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The Amish

Mythopoeika said:
I've never understood the Amish objection to technology. I mean, Jesus and the Bible didn't pronounce a 'thou shalt not' against it. I suspect they may simply wish to distinguish themselves from the other people around them.
The Mennonites and Hutterites, though...they don't seem to have such a problem with technology.

I've always suspected that it's about power. If you control everything inside your community and prevent contact with the outside world, you can push people around to your heart's content. I'm not cynical or anything. ;)

The Mennonites did come up with an excellent strain of restorative justice, though.
 
The point about doing without technology is to not get distracted by the bells and whistles of daily life. If you look at when these denominations started, they spun off from mainstream churches beginning about the Enlightenment and snowballed during the Industrial Revolution, when fashion and technology began to speed up and the force of novelty in the material world began to impact forcibly on everybody, not just the leisured classes. It's the same as wearing the "plain clothes" - the prescribed dress is there so you'll be thinking about your duty and not about what to put on in the morning.

Trouble is, such rules-making doesn't actually keep sin at bay. Anybody who's ever been to a school at which uniforms were supposed to hide class differences and prevent kids from provoking each other and the teachers with their sartorial choices has seen it for themselves - it doesn't work. Some people get caught up in enforcing the letter of the rules in defiance of their spirit, the kids find ways to subvert the dress code to their social ends, and everybody can still tell the poor kids from the rich kids at a glance.
 
You have a very good point there.

Its like in a equal society there is no room for individual. (And you will note this was disencouraged in Classical Athens too.)

I am general pro amish, as you know, but I am sad for the children who never get the choice of chosing to be someone other than a peasant farmer.

(I have lots of `alternative` friends who would love to be peasant farmers. IT does little for them.)

But of course I come from a society in which the Amish probably would not be permitted to exist.
 
You really must not know much if you will insult them as peasant farmers. Many own their own businesses and are very successful. They should also be applauded on their very low rate of obesity. :D
 
Estimate: A new Amish community is founded every three and a half weeks in US
July 27th, 2012 in Other Sciences / Social Sciences

A new census of the Amish population in the United States estimates that a new Amish community is founded, on average, about every 3 1/2 weeks, and shows that more than 60 percent of all existing Amish settlements have been founded since 1990.

This pattern suggests the Amish are growing more rapidly than most other religions in the United States, researchers say. Unlike other religious groups, however, the growth is not driven by converts joining the faith, but instead can be attributed to large families and high rates of baptism.

In all, the census counts almost 251,000 Amish in the United States and Ontario, Canada, dispersed among 456 settlements, the communities in which members live and worship. The 1990 census estimated that there were 179 settlements in the United States.

If the growth of the Amish population continues at its current rate, the Ohio State University researchers predict that the census could exceed 1 million Amish and 1,000 settlements shortly after 2050, and these numbers will bring economic, cultural, social and religious change to the rural areas that attract Amish settlement.

Among the changes the researchers predict: Amish will buy up land vacated by farmers in rural areas close to community services, but the availability of farmland might not keep pace with population growth. This means many Amish men will likely look for nonfarm jobs such as woodworking and construction trades, which could affect land prices and potentially enhance local economies through the establishment of business startups.

The census restricts the count to Amish among the "Old Orders," those who maintain a horse-and-buggy lifestyle and avoid or limit their use of most modern technologies.

The researchers who compiled the census used a variety of sources to produce this count, including current and archival settlement directories and statistics from publications that cover some of the largest Amish communities, as well as by calculating estimates based on research-based facts about Amish settlement characteristics.

It took about two years to develop the census, which was commissioned by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies for the recently released 2010 U.S. Religion Census.

"The Amish are one of the fastest-growing religious groups in North America," said Joseph Donnermeyer, professor of rural sociology in Ohio State's School of Environment and Natural Resources, who led the census project. "They're doubling their population about every 21 to 22 years, primarily because they produce large families and the vast majority of daughters and sons remain in the community as adults baptized into the faith, starting their own families and sustaining their religious beliefs and practices."

Donnermeyer compiled the count with Elizabeth Cooksey, professor of sociology, and Cory Anderson, a graduate student in rural sociology, both at Ohio State. Anderson presented a paper today (7/27) in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Rural Sociological Society.

