2022 Amish Population Profile
groups.etown.edu
groups.etown.edu
I was particularly intrigued by “The Amish seek to master technology rather than become its slave.”
I love the conveniences tech offers, but I also worry about the digital habits that have turned into unhealthy addictions. Where in the technological progression did we tipped from technology being a tool to being a handcuff. Broadband? Wi-Fi? Smartphones?
Given the deep ties to tech here on HN, I am curious to know if there are others here who have similar thoughts.
Pagers are (more or less) dead. Telegrams are dead. Fax is (more or less) dead. Newspapers are dying.
Amateur Radio, Flyers and public squares would still work, though.
We probably already are seeing a form of it. With "temperance" to online advertising being adopted wholesale via the likes of Ublock Origin and other ad blockers.
Then there are the people who've Degoogled, Unfacebooked, (etc).
If (!) substantially more people continue to avoid Google, FB, (etc) it could become an actual Movement.
Hopefully it happens, in a positive (for humanity) way. :)
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter you’re thinking of. And also glutamate since glutamatergic firing in brain reward pathways are heavy associated with addiction
The Amish actually fascinate me in this regard. If you've ever met with an Amish person, they are far from primitive or dumb.
When the Amish communities were first founded, they were technologically no different than the groups around them. Just anytime a new technology is introduced, Elders host a discussion about how they would adopt it as a group. So it ends up as some Amish have telephones and some don't and etc.
From what I understand, Knuth entirely stopped using email in 1990, for a similar reason. But for Knuth, at that point, he was already using email for 15 years.
My children play with their friends, in meatspace. They co-ordinate doing so with WhatsApp or Telegram. This is the healthy balance. What they don't do is spend unending amounts of time playing video games, watching movies, or ever play a mobile game. They go to the movie theatre, or watch <insert streaming thing> with their friends should they want. But they don't do this every single day. Some use Khan Academy for play-based learning, all use their eBook readers for the unlimited books on whatever topics may interest them, for when we're out of treepubs.
Our trees are watered via a bluetooth drip irrigation system. Our groceries are delivered once ordered via an application. They walk to the local market to buy fresh in-season vegetables when we run out. During the week, when we study Torah we can access the history of exegesis through tablets. On Shabbat and Holidays we use books. It's balance.
How did you prevent your kids being sucked into tik tok and so on ? I tried, but failed :-( (at some point, I had to check what they do to make sure they don't spend too much time on these but, well I just couldn't handle the amount of checking I had to do)
(Sometimes clergy from mainline or popular denominations will also claim it. There is some grey area in interpreting legitimate conscientious objection.)
A ton of unnecessary gray area, and a violation of separation of church and state to give preference to certain tribes over others based on political influence.
Inflation, not so much an issue, since benefits and maximum contributions receive COLAs and theoretically wages are inflating at pace with CPI.
Kind of an odd measure of if their values are a good idea or not
Which usually means they're more selected for things the parents like (well respected in the community) rather than things that look good in pictures (shirtless pics).
But they're still options, not compulsions.
Getting introduced to a potential partner by family or friends and then dating is not any different than flirting with a partner and then dating, for the purposes of describing the circumstances that resulted in marriage.
Whether or not a couples’ uncles introduce each other, or their friends introduce each other, or couple meets each other at a bar/club/church/temple/volunteer org, the only meaningful difference I see is whether one or both parties consented (or was coerced due to drastic difference in negotiating position, such as my immigration example).
Two sets of parents deciding their kids are going to be married as adults and forcing/coercing it is arranged/forced marriage.
Two sets of parents introducing their kids to each other and the kids deciding they want to be married to each other is just marriage.
This is forced marriage.
> Two sets of parents introducing their kids to each other and the kids deciding they want to be married to each other is just marriage.
This is arranged marriage. In a non-arranged marriage the kids find each other, or they get introduced in a non-formal way. In an arranged one parents or a matchmaker do it for them, but the kids make the final decision. An arranged marriage is simply that there is someone actively looking for a match for the kid.
In a forced marriage the kids have no say, or their only say is to try to convince the parents, but if the parents disagree the kids have no choice.
That's simply what the words mean. You asked for a definition, this is the definition.
Keep the distinction and you'll communicate better on this subject without confusing people. (Notice that the only replies you got were people explaining that you are wrong about the topic - that's because you used the wrong term.)
Who or what do socially conservative practices like arranged marriage, prohibition on fornication, restriction on contraception (etc) serve? - the maximisation of happiness … or … often paternalistic control over a population for the greater benefit of a socially powerful elite?
Women and men who have had only 1 sexual partner are happier in their marriages:
https://ifstudies.org/blog/does-sexual-history-affect-marita...
There's also the big benefit of essentially eliminating STDs.
In my view, a lot of it comes down to what does sex mean? To me, sex says "I love you so much I want our love to overflow into new life. I love you so much I want to raise a child with you." Raising a child within a marriage is generally much better than raising a child outside of a marriage.
> restriction on contraception
One big problem with contraception is that it's not reliable. The pill has a 7% failure rate on average, and condoms have a 12% failure rate on average. People use contraception thinking it will prevent a pregnancy, but they're wrong.
> benefit of a socially powerful elite
I don't really understand how a prohibition on fornication benefits a powerful elite. The elites in the media industry seem to be promoting fornication in movies, TV shows, books, videogames, etc. I think elite men often want to use their position to have sex with a lot of women, which would be easier if women are ok with fornication. Also they won't be regarded as hypocrites if they say what they're doing is ok. Take for example Aziz Ansari. A woman accused him of some bad sexual thing. Much of the media defended Aziz saying it was just awkward sex, and that's not unethical. If Aziz had been publicly against fornication though, the media wouldn't have defended him.
Sure we'd be 'set back' by most standards, but we also wouldn't have global warming.
I'm not an expert of the Amish, but I assume they are generally happier than the average American. At the very least, less stressed.
I've heard enough rumors to know it's not a perfect community, but I still think there's a lot we can learn from them.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fs...
Also life is much better today for a weak, stupid person. 100 years, or even 40 years back, your life would be hell due to people giving you a hard time.
Today you would be put on a pedestal and worshiped for your shortcomings...
> We'll have to get ourselves out of the climate mess the same way we got into it - with technology.
And get into another one by doing it. Flawless logic.
Human beings should start being humble and realisitic about their capability to predict the effects of thier actions on environment, and start messing with it less. Not more. If humanity as a whole, has the capability to JUST FUCKING STOP, I would have much hope for the future. But no. Humanity has as much ability to course correct as that of a flying hippopotamus.
40 years ago, an imbecile could support himself doing menial labor. Now not so much.
Yea, Today an imbecile could run the country..I would leave the specifics to your imagination..
None of them were born stupid.
To be frank, I think, if not now, then eventually, all positions of authority will be manned by such plants..
Wealth inequality, environmental destruction, and mental illness.
Pick your narrative and you can find metrics that support it.
(Not that I believe this. Just giving a plausible counter explanation.)
So every thing, even if this thing have huge potential to do good, will eventually be discovered by the exploiters to do more efficient exploitation. I will go even further and will say that things that does not aid much with efficient exploitation won't attain wide spread usage in this day.
For example, we got a TV in each home, becuause that would help with more efficient exploitation. Each of us have a full color, slab like smart phones with a dozen listening devices with 24x7 internet connection because, yea you guessed, it, because it helps exploitors to squeeze that last drop of juice out of you...
Now I am not saying that there is a self declared bunch of exploitrers that decides which tech should go mainstream, but I think this is sort of emergent behavior, given the primal instincts in each and every one of us human beings..
This could also be a post hoc justification that sounds good.
When I moved out I started taking all my meals with tv and later video on my computer.
I’m now in my thirties and I see the value of my parents decision.
I don’t live in the states, but I read online that cinema in the states are quite noisy. Where I live, the main benefit to me of going to the cinema is the forced focus. Dark room. No pause ability, no phones, no talking.
I’ve seen a few “no Wi-Fi, no laptop” cafes and thought them silly, but I’m starting to turn around. It would be nice with a no smartphone cafe, but I’d still want a picture …
My point is: no, you’re not the only one with these concerns and I think you are right that there was a tipping point where we “lost”, but the battle has been ongoing for a long time.
Honestly, I agree with you, there are a lot of people in the US that casually treat public spaces as if they are theirs alone, and this sort of rudeness and selfishness permeates the culture. Some subcultures are worse than others about this.
The only cinema in the US I don’t hate is Alamo Drafthouse.
Not everyone is a beachy amish, not everyone is a schwartzentruber like you see in movies or imagine when you hear "Amish". You might have a hard time finding any one town where everyone has the same commitments, except for the schwartzentrubers, mainly due to it being the simplest lifestyle. Most of us just prefer a community centered, simple family unit with as much harmony with our neighbors as possible.
But if they're going to buy something high-tech once and keep it running themselves for years, wind turbines or solar seem more promising.
I don't know what sect the family belongs to, but a couple months ago I drove past on a Sunday morning and saw over twenty buggies parked in the pasture, nary a car in sight, so I'm confident they're at least not in a car-owning group.
There is nothing I despise more than what I call "The Economist Fetish", you know how it goes, "GROWTH! GDP! CAN EARTH SUPPORT 10 TRILLION PEOPLE?!! LETS FIND OUT!!", economists, as the namesake implies, are the most infested with this intellectual disease, but milder forms are endemic to a lot of modern people. A perverse and virus-like fascination with growing and expanding, a bizarre sexual pleasure derived from imagining life blown up to monstrous proportions. Someone with this disease have a rather curious inability to think about limits and ranges of validity : Can we humans, evolved for 1/4 million years to live among tightly-knit communities, live sanely in those infestations we call modern cities? Can the ecosystem, usually an incredibly balanced and intricate contraption based on animals eating each other to avoid overflowing resources, handle a species hitting 10 billion soon? An economist-fetishist have no patience for those questions, the rush for "GROWTH" overrides all conscious thought and sensation, like a drug, leaving only the raw sexual desire for more, more growth, more humans, more fuel, more cities and cement, more molding of the universe according to ugly and short sighted designs.
I like the Amish, in another life I would have loved living among them (if they allow strangers), despite my atheism. They are as far as you can go against the perverse idea of "society" and toward the more humane "community" without a full-fledged revolution.
Sucks for all the adopted people then, and those with lots of non-blood-related bonds. :/
It's not about technological progression, it's ethics and legislation.
Back in the day you would either not build user-hostile technology on ethical grounds, or the law would quickly catch up and outlaw your practice, or you just wouldn't get the funding necessary to do. For example, when some politician's video rental history was threatened to be made public, a law was quickly passed to outlaw the practice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act) and when Google (I think) initially announced plans to use targeted advertising based on personal data they initially backtracked due to the huge negative public reaction at the time.
Somewhere however the tide has turned and building user-hostile technology started being socially acceptable and rewarded by the market. People/companies that we call "VCs" even started specializing in funding said technology, all while regulation took a backseat.
- Absolutely NO social media on the phone. Computer only.
- Relatedly: Turned off ALL phone notifications except those that come from real-life human beings who I know personally.
- Paid hosting and perhaps more importantly, email. Self hosting is a pain, but I want the control and reliability. To me, it's an incredibly bad idea in the hands of e.g. Google. I need to be able to talk to a human who can fix things if it breaks.
The breadth of knowledge they have, as a group at least, is impressive. You could buy handmade furniture from them. And cheese. You're doing yourself a disservice if you've never tried an Amish cheese. And, they built my mother's house. A truck drove them in and picked them up each day. Just watching their work and attention to detail was something else.
If nothing else, they're a very self sustaining population.
There’s so much respect for communities with attention to detail and specific cultures: Amish, German, Japanese in particular.
It’s often spun as something specific to that community which “America” or “the UK” has lost. But… it seems more like what it reflects is a long established community of people who are treated well, like there jobs, and had the opportunity to do it for generations.
That turns it from a “unique to X culture” to idealize to just making you wonder what that level of expertise isn’t more commonly seen in the craftsmanship of our daily lives.
Wow... for context, compare to the fact that (at least according to the decennial census) the white population of the US actually decreased from 2010-2020.
But seriously, they shun electricity‽
Saw this on HN once: https://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/
Other much more distant relatives in nearby communities don't use electricity or any modern technology and speak mostly Pennsylvania Dutch.
No cars, no electricity, though they'll hire a car when people need to get medical treatment or travel long distances to visit relatives. It's not about not using technology, so much as it is not having technology in your daily life that doesn't bring you closer to God. This particular group even uses safety pins instead of buttons in their clothes, since buttons are usually shiny or patterned with designs, which are can be a temptation of vanity. It's a conscious decision to give up a modern convenience in exchange for being spiritually healthier.
Try spending a winter in a place without electricity, where your life depends on keeping a wood fired stove going (preferably a high efficiency model that doesn't produce a lot of smoke or particulates), and you start to appreciate the true amount of work that gas heating saves you. It does make you wonder, though, if the effort saved has allowed you to actually live a richer life.
That is what they live every day, in all aspects. More work and fewer conveniences, but fewer distractions from what they value most.
Compared to natural gas and propane, which realease a fair amount of methane (not to mention just as much CO2), and it's not the slam dunk criticism that you're thinking it is.
Spoiler: it doesn't hold. Extrapolating population numbers like that is extremely rarely correct.
My theory is having kids is just really hard work, but a deeply ingrained religious belief that children are a blessing from God helps groups like the Amish push forward with it anyway.
Evolution only makes predictions about reality, it doesn't tell you what is more moral or what you should do
Nobody said fitness implies morality. But the Amish by definition have higher evolutionary fitness than average Americans.
sure, it does not matter that things that we pay for and consume ends up having a million things that makes us sick in multiple ways, and if you are in some developing nation, you would be hard pressed to find food to feed your babies that is not laced with some kind of harmful pesticides or fertilizer, but hey, we can always pay more in healthcare to extend our diseased misery. We are doing just fine, in the mean while, there are more and more existential threats as the day progress, but hey, say it with me, we are JUST.DOING.FINE.
If we extrapolate this over the next few decades, and accept the conclusion that more technology = less children, and we can expect to see more technology in the future. Almost no new children will be born from within these high-tech societies, we will have to rely on immigration from Africa (the only place where replacement rate is high), and low-tech traditional religious societies.
What good is technology in this future scenario?
Technology has already replaced most agricultural workers in most developed countries and I can't imagine anyone wanting to return to pre-industrial agriculture.
Ofcourse if the current trends continue.
More kids surviving does and on that part the Amish benefit from technology because they can and some do to seek medical help if it's necessary.
If they become dominant or even merely competitive with the larger society then there will be conflict.
They also have huge economies of scale.
One of my grandmothers was one of 10 kids, and liked to relate that her parents always said it was the first 4 kids who were the hardest. After that, they start to look after themselves! Older kids act as babysitters for younger kids, etc.
There's a logical disconnect here: I can believe in death, but I really don't want to "win" at death.
Hence, if the human mind is a product of evolution, evolution must ultimately prefer truth to falsehood. But, what then to make of evidence that, in the long-run, natural selection prefers religious beliefs to non-religious belief? Can you see how that might be a problem for those who are convinced that all specifically religious beliefs are false and irrational?
Religions themselves are to some degree affected by their own evolutionary pressures. The views on missionary work, procreation and possibly also military all will effect the group of people that adhere to the religion, and if they lead to a higher survival/birth-rate then the religion itself will also win against alternatives. The truth of its dogma isn’t really relevant for this factor (unless we start considering interventionist deities, but that’s a different discussion entirely, as the above would apply across shared value/belief systems without the need for interventionism)
Would you still endorse the same statement if one replaced “religious” with something else, say “philosophical”?
Also, is that saying “the truth of a belief is irrelevant, so long as it has pragmatic benefits”? But, doesn’t that undermine one of the key arguments for the truth of scientific claims - the pragmatic technological benefits of their acceptance?
See above re: fundamental misunderstanding of truth in science.
As for your original post, you make a jump to stating that evolution would prefer truth, but that’s not a given simply from the fact that we perceive our world in such a way that we consider evolution. Evolution as we understand it is without intent, and only “prefers” that which in the long run yields further offspring.
A point I was trying to make was that the truthfulness of for instance religiosity doesn’t impact whether or not it has an effect on “fitness”. A religion can be entirely false, and yet contain memes that make its adherents’ genes procreate more successfully.
You can’t be sure you’re arrived at the truth. Nothing about the philosophy of science expects you to be sure; it’s an inductive process that encourages increasing confidence, but never absolute certainty.
Evolution doesn’t “prefer” anything. It’s a stochastic adaptation process. The existence of religious beliefs is incredibly interesting from an anthropological perspective, but doesn’t really tell us anything about evolution itself.
But still, an argument that “some religion is probably true” would have value even if it can’t tell us which religion is true
>Reasons for Population Growth. The primary forces driving the growth are sizable nuclear families (five or more children on average) and an average retention rate (Amish children who join the church as young adults) of 85 percent or more. A few outsiders have joined the Amish, but the growth is almost entirely from within the Amish community.
Go figure, this has nothing to do with religion.
You may roll down a hill but it doesn't mean you win at gravity theory.
At the moment, that looks like Amish, Muslims, and Elon Musk.
The population who remain childless to not add to the population burden of the planet will become irrelevant. I find that sad, since I really like several of them...
No, Musk lacks something the Amish and Muslims have: continuity. Amish children are likely to remain Amish.
Musk may have 20 kids but those kids will probably have the American average of 1.5 kids each and his descendents will limit to 0 like everyone else in his culture.
What does this mean? Are you saying the human population of the universe will drop to 0? If so, why mention "his culture"?
How exactly is race categorized in that census? I'm just wondering if this is partly due to descendants of mixed couples not classifying themselves as white.
I’m not sure if this is the case for all Amish communities, but in our area at least they do not own cars but will hire someone to drive them when the situation calls for it, such as when they’re attending a wedding or other event that’s far enough away to make buggy-driving impractical.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish#Use_of_technology_by_dif...
[2] smartphones are discussed in episode 4 of this web series, and "Amish drivers" in episode 3 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEyPgwIPkHo7lOk-72-tX...
That's how you end up with things like horse-drawn carriages with electric lighting or even Amish that use computers for work.
They still must follow the law of the land, so things like this are often out of necessity rather than any sort of communal inclination.
Amish men, at least in my area, would also occasionally go to bars, the whole family went to stores, etc. where they would be able to use technology like phones.
And I'm fairly certain the Amish around me in Western Pennsylvania/eastern Ohio were some of the stricter ones whereas, I've heard, communities in Minnesota for example are less strict and will even have things like TVs in their house.
I realized afterwards that their decision tree could be compressed to two conditions: keeping everyone in the community really busy, and not interfering with their social and moral norms. These two aren't entirely unrelated but are different enough to state separately. I believe as long as these two conditions are met they will not see technological tools as harmful.
This article “Amish Hackers” is a good look at their approach [1].
That article has been on HN several times over the last decade. Here is the most recent discussion [2].
Well, it's hard to cite a page where somebody manually estimated some numbers from various sources without at least providing a table to see what the individual estimates were so at least some errors can be corrected.
But, interesting factoids.
I still wouldn’t endorse the bible-based aspects of the Amish lifestyle, but I see that their approach to technology isn’t all that irrational. They are taking a very methodical approach to what we might call dependency management. They seek independence, and they realize how dependence and risk can arise from the deep supply chains inherent in technology. Hence they do not reject electricity outright, but do reject grid connections.
Their approach is also to thoroughly impact assess technology on their community. They assess holistically whether a technology will help or hinder them, in a social as well as economic sense.
I think we could learn some things from the Amish when tempted to chase new tech.
Groups like the Amish who want to have kids have a ton while the secular population decreases.
I wonder if Amish women are completely free to decide how many kids they want.
Sort of like in western world people have no „complete agency“ to refuse consumerist work/buy/die life. Technically they can, but in reality the society is stacked against that.
I'd argue that Amish are even more flexible than mainstream. Amish communities kick out the young to explore the world and then return on your own accord. Is mainstream society willing to kick out the kids to live with amishes or something along those lines? As far as I see, with very few exceptions, it's reinforcing the work/buy/die cycle.
How? If they reject it, they then need to go out and find shelter, and food, and income, in a world where they are negotiating with men, more who are all more physically powerful, as well as cognizant of the woman’s lesser negotiating position.
I do not know about Amish forcing their young to do non Amish things or whatever, but without a financial nest egg, or otherwise ability to afford security, a woman can easily feel more intimidated about striking it out on their own. Men simply do not have to worry about their physical safety in the same manner.
Most Amish communities do send kids out to explore the world. And looking at other comments, Amish women are usually more adopted to outside world and have modern office skills helping men construction etc businesses.
Semi-related... In my post-soviet country, we've a huge problem that women were forced out of home to the workforce in soviet era. Yet men were still sofa kings. Then 90s rolled in with huge unemployment and frequently women were handling both home & working, while men camped on sofas unemployed instead of taking care of the house.
Guess who is propagating this culture? Mothers and grandmothers mostly. For decades they treated boys as a special case who should go out and play and they'll clean up the house. With the help of girls, obviously. In my own childhood, it was a recurring conflict. Mom telling me to do cleaning after school. Grandmother not allowing me to do that and kicking out of the house while cleaning herself. And talking around, it's a very common pattern. Also, guess who is talking shit how men are lazy?
If your claim is that only women are responsible for propagating cultures where women are considered property, require dowry payments, lack women’s rights such as schooling, property rights, voting, driving, etc., then we will have to disagree.
I am pretty sure men have something to do with shackling women in certain societies.
I do not know where you intend to go with your thoughts, but if you are holding women solely responsible for the way men behave, again, we will have to simply disagree.
In very traditional societies, (grand)fathers spend very little time with kids compared to (grand)mothers.
Of course it's not just women to blame. Men themselves can bring the change too. But blaming just men is ignoring the elephant in the room. In traditional societies, women do have a crapton of power. It is power in a slightly different sense, but I'd argue that it's much bigger power.
In modern world, men and women can easily operate on their own by fixing problems using money. In traditional society... Men are toasted if they loose women. Of course, women do have a damn hard time without men too. But this dependence is mutual.
Seems to directly contradict any notion of both sexes having similar levels of power. Hell, 2022 USA is removing women’s power to get the healthcare they need.
Looking from a different background, postmodernist „freedoms and objective power“ seem very narrow definition that skips a lot of nuances. Individualist postmodernism needs some diversity of thought in this area.
P.S. It makes my brain freeze that killing fetus is „healthcare they need“. The new baby needs healthcare as well. For the record, I'm not against abortion per se because sometimes it is the lesser evil. But calling it „healthcare“ sounds batshit insane to me.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar
> The new baby needs healthcare as well.
And the new baby is welcome to get it outside the womb, where it is no longer affecting someone else. Note that no doctors or women are going around terminating 39 week fetuses for the fun of it.
>They lack freedoms and objective power according to your perception. At the same time women who don't need to care about making income in consumerist world can focus on family and local community. Which, coincidentally, gives a lot of power on raising the next generation.
Being dependent on men for food, shelter, water, security, and other basic needs is not a limitation of freedom due to my perception, hence my use of the word “objective”, meaning outside of one’s perception. If my daughter cannot choose to live life without the help of a man, that is a restriction of her freedom, and reduction of her power.
If a government gave women a universal benefit of housing, food, etc and told them not to work, then maybe your scenario would be true. But I have never heard of a society where the woman does not have to worry about earning income and their spouse earning income, which being dependent on the latter gives them all the power. Objectively.
That's just another way of saying the same thing. In societies where non-childbearing-women are not valued, of _course_ having children increases your place in society.
Patriachy isn't men dictating every action of every individual, it's structuring society so that the only real choice is the one that benefits the ruling class.
No, that's literally what patriarchy means, that the ruling class is men.
When the ruling class is women, that's called matriarchy.
When the ruling class doesn't favor either, it's neither.
So "X is not in the ruling class and X made a choice to improve their life" does _not_ suggest that a system of rule is not in place.
What does this mean? Women’s financial independence is dependent on their ability to secure income to provide for themself without the help of others. I do not see what it has to do with alimony and child support.
And the few unfortunate women I know who do rely on child support to help raise kids... I do not envy those women. Their lives are anywhere from hectic (single-parenting with fulltime jobs) to hard (trouble making ends meet, despite economizing).
E.g. chance to procreate has reverse correlation to IQ.
In Muslim communities, however, I would expect number of children to correlate with wealth/income (which is correlated with IQ) and with religiosity (which is not). So the overall picture is a lot more murky.
Big, developed cities like Istanbul and Tehran have TFR well below reproduction rate and very similar to European values. Backwaters like rural Afghanistan or Niger, where literacy is still uncommon, have tons of kids.
Basic education for women is very well correlated with lower TFR everywhere in the world.
Here's one thing some people in this thread need to understand. Nature doesn't care. Nature doesn't judge you if you don't have kids. Your genes being slightly less prevalent down the timeline isn't a punishment.
There's no high score table at the end of time saying "This is how good your genes did".
Even the idea that they are "yours" is pretty incoherent.
If stuff like who gets most kids worries you, you seriously need to look elsewhere for meaning in your lives. That's one thing you could learn from the Amish.
Nature doesn't judge you, it just gets rid of you.
I die because nature has selected humans to have a certain lifespan.
In many species, almost no individuals reproduce. Worker ants never have children. Same with worker bees. Plenty of species select have some/most members not reproduce to protect assist species.
From evolutionary perspective, only your genes are „your“ genes. And from tribal perspective, procreation of each (quality) member is for the better.
P.S. At some points in human history we had a similar only-chosen-procreate tendency. But it was overturned. I'd argue that for the better. Humans who have a stake in the future seem to care more about the society. Compared to ants-like society where warlord procreates and the rest of men just guards his harem.
A human being is a continuous process both genetically and culturally. Your forefathers form who you are and you form people who will live long after you.
There should be things which matter for their own sake, here and now, no matter what happens in the future. I can promise you that if you don't find them now, you won't find anything that matters in the future either.
I say this as I take a short break from coding on the weekend and thinking about how I could automate folding the washing with a homemade robot. So maybe it's not for me...
Also the learning of a new language, the idea that education past 8th grade is "pride", the shunning as social control, the hierarchy of which you will be at the bottom, plus the allegations in some communities of physical and sexual abuse. Among other adjustments.
I say this as someone who felt the same longing until I looked into what it would actually entail.
The Gulf states however I don't think would be safe for me due to my religion.
I'm also a firm believer that while communities should be free to be as exclusive as they want, nations should be as inclusive as possible.
I used to assume it was close to 100%. Where are these 15% of people who leave the settlements as adults?
> Contrary to the persistent myth that they are dying out, the Amish population in North America continues to grow at a rapid pace. Numbering over 330,000 in thirty-one states and four Canadian provinces, the Amish population doubles every twenty years (Young Center 2018; Donnermeyer et al. 2013). While over 60 percent of the Amish still reside in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, home to the four largest Amish settlements, population pressures are increasingly resulting in out-migration to areas where land prices are more affordable. Because the Amish do not actively seek converts, this population surge is a result of two major forces—large family sizes and a high retention rate. Though family size differs by affiliation, Amish families still average approximately five children. At the same time, the retention rate is at an all-time high. Fully 85 percent of Amish youth get down on their knees in front of their congregation and pledge to uphold the Ordnung, or unwritten code of conduct, of their local church district (Kraybill, Johnson-Weiner, and Nolt 2013).
[1] Kraybill, D.B., Johnson-Weiner, K.M., and Nolt, S.M. (2013). The Amish. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
[2] McConnell, D.L. (2019). Leaving the Amish. In: Handbook of Leaving Religion, ed. D. Enstedt, G. Larsson, T. Mantsinen, pp. 154-163. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004331471_013
I had a friend in high school whose mother was ex-Amish though. That was kind of interesting. They were just regular folks but it was essentially like her mother had immigrated from the old world and truly left all her family behind. I don’t know if leaving is always a permanent severance from the community but I guess in this case it was.
There was an ex-Amish programmer at my current employer's, a few years before I started.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Playground_(2002_fil...
There are communities like the Amish but without the religious beliefs?
I will be interested to join, but replace the religion with some secular spiritual exploration.
There's some that are quite well run. I wish I could find the link now, there was one in Appalachia which was doing quite well some years back.
While it doesn't count as non-religious, the Hutterites are quite interesting, as they are from another branch of the Anabaptist faith. And growing too, at a time where the Amish don't seem to be!
However, after some thinking, I come to the conlusion, that either all the reporting is one sided positive about it or at least, the price they pay for what they achieved is a bit underreported. And I don't mean like missing out on Netflix, though a lot of people would already consider this a price that they would have to pay. I think of it more on a personal level with respect to social structures and freedom. Both human history and personal experience tells me that their communities work - if they work as frictionless as it might appear - only with a very rigid set of rules. Which of course impact the personal freedom significantly. We don't know how much social pressure is needed to uphold the structure, how much social force even.
This is by no means meant as a criticism of the Amish - without talking personally to them I would't dare to critize them from far away[1] - but rather of the reporting which seems to paint things in a more idyllic way than reality might be.
On a technical level, it certainly helps that Pennsylvenia seems to be a great place for their life style and one key element to their stabilty might be, that members who want to live differently can litterally walk away as "the rest of the US" is just a few miles away. Which also should be considered when looking at them as a possible "role model" for all: they do gain a lot of benefits from living near people who fully embrace the high tech life style, e.g. when needing medical help. Again, not a critique, just as a point of consideration.
But in one sense they should serve the rest of us as a rule model: they show that every one can and should decide for themselves how to live in this modern world. One might not shun technology completely, but even if it means using the smartphone and the internet more responsibly, that could help people a lot. We need to be a bit more concious in our decisions, however they end out to be.
[1]: fun fact, if I ever make it to Pennsylvania, I might well be able to talk to them. As far as I have learned, Pennsylvania Dutch is basically the regional German dialect "Pfälzisch". Which is basically the region me and my family comes from. So while I don't speak it normally, I can perfectly well unterstand it, and would quickly be fluent in it :)
It's an election year. I wonder if they take long-term visitors....
Crypto-Amish like crypto-Judaism[0] or Amish people who believe in magical internet money?
Their actual fertility hasn't changed any - what's changed is that since the 80s the outside world has become more phone-obsessed zombies. We've crossed some sort of technological Rubicon where our technology has become less appealing to primitive people.