The Amish have negotiated a pact with modernity (2018)
qz.com
qz.com
The hard part is creating a viable alternative culture that can make collective choices about technology use.
It’s also worth noting that the Amish rely on the ‘English’ I.e. American legal system and military for their defense. Their way of life doesn’t stand alone outside of American society.
Furthermore, allowing people to maintain their lifestyle with minimal interaction with the state is probably the best possible use of the state in the first place.
Military forces are a separate problem from legal problems. I think rather a lot of the people rushing to correct me are conflating the two in their heads. When you say "just being taken by other Americans", are you thinking of a rogue criminal or some sort of organized invasion?
Personally, I suspect that even if you tried the sort of organized invasion that a civilian might try to put together that you'd still find yourself up against some stiff resistance. Criminals in general are less than excited about stealing from people when they can almost count on being shot at. They steal from people who won't shoot at them.
The problem is when you get to military levels of invasion, at the level where you start putting together forces that count on being shot at and still overpowering you.
Sounds like a militia.
Also, you don’t seem to be being taking seriously what it means not to have a legal system.
For example why are you talking about criminals? If there is no legal system, there are no criminals. A bunch of guys with AR-15s and pick up-trucks and walkie talkies really wouldn’t find it hard to displace a religious community who are relying on old hunting rifles, horse drawn buggies, and no wireless comms, especially since the Amish would have families to protect.
They'll only need to make an example out of a few people to make it clear that giving in to their demands is much cheaper than fighting them.
In other words, you can be as “committed” to pacifism as you want, but your life and freedom, and your indulgence in your pacifist philosophy, is made possible by other people’s commitment to the defense against violence with violence, and, often, to their sacrifice.
There are some things worth dying for (for example, freedom as you point out). A pacifist has a similar mentality, but believes not taking a life is worth dying for.
Both the pacifist and the non-pacifist want freedom, but the pacifist would rather surrender liberty than kill if that's what it comes to. By analogy, I want to keep my car, but I would not shoot anyone who tried to steal it even though it's legal where I live. I might hate what they're doing but I value their life more than my car.
“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.” -- John Adams
> The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of the western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China. It is not claimed, again, that the Indians should abjure violence in their struggle against the British. Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is perhaps excusable if it is violent enough. After the fall of France, the French pacifists, faced by a real choice which their English colleagues have not had to make, mostly went over to the Nazis, and in England there appears to have been some small overlap of membership between the Peace Pledge Union and the Blackshirts. Pacifist writers have written in praise of Carlyle, one of the intellectual fathers of Fascism. All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty. The mistake was made of pinning this emotion to Hitler, but it could easily be retransferred.
"Notes on Nationalism", 1945 (https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...)
The army was abolished by the man who became president by winning a civil war. Costa Rica maintains armed forces to patrol the border, combat drug trafficking, and maintain internal order, as well as an armed police force. But they don’t call any of these things “armies”.
They have a defense alliance with the United States. If another country tries to invade them, the US will use violence to defend them. Is it pacifism to depend on someone else’s willingness to sacrifice for you?
Costa Rica only exists as a country because they successfully used violence to repel a private army raised by a US citizen who wanted to annex them to the US.
Call me pessimistic if you want. I prefer to believe that I have a realistic view of the role of violence in the world.
In history there's a handful of cases where there have been what are viewed as probably warless societies. Honestly I wouldn't say they fared any worse than warring states. Indus Valley Civilization, Rapa Nui Civilization, Early Sumeria... I'm sure there's countless others in reality but those are what I recall off the top of my head.
I find it difficult to actually piece together a narrative where war is actually a necessity. Empire itself, abstracted, is really just the displacement of toil which isn't a "necessary evil" by any means. And by far and large that is what virtually all war has been predicated on up to World War 2 which justified itself with teleological underpinnings like Marxism and Fascist ideologies; perhaps a few exceptions being outright hostilities triggered by emotional kings.
Ultimately it's survivorship bias, but the surviving population is selecting for all the worst conceivable parameters, which in turn has perverted our whole understanding of civilization. It's made it seem as if war is necessary, that defense strategies and assets must be in place, etc... I don't think this is really the case, but creating a policy system that is totally forbidding of the powers necessary to conjure the public force is a difficulty in and of itself.
I do also suspect that people who do tow the line of government aren't self-contained individuals, they do themselves require laws, governance, and espouse things like inevitable war are exactly those predisposed to causing it, and they're projecting themselves.
If you don't believe in threats, why use https?
But I would disagree with the notion that one society should only adopt a belief if it generalizes to the entire planet. That's not really a useful yardstick to judge feasibility in a world that requires heterogeneity and in which different groups have different pressures. Universalism is a bigger lie than pacifism.
So what role does pacifism play? Let's reinterpret the Orwell quote -- those who have money and guns can be Pacifists. I would say yes. If they were militarists, it would end badly as you would get powerful warmongering states. So a bias towards pacifism among those who strong and in no danger makes sense, just as a bias towards militarism among those who are weaker and in danger makes a lot of sense. Then we can look at the other aspect. If you are a radically different subgroup embedded in a larger population, you want to keep your head down. You don't want to be seen as a threat. So the Amish, famously apolitical and non-militaristic, are more tolerated by the rest of society.
This alternative culture is impossible under capitalism, where the tendency is for any and every technology to be acquired and applied in the service of the already rich and powerful.
Also, by definition, if collective choices are being made about the use of technology, then it’s not capitalism.
Collective choices get made within capitalism all the time. Corporations, clubs, cooperatives, unions, associations, etc, cities, counties, countries, etc, are all legally established collective choice making groups. There is also nothing preventing people from forming their own groups by free association.
The key feature of a capitalist enterprise is that the workers and the owners are not the same group. This is in contrast with a socialist enterprise, where the owners and the workers are the same group.
There is a ton of stuff preventing people from forming their own groups. Have you seen how companies (see Amazon & Starbucks recently) react to people attempting to do so?
Is there any vaguely-homogenious 0.1% of America's population that could stand alone outside of American society, when you start requiring mega-scale social systems like a first-world legal system and military? I'm thinking "no".
The Amish are probably able to put some kind of legal system together themselves, but their decided religious pacifism limits them to living under protection of others.
The beauty of a society that embraces individual choice is that the individual gets to choose. You can let somebody else decide for you, but you can also go against them.
The article loses me on this point as well. Any individual can look at the effects a technology has on those around them and decide not to participate. Does that mean you're left behind? Yeah, but the Amish face the same problem anyway.
The one advantage the Amish have is that their 'eccentric' choices are seen as more valid and respected compared to an individual making those choices. But I think that's more of a failing of our modern culture not respecting individual rights as much.
Said strong economy being most of the time directly linked to the technology level of the country.
The value of a TV is completely dependent on who can broadcast.
“Saying if I want a TV I should be able to buy one.” is a meaningless comment on freedom given that broadcasting is regulated.
The government doesn’t have to control who can buy TVs if it controls who can broadcast.
But if you don't want say a gun but then profit from an army that does use guns that does sound a bit hypocritical.
You can decide for yourself, but most technology is social, and so it matters quite a bit whether other people make similar decisions to you.
Whilst the Amish are reliant on the rest of society's laws and defenses, there are other ethnocultural groups within the USA that are reliant on the rest of society for their housing and food supply. That's a lot further down the hierarchy of needs.
> In the 1960s and 1970s, 75% of Amish children would decide to become Amish adults. The most recent statistics show that’s up to 95%.
Why do you think this number continues to increase if your assumptions about the Amish are true?
Even tough it seems they understand the choice they are making regarding some technology and even tough in many case with hindsight it appears that they made some judicious choices for their society wellbeing, I argue they do not have the tools to make those choices in an unbiased manner as those tought experiments are also technological byproducts.
Their stance regarding modern medicine, tolerating it when someone is truly ill, seems particularly hypocritical if not disingenuous.
I wonder if the rest of us use technology in an unbiased experimental manner without regard to the consequences? As the decades go by we become increasingly stressed having to deal with commutes and corporations and bureaucracies and living in a world of phone zombies, mass media outrage, echo chambers, etc. All the While our world becomes more complex and less robust.
Personally I think there's a huge lack of intent and wisdom on our part. As a group we're focused on novelty and profit instead of people, and don't seem to be so great at dealing with the resulting problems like pollution, inequality, depression, etc.
All technology is the product of people with beliefs about prevailing conditions and beliefs of what is valuable. As the articles says, technology is not some isolated, abstract thing. It is embedded in a much larger reality that is indeed value-laden, thus making technology itself value-laden.
We've already accumulated a ton of technical debt, just like so much feature packed bowl of spaghetti software. Were cars worth it, the long commutes and destruction of neighborhoods versus the independence? People seem to miss the way things used to be. And the debt from the last 75 years of frantic building is still accumulating - crowded roads, car-only subdivisions full of low-income folks living five to a house because you can't get to work without a car, etc. A similar argument can be made about computers - the personal alienation and the impersonal bureaucracies versus the huge increase in available information, but with the possibility of a future nightmare of totalitarian surveillance and control.
I didn't mean to argue with anything you said. Perhaps I just see the situation as more acute. I like my tech debt analogy. Just like bad code it is not just about the current problems, but also the future problems we've already baked into the system.
There aren't bloggers out there implying the rest of us are sagely engaging/disengaging with the technology.
I think GP is annoyed by attributing unwarranted wisdom. Maybe it is a result of wisdom, but those bloggers certainly aren't giving good arguments for it.
What would we observe differently if it were regular technophobia?
However, there are lots of Amish that have freezers hidden in the barn running off generators. If the clergy shows up, it is unplugged and everyone pretends it isn't there. Lots of the children have cell phones hidden in the corn fields that they sneak out and use (even outside of those that are on rumspringa). Given the lack of affordable farm land, lots of the Amish now work in the trades. Someone picks them up in a F-350 crew-cab and takes them to work, but not before they stop at the Sheetz/WaWa to buy soda and candy and lunch just like all the other workers. Our Costco has tie-ups for the Amish and they come out with several carts loaded to the max. They continue to struggle with the modern world and it is getting harder each generation for them to remain insular.
Can you explain? The amish are not against technology by any means. They just don't think you need to let it run you. I mean, as many said, the amish use telephones and even cars if necessary for business, or emergency. How is this any different?
I would say the thing that's missing from "our" society is a compass. What is it that we want to be, what do we value the most, etc? You begin by knowing those answers, and then you can evaluate whether technology helps or hurts you.
For example -- almost everyone says "we value family." But the chasidim and the amish express that by living close to their family, while "a typical American" moves far away from home and then has to rely on FaceTime and WhatsApp. The reason we have this problem is because we value something else above family (or community) -- that may be novelty, work opportunities, etc. But mainly, I think it's because we've become quite a bit untethered.
Society has moved pretty far away from religious and traditional values in the past few decades, and hasn't replaced them with anything (certainly not anything better.) So while a chasid or amish person can look at TikToc and say "that's just going to take me away from my family/spiritual work and therefore I don't want that" - we in secular society are confused about our trade-offs.
This is religion, as you point out.
> But the chasidim and the amish express that by living close to their family, while "a typical American" moves far away from home and then has to rely on FaceTime and WhatsApp.
It's not just this binary though. There are various levels of facetime and whatsapping as well.
And actually, most americans live close to family. On HN we are a bubble.
- 30% through the article: "Ok, maybe I'm Amish."
- 60% through the article: "Ok, I'm definitely Amish."
- 100% through the article: "So what other media can I consume on the interwebz?"
I think that's where we as the more "common" society may have gone off course: no technology (chair, toothbrush, etc to be cheeky/comprehensive on my use of the word technology) lives in a world where it's an absolutely perfect good. Anything can be abused, and when we've though about adjusting or rethinking big internet-based technologies, including social media services, it seems we're not putting enough responsibility on the operators of these services.
To me, that _doesn't_ mean we expect them to be perfect either with the ability to be responsible actors, but there needs to be some agreed upon standards that we can evaluate performance of their ability to act responsibly. It can just be left up to them, which is currently the state at a high-level.
If you look deeply in many religions they are the same. Buddhist monks aren't excluded from tech but they certainly dont own any themselves. Why? Because it's something to consider and create desires. Just as they shave their head not because of aesthetics but because now you never have to worry about your hair looking bad.
When you eliminate the unnecessary from your life, you certainly live a happier life.
I realize it's cool to fetishize them but think of them like the Jehovah's witnesses.
I think the rational play for an Amish youth would be to not commit to the religion, but live the lifestyle. That's not really feasible for a young adult who was brought up as a JW child, after a certain age. They would be gradually excluded from their baptized cohorts, even if never shunned outright.
Let's also notice that you chose to say 'preserve their culture', whereas in the comment you replied to I was speaking of religions (and also, albeit implicitly, cults.) I'll come back to your Culture point, but I have to answer your question in the context of what I meant, not what you meant.
Religious shunning is problematic because it harms the individual. Again using Jehovah's Witnesses as an example: JW children are under intense peer pressure to make their commitment at an early age. They are strongly discouraged from building up a social network outside of the JW domain, or even to pursue higher education. So if a JW child gets baptized at 14, and then when 20+ realizes they are gay (or atheist, or buddhist), coming out as such after making that JW commitment causes them significant social, economic, & psychological harm.
But does it protect the religion? Absolutely. That's the whole point, individual-be-damned (if you'll forgive the pun.)
As to your point about Amish culture: religion & culture can be orthogonal to varying degrees. I suspect the Amish are one of the extreme examples, where religion & culture overlap inextricably. There are many aspects to their culture that are especially precious to them, and so it only makes sense that they wish to preserve it.
But still, it would be willfully myopic to not concede that the shunning harms the individual. Atleast /rumspringa/ gives their youth the ability to make a more informed decision, and even a way to avoid complete ostracism even if they explicitly choose to live as though English, and never make the commitment to be Amish. I give them credit for that accommodation, relative to the shunning that other insular religious groups do.
I fundamentally disagree and I think this is where a lot of Westerners get hung up on dealing with other countries. There are non-religious cultural practices for sure, but these are not practiced independent of religion.
Unnecessary for you maybe, it doesn't look very happy to me
Are phones unnecessary? Maybe, maybe not, but IMO, the way to a happier life isn't to ignore things, but to find a balance (or develop the self-discipline) to use something like a cell phone in a way where it can improve your life.
It's more complicated than that. Always.
The monks I've known accept modern science, medicine, etc cheerfully. It's not really relevant to Buddhist spirituality any more than the advent of frozen fish sticks was.
It's fine to LARP 1850 if that's your bag. But people who truly wish to live in the confines of that era will have children who die of cholera. We should all be grateful for the upsides of modern society.
The Amish are OK with using electricity as long as they can generate it themselves. They don't want to be dependent on a utility to provide it.
Without a turn signal, car drivers would try to pass a buggy that has moved into the middle of the lane in order to make a left turn.
This knowledge is not unknown in the English world. This is how most large, conservative financial organizations manage technology. They don’t dive into new technology without some very careful consideration.
His journey into orthodox jewish neighborhood in NY is great too.
The Amish understand a life-changing truth about technology the rest of us don’t - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17106823 - May 2018 (6 comments)
I'd give up computers and the internet entirely before I gave up my car.
We live in a rural area about 10 minutes drive from Olympia, the capitol city of Washington state.
There's a fair amount of public transit in and around Olympia, but none of it comes close to where we live. Uber doesn't serve this area, and taxis are rare and expensive.
My wife and I work from home, and drive our largely hydro-powered Tesla in to town a few times a week.
Zoom in on Houston or Dallas, Texas for cities heavily reliant on autos. Or just about any place not in a major coastal city in the United States.
It's more accurate to say that these coastal cities have certain enclaves where you don't need to own your own car but can take public transportion/walk or get an Uber in a pinch. Uber makes a big difference in increasing the size of the enclave, but having other people drive you around isn't car independence.