The Amish as a source of tech-savvy guidance
psyche.co
psyche.co
The bigger picture was that the Amish view of technology was not to view 1857 or whenever as the year technology stopped, but their view was to evaluate technology in light of where it fit in their culture. Hard work is a virtue, so why do I want tools to make things easier. Raising barns together draws us together as a community, so what's the value in technology that lets fewer people build a building. And so forth and so on.
On the surface the idea of evaluation technology based on impact seems great, but the thing is the Amish never invent anything. The rest of culture invents without thinking about the consequences and deals with the consequent. The Amish have the luxury of sitting back and evaluating after the fact. In fairness, I don't think the Amish really care if anything new does get invented, but they have effectively externalized the downsides of technology onto the rest of us while reaping the occasional upside.
But Amish women are often employed at local farmers markets to add local color and entice tourists into buying non-Amish bakery goods.
That the Amish, a fairly closed culture, are objects of tourism, has always struck me as pretty damn weird.
While it may reflect a nostalgia or longing for a simpler life, I know I wouldn't last long keeping a working farm alive. Plain lives are hard work.
Then the FCC mandated that customer-provided equipment be supported, assuming it met standards.
The RJ11 jack (and siblings, right up to the RJ45 for ethernet) came into widespread use after that.
I was really short on money at the time and didn't have a DSL modem, I would have preferred to rent the modem but they said that wasn't an option - they could only sell me one.
It was a pretty brutal monopoly.
I'm sure every community is different, though, as you would expect in the absence of widespread remote communications.
It's not like I got a detailed life history from these people, but if you ever get the chance, the level of culture shock can be striking. The biggest event of my time there was the neighbor's horse that was used to drive the plows sustaining an enormous gash on its front right leg. That effectively stopped work as people rushed to try and stitch it up. With no machinery, they're entirely reliant on horses to accomplish any meaningful field work, so a serious injury to one can severely impact yield.
They are prepared for that, though. Thanks to not making much in the way of purchases of virtually anything from the outside world, resources only flow in so they have a surplus of everything they need to last years if they need to hunker down. Any form of community wealth is entirely kept in the community, so there were apparently some fairly vast intergenerational savings built up.
So I don't know if the concern was really that being down a plow was going to have any material impact on anyone's ability to eat, but it was dramatic nonetheless. I didn't ask, but I got the impression the guy driving the plow was as distraught as he was because he considered the horse a friend. He seemed distressed by the amount of pain it was in.
If you feel astonished that someone is unfamiliar with something, that is an emotion best kept to yourself. I have learned this the hard way when people reacted poorly to my own expressions of astonishment.
Consider how someone might feel after hearing you say something like this:
"What??? You've never heard of tiramisu???"
(I'm not saying that's how you put it, just giving an example of an astonished reaction.)
Instead, meet them where they are and explain without judgment the unfamiliar term:
"Oh, tiramisu is a delicious Italian dessert. It's made with ladyfinger cookies, mascarpone, and coffee. Mascarpone is a soft creamy Italian cheese, often used in desserts, sometimes in savory dishes too. Would you like me to send you a tiramisu recipe? You will be in for a real treat!"
EDIT: Which, I see now, also quotes the xkcd strip.
As the article says, regardless of how you feel internally, choose the external action that is likely to give a happy interaction rather than an unhappy one.
As for the animals, yes, it's pretty normal to bond with them and care about them, especially something like a horse.
It's definitely a completely different culture, though, no doubts about that.
I think you're expecting too much from others. I didn't grow up Amish, and although I did grow up in a non-assimilated insular religious community I've been living in Western secular society for about 10 years now.
The only Italian foods I can think of are pasta (I can name spaghetti and macaroni and lasagna and that's it) and pizza, which I knew of since childhood. Lately I've seen the word tiramisu around but I have no idea what it is. I think I saw it on a cake in a bakery and I assumed it was pretentious for chocolate but actually I don't know. I certainly didn't know it was Italian.
A bit more on topic, I'd generally agree that it's not so common as to be universal. I don't think I'd heard the word in any way that registered as significant before my mid-20s, and I'm certain I never tried it until my late 20s or early 30s. I grew up in the suburbs around Pittsburgh, PA with plenty of passable Italian restaurants -- but tiramisu simply wasn't a dessert people in my family ordered.
HN tip: The reply link on new comments in a thread may not appear immediately. I think this is a measure to discourage heated back-and-forth replies.
But you can always click the "n minutes ago" link to open the individual comment and reply there.
“Live in the world without being of the world.” There are many interpretations of that.
There were noticeable differences community to community, often less than a mile away. Things like their stance on modern technology, plain dress, etc.
At the same time it was considered a huge deal that the bride & groom came from different communities as they had conflicting theological views. I forget the key difference but it was something smaller than I experienced as a child whenever we'd change Roman Catholic Churches.
just curious what do you mean by changing Roman Catholic churches? As far as i know there is only one roman catholic church, but with different dogma's depending on region.
[1] https://canonlawmadeeasy.com/2007/09/20/are-they-really-cath...
No there aren’t; your source seems to have confused the descriptor “Roman Catholic Church” which refers to the entire body in union with Rome for what is usually described, where it needs to be distinguished, as “Latin Church” [0], the autonomous particular sui iuris church within the Roman Catholic headed by the Patriarch of Rome (who, as Pope, is also head of the entire Roman Catholic Church, with superceding authority over the heads of the sui iuris churches.)
[0] formerly also commonly “Western...” but the use of that descriptor has since been fairly authoritatively declared as no longer approrpriate.
In my experience, some Eastern Catholics reject the term "Roman Catholic" as a descriptor for themselves because they associate the phrase with the second definition not the first. Given that, I'm not inclined to agree with you that the "Roman Catholic=Latin Catholic" usage is wrong, it's just different.
For instance, this was all post Vatican II but close enough that some were very much still old timey in feel and others felt more contemporary. Another example stems from the homilies the priests would give, each individual would have their own spin on things and that can have a huge impact on atmosphere.
Specifically what I meant by my comment: my recollection was that some of the key differences in those anabaptist congregations I mentioned tied to physical layout during service. Who sat where, who stood where, etc. Those were the sorts of things that was always a bit different parish to parish in my experience attending mass at a number of RC parishes.
There is one Roman Catholic Church and its dogmas (and even mere doctrines) are the same everywhere. There are several autonomous particular churches sui iuris within the Roman Catholic Church, and within them many local particular churches, and within them many smaller units called churches, all of which vary in a greater or lesser extent in practices and traditions (but not dogma or doctrine.)
Lots of places.
The term "the Amish" is so broad that it is largely meaningless, unless everything you know is based on stereotypes.
See also: "The Americans," and "The Christians."
You and I are both "HN Users," but I suspect very different. I wouldn't want to be judged based on your lifestyle just because we both belong to this group.
Some Amish communities allow electricity but not in the house. For example, they may accept electric milking equipment for cows, and have electricity to power that, but the electricity connection is only to the milking shed not to the residence. Or, they may own a business, and connect their business premises to electricity, but not the house.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model#Leve...
This reminded me of an Atlantic article making a similar point: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/camp-...
>But Baldwin asks, "Where did you get your axe? And the slide camera and the stove, the flour, the nails, the books, the garden seeds, and the window glass?" While it seemed that they'd gotten farther away from a technological life, "they'd merely lengthened the umbilical cord." And here's the key part of the criticism: "By moving to the bucolic boondocks, that happy family dodged the undesirable effects of the technology that was supporting them even as they sneered," he concludes.
I think we all need to be more engaged and thoughtful about our choices, how they affect our lives, and how they affect the lives of those around us, but we need to be alert for situations where we just push problems elsewhere instead of addressing them.
I view them as a variety of groups who have made some reasoned compromises as to how much they will allow their adoption of technology to change their way of life. They do not seem like the type who think they can do it all on their own and understood that they live inside of another country, etc.
Technology shapes us even as we shape it. They are at least attempting to put in some care as to what shaping they allow.
Even the wording (in particular, the choice of "sneered") makes me think the whole thing was written in bad faith.
- Axe: The pole is made out of wood, and the blade out of metal that can be smelted from ore or scrap with some effort.
- The stove: Same, or build one out of stone.
- The camera: that one's more difficult, but optics or chemistry aren't that new. You may need specialised equipment to manufacture this, but it's still possible.
- Nails: Smelt from ore or scrap into a mold.
- Books: Wood pulp and printing presses, both of which are several centuries old.
- Garden seeds: Literally will self-reproduce, bar any messing about with making them sterile via cross-contamination with commercial varieties.
- Window glass: Melted sand, likely doable with a well-stocked workshop.
It's more akin to a graceful degradation than lengthening the umbilical cord.
creating a functioning camera requires quite advanced machining to create parts with tolerances required.
The same goes for most other items on the list, except for seeds and books. Creating an axe by hand is obviously possible, but getting the high-quality steel we use in the modern day is very hard without industrialization.
Without a lathe and a way to power it, getting a camera is nearly impossible. Creating flat glass is also quite a difficult proces which requires melted lead or tin.
What that means is that your time is the most valuable thing. (And materials, which take lots of time to obtain.) So if you begin to price out the time cost of acquiring all the materials to create a furnace and glass, it'll be enormous. The same goes for a steel axe, or books from wood pulp. In fact, anything from metal is an enormous amount of work, so I'd probably leave it aside.
But that doesn't mean you can't have an axe, or paper, or glass - you simply have to look at what people used to do. Stone axes work fine [1], paper from birch bark is great, and mica makes a decent glass replacement. (If you get lucky, you'll find large mica sheets, which are clear as glass - if you're not, you can attach small ones together, but it won't be clear.) If you're in a cold enough climate, and you survive the winter, ice can be a replacement for glass and a weapon.
As for the camera - no way you'll get a functioning "modern" camera with optics and an aperture and everything. I would simply build a camera obscura and use my birch bark - the biggest technical challenge there is getting a totally dark "room", which could probably be done the simplest by making a dirt hut with a wooden front and a pinhole made of birch bark coated in ash. (The thinner the hole material, the better.) If you had people to trade with, and plenty of time, I suppose it would be possible (if difficult) to make a photosensitive plate that you could use with your pinhole.
[0] https://sci-hub.do/10.1038/s41562-019-0614-6
[1] They only take about 3-4 times longer to cut wood than steel: https://sci-hub.do/https://doi.org/10.2307/3772981
If specialised, time-consuming work needs to be done, two options come to mind:
- several people rotating on shifts to donate some of their respective 4 spare hours to work on the long-term project
- several people working to provide nutrition and heating for themselves as well as for one other designated person who's the local manufacturing expert, and who proceeds to dedicate all their time to the long-term project.
> As for the camera - no way you'll get a functioning "modern" camera with optics and an aperture and everything. I would simply build a camera obscura and use my birch bark - the biggest technical challenge there is getting a totally dark "room", which could probably be done the simplest by making a dirt hut with a wooden front and a pinhole made of birch bark coated in ash. (The thinner the hole material, the better.) If you had people to trade with, and plenty of time, I suppose it would be possible (if difficult) to make a photosensitive plate that you could use with your pinhole.
That I agree with. A bellows camera on a tripod is probably the closest thing one can make with basic tools that's not fixed in place.
Most of them in lancaster county do not have cell phones, but have phone booths in a remote corner of their farm so it's not convenient.
It's a strange combination between modesty and strategically bending rules. I kind of adore that.
It's very earnestly human. Being rigid is fine and all but it also kind of sucks a hell of a lot. So it turns into a "how can I make this suck a little less without breaking what I believe in too much?" which is something I think we all struggle with but it's really laid bare here with the contrast between their lifestyle and ours.
Anabaptist communities vary far more than you suggest. It's a bit like Judaism that way; sure some are identifiable by particular dress etc. but there others you wouldn't notice at all in the SUV beside you on the highway.
By the same token, they are externalizing the upside of early adoption while suffering the loss of benefits, while providing us a living illustration of the alternative to our own choices.
I've been living like this for a while, without having a name for it, but at a pretty fine-grained level, for instance by staying off (most) social media.
We all make these decisions. E.g. people's valuing privacy precludes their owning an Amazon Ring.
Interestingly, I often miss landline times, because with landlines it was a fair excuse to say you were out and weren't reachable, whereas in the cell phone era people tend to expect you to be always reachable, and I'm in vehement disagreement with that kind of expectation from anyone other than an SO or close family member.
"So how can I reach you then [at all times]?"
They simply cannot comprehend a world in which people are (gasp) not reachable at all times and plan around such an assumption.
Mary said she didn't know how to describe what was happening. "I thought they were being bad to me. That was the only word I had to express it," she said.
In an Amish culture unaccustomed to women speaking up, Mary felt she got more scolding than sympathy when she told her mother what was going on.
She said her mother told her, "You don't fight hard enough and you don't pray hard enough." Mary said her mother made her feel as if the assaults were her fault. "Every time I would talk about this she would say that they have already confessed in church and you're just being unforgiving," she said.
…
"The funny thing is that they view drinking alcohol until you puke as bad a sin as raping somebody. They get the same punishment for either one," Mary said.
But Amish-style punishment was not going to bring Mary the justice she wanted. And for her, the final straw came when she suspected a younger brother, David, was molesting their 4-year-old sister.”[1]
—————-
MCCLURE: The majority of my sources never made a police report. They never had a court case. Whenever I spoke with these women, they had dozens of other victims that they told me about, dozens of other cousins and friends and family members that - they told me that this had happened to them, too. And, obviously, I can't put a number out there that's unverified or not supported or corroborated by a court case or a police report. It's very difficult to do a story like this where the evidence is limited. And so just anecdotally, just based on my conversations with these women and men, there are a lot more victims out there in Amish country that we may never know of simply because there is no paper trail.[2]
—————-
[1]https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=316371&page=1 [2]https://www.npr.org/2020/01/19/797804404/investigation-into-...
The Amish Keep to Themselves. And They’re Hiding a Horrifying Secret. A year of reporting reveals a culture of incest, rape, and abuse. - January 14, 2020 by Sarah McClure
https://www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2020/01/14/...
EDIT: I shouldn’t be surprised that pointing out Amish sexual assault makes HN spitting mad. Few things make HN angrier than implying rape is a problem worth caring about.
But to be clear: none of the religious practices of the Amish involve rape. The same weaknesses are present in many other similarly organized groups (see the ongoing scandals in the Catholic Church, less reported but similar patterns in southern Baptists, and even the military’s serious issues with sexual abuse).
Singling out the Amish and claiming that something they’re deeply ashamed of is the focal point of their religion is textbook hasty generalization and hyperbole.
This is a much broader phenomena I think; isolated communities with fairly centralized authority lend themselves to sheltering abusers.
Lots of Amish have cell phones but it is mostly the younger ones and they hide them in the corn fields. They sneak out at night or use them when they work off the farm. It might be surprising to some that the Amish have moved into the trades with a force. Most of them can't farm anymore because there isn't any farmland for sale in Lancaster anymore, and lots have pushed west to Ohio or Indiana or Iowa. The ones that work in the trades, get picked up every day and ride in someone else's $80K crew cab truck, they go into the convenience store and buy breakfast and lunch just the same as everyone else. They have learned that there is more money out in the "English" world than in farming. It will be interesting to see what happens across time as they get used to "keeping up".
Their attitude towards technology is as lacking in virtue as absolute pacifism. Pacifism that can only exist through others violence isn't a rejection of violence it is merely abdicating responsibility for deciding when to use that violence to others. In a way its more odious than violence.
Without us keeping the Amish way of life "subsidized", perhaps they would indeed have perished. And they would have gone willing, due to their belief system. It's remarkable that you can try to spin not being willing to participate in the technological-industrial system as "more odious than violence".
It is the statement that I know violence may be needed in some occasions but in order that I may imagine my own hands clean I am going to abstain from making the choice forcing someone else to. It neither stops your fellows from becoming nazis and hurting others nor being marched to concentration camps.
The simplest moral test one can apply is what would happen if everyone applied the same thought rules for behavior. It would be great right. More realistically what would happen if most people did? If they weren't willing to apply at least minimal defensive violence then a minority of defectors enslaves everyone else.
You have very little understanding of the Amish perspective. If your assumptions of their beliefs lead you to a conclusion that their pacifism is more odious than violence, it should be a red flag that perhaps you are mistaken in your assumptions.
Their security, in their view, rests with God. The Bible demonstrates repeatedly that, at times, God uses evil men to keep other evil men from harming His people. For example, God used the evil Babylonians to conquer the evil Assyrians, to the benefit of his chosen people who were commanded to keep a low profile and stay out of it. Likewise, the evil Persians conquered the evil Babylonians, leading to the release of the Jews from captivity: once again, the Jews in captivity were to lay low and let God seek vengeance in the Babylonians.
The Amish are quite aware that one group of evil people (let’s say cops and the state) are doing evil and violent things to another group of evil people (namely, criminals.) The Amish stay out of it, keep a low profile, and rely on Providence.
In short, their views are more subtle than you think. Instead of concluding they are ‘odious’ you would do well to understand them.
The Amish in America are able to live their life as is because Americans have absolutely been willing and able to do violence to would be conquerors and aggressors not because of virtue and providence.
Otherwise it sounds like a case of "don't get high on your own supply".
Given that most mechanical locks can be trivially picked, I fail to see the disadvantages of electronic locks. Yes, the failure modes of mechanical locks are better understood - they are understood to be incredibly serious, and easy to exploit. An $80 snap gun will open most locks, and requires zero skill or training to use.
Saying that you prefer a mechanical lock to an electric one because its failure modes are well-understood is like saying that you prefer ROT13 encryption to <My homebrew encryption>.
Are homebrew systems stupid? Yes. Is it likely that my homebrew system has problems? Yes. Are those problems well understood? No. Is it probably better than ROT13..? Yes, because ROT13 can be broken by a child.
I say this as a person who used to own a smart lock and went back to a regular one because I was tired of getting locked out by dead batteries and malfunctioning bluetooth.
Also on one occasion someone who was not authorized (fortunately a guest), unlocked my door and entered my house with the electronic lock because I happened to be sitting near the door on the inside.
More electronics does not mean more better.
I have so many minor automations that add up over time. When I get home, my Z-Wave lock on the front door automatically unlocks. If I open the garage, the LED shop lights turn on and the door in from the garage unlocks.
https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2017/09/18/approach-technolo...
The focus should be on minimalism. Start by understanding your priorities, goals, and the mental ecosystem you want to inhabit. Then evaluate each tool for its effectiveness in the above pre-stated constraints.
Every technology should have a clear purpose & place in your life, or it risks becoming into a form of media you lose control over.
On the other hand, the real reason why I put smart switches in my home was practical. I hate that 3-way switches have no fixed "on" or "off" motion, so I started with smart switches to replace my 3-ways. Then I realized that the timers on smart switches are easier to program and adapt to Daylight Savings Time, so I put more in.
I'm an early adopter and I also approach new technology very conservatively. I can totally understand why the Amish don't rush out and adopt everything.
(Sorry, could not resist ;-)
Spotify sent me a google home for free, and in a year I have only intentionally used it once or twice, and I think on one of those occasions my phone answered the wakeword first, so what even is the point? 99% of the times it waked were responding to me telling someone "okay cool", or my cat stepping on it. A few months ago it went in the old dead electronics pile, and a few weeks ago that pile went to a recycler, hopefully the metals in it can be turned into something actually useful.
A desktop computer at work or in the living room somehow doesn't have the addictive qualities of a smartphone. Perhaps it's because all technology does is amplify networks, and the networks created by isolated people with devices are different from the bonds of family, work, proximity, etc.
If that's what you want, get a new unlocked Android phone, and power it up without a SIM card. When it wants you to sign up for Google, click "later". Then remove the Google startup app to avoid further nagging. Then connect to WiFi or use a USB cable, download F-Droid, and load what you need from there. Remove most of the Google crapware, plus any other junk that came with the phone. Then add a SIM card. I have a ruggedized phone from Caterpillar Tractor set up that way.
(Haven't installed a replacement for Google Play Services yet, though. I should.)
Something to keep in mind while building the "tooling" of tomorrow.
Johnny Byler's sentencing brought out the largest crowd -- and the most tears -- not in support of Mary, but in support of the confessed rapist.
Is anybody aware of the source of this quote? I hear it quite often but have never seen the evidence to support it. I am starting to think that it might just be convenient to throw into an argument about technology.