Two things:
1. What? — An FP coder
2. Patterns mean "I have run out of language." — Rich Hickey
1. What? — An FP coder
2. Patterns mean "I have run out of language." — Rich Hickey
That's why he called it a pattern language. It's the language of patterns found in life ;)
We just saw a top level post on lessons from Haskell, for example, that while not using the pattern form, expressed a variety of idomatic, reusable solutions to contextualized problems.
Secondly, I think you are misusing the term Cargo Cult. Someone like Doug Lea (the OP) has a lot of experience with good software design - his concurrency libraries, in particular. Suggesting that OOP as a whole is a cargo cult is the height of ignorance.