The researchers describe the Amish as largely misunderstood based on their limited depiction on television reality shows or in the news media. The Amish represent a branch of the Anabaptist (or rebaptized) movement dating to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Based on their interpretation of the Christian bible, the Amish settle where they can separate themselves from the world, minimize disturbance from others and use the land for farming or other livelihoods, Donnermeyer said.

The church is central to Amish life and is intentionally small-scale in its organization in keeping with their religious philosophy of separation, Donnermeyer said. Larger settlements are composed of multiple church districts, which typically consist of a few dozen families whose baptized members use a lottery system to select leaders. Worship services are held in members' homes.

The absence of a centralized church registry makes it complicated to produce an accurate estimate of the Amish population, Donnermeyer noted, but he said this census is likely the most comprehensive scholarly count of the Amish population to date.

He and his colleagues relied on more than 60 settlement directories they obtained from the Heritage Historical Library operated by the Mennonite Church and three publications that cover news about various Amish communities, both large and small. Those publications are The Budget in Sugarcreek, Ohio, The Diary in Bart, Pa., and Die Botschaft in Millersburg, Pa.

The researchers also used demographic data from established settlements to produce average household estimates for newer or similar communities that had not published directories. A settlement, by definition, must contain at least three households and include members who are able to hold a church service; these criteria were the basis for estimating the population of settlements that were less than a year old.

Baptism into the Amish church is offered only to adults – a fundamental tenet of the Anabaptist movement. Of the 250,784 Amish adherents identified in the census, 145,235 are considered nonmembers because they are children who have not yet been baptized.

The census provides Amish population figures for each state with at least one Amish community. The researchers included Ontario, Canada, home to 15 settlements and almost 4,400 Amish, in the census. The Amish live in 29 states, mostly in the Midwest and Great Lakes region but also as far south as Florida and Texas, into the northeast reaches of Maine and as far west as western Montana.
According to the research, Ohio is home to the most Amish community members – 60,233 – and Pennsylvania is a close second, with 59,078 Amish residents. Indiana has 44,831 Amish citizens. The 456 settlements contain a total of 1,868 Amish church districts of the "Old Orders."

No state has seen more recent growth in settlements than New York, where 15 new settlements have been established since 2010. But 34 of Ohio's 54 settlements have been founded since 1990, a trend that contributes to the state's large Amish population, Donnermeyer said. Ohio is also home to Holmes County, the U.S. county housing the highest percentage of Amish, with 42 percent. The Greater Holmes County settlement, which sprawls across six counties (Holmes, Wayne, Tuscarawas, Coshocton, Stark and Ashland), is the largest settlement, with nearly 30,000 Amish, followed by the Lancaster/Chester County settlement in southeastern Pennsylvania.

"My guess is that in 15 years, we'll witness a county whose population is majority Amish, and Holmes County is likely to gain that distinction first. Perhaps LaGrange County in Indiana will not be far behind," Donnermeyer said.

Provided by Ohio State University

"Estimate: A new Amish community is founded every three and a half weeks in US." July 27th, 2012. http://phys.org/news/2012-07-amish-founded-weeks.html
 
Amish hair-cutting trial goes to Ohio jury
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19594765

A group of Amish leaves the US courthouse in Cleveland during the trial

Related Stories

Sixteen Amish deny hair attacks
Amish son 'cuts father's beard'

An Ohio jury has begun deliberating in the case of 16 Amish people accused of hate crime after they cut the hair and beards of rivals.

Prosecutors say religious differences motivated the attacks by members of a breakaway group led by Samuel Mullet; uncut hair is an Amish symbol of faith.

Defence lawyers acknowledge the hair cutting took place, but say the hate-crime charges are excessive.

The six women and 10 men have pleaded not guilty.

The accused face up to life in prison if convicted.

Jurors ended their first day of deliberations without a verdict on Thursday at the US district court in Cleveland.

During the trial, prosecutors argued that the attacks were caused by disputes between Mr Mullet and the leaders of another Amish group, and that cutting their hair had "religiously degraded them".

'Terror'
They argue that Mr Mullet orchestrated the attacks, even if he was not present.

After every incident, the suspects returned to Mr Mullet's home, once giving him a paper bag stuffed with hair, prosecutor Kristy Parker said.


