

Can you imagine?! An entire religion centered around the obsession with material objects?! And how fascinating that the possession of these objects in turn symbolizes power for these isolated islanders. Daisy goes on to talk about the parallel with this seemingly absurd belief system and "what I believe is the overwhelmingly dominant religion of the first world, which is the financial system—a belief system that relies on trust and faith and sympathetic magic." Our belief in the financial system and desire for wealth in turn leads to the buying of, and perhaps obsession with, material objects. So in actuality, while it may seem crazy to create an entire religion around cargo, how far removed are we Americans from the things we worship ourselves?