Samuel Mullet has denied ordering the attacks
"None of the terror that was unleashed on the victims last fall would have happened without Sam Mullet," she said.

All of the victims were people who had a dispute with Mr Mullet over his religious practices and his authoritarian rule over the settlement he founded, she said.

Defence lawyers argued that the attacks were the result of family or financial disputes.

"Use common sense," defence lawyer Neal Atway told jurors. "What happened was offensive, but what crime was committed?"

Mr Mullet told the Associated Press in October that he did not order the attacks, but did not stop his sons and others in his group from carrying them out.

The Amish leader said in the interview that he had wanted to send a message that the others should be ashamed for the way they had treated his group.

Many Amish believe that the Bible instructs women to wear their hair long and for men to stop shaving after marriage.

Ohio has an Amish population of about 61,000 - second only to Pennsylvania.

Within the Amish community, punishments are often decided internally and crimes are rarely reported to the police. Some of the victims of the attacks had refused to press charges.
 
Amish leader Samuel Mullet and 15 others guilty of hate crime
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19669950

Defence lawyers said the attacks did take place but were internal disputes

Related Stories

Amish haircuts case goes to jury

Members of an Amish breakaway group have been found guilty of hate crimes for forcibly cutting the beards and hair of community members.

The leader of the group, Samuel Mullet, has also been convicted of planning the five attacks last year in eastern Ohio.

The 16 face 10 years or more in jail over the incidents, prompted by a dispute over religious differences.

Prosecutors said the victims' hair was cut because it has spiritual significance in the Amish faith.

Defence lawyers admitted the attacks did take place, but argued they did not amount to hate crimes.

The hair-cutting incidents were internal family disputes, they argued.

'Chicken coop punishments'
Mullet was not accused of participating in the hair-cutting attacks, but prosecutors said he encouraged the defendants - six women and 10 men, including four of his sons - to carry them out.

He taunted his victims in jailhouse phone calls and received a paper bag full of the hair of one victim, prosecutors alleged.


Samuel Mullet Sr said the attacks were a response to criticisms from other Amish groups
One Amish bishop testified that his beard, which usually hung to his chest, was cut almost to his chin after four or five men dragged him out of his farmhouse in a night-time attack.

Other witnesses said Mullet maintained absolute control over the settlement he founded two decades ago.

Some said men were made to sleep in chicken coops as punishment. Mullet also practised "sexual counselling" for married women in his community, according to court documents.

Mullet told the Associated Press in October 2011 that he did not order the attacks, but did not stop his sons and others in his group from carrying them out.

The Amish leader said in the interview that he had wanted to send a message to other Amish religious groups that they should be ashamed for the way they had treated his group.

Mullet had been criticised by other Amish leaders for being too strict, and for ostracising members of his own group.

Many Amish believe that the Bible instructs women to wear their hair long and for men to stop shaving after marriage.

Ohio has an Amish population of about 61,000 - second only to Pennsylvania.

Within the Amish community, punishments are often decided internally and crimes are rarely reported to the police. Some of the victims of the attacks had refused to press charges.
 
Samuel Mullet and Amish beard-cutters jailed
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21389094

Ten men and six women were convicted of hate crimes over the attacks

An Ohio Amish sect leader has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for directing hair- and beard-cutting attacks on Amish people in 2011.

Fifteen of Samuel Mullet's followers were also given prison sentences ranging from one to seven years.

They were convicted of hate crime after prosecutors argued the five attacks were motivated by religious disputes.

Amish people believe the Bible instructs women not to cut their hair, and men to grow beards once they marry.

His ankles in chains, Mullet, 67, told Friday's hearing that he had spent his life trying to help people.

'Terrorised'
"That's been my goal all my life," he told the hushed courtroom.

But Judge Dan Aaron Polster was not convinced.


Samuel Mullet argued he did not order the attacks but did not stop them either
"The victims were terrorised and traumatised," he told the court. He said the victims of the attacks had their constitutional rights to religious freedom violated.

Mullet has been accused of running a cult and exercising absolute control over the breakaway Amish settlement he founded two decades ago.

He allegedly punished male members by making them sleep in chicken coops. Mullet also practised sexual "counselling" for married women in his community, according to court documents.

During the trial, victims of the attacks testified they were restrained and had their hair forcibly cut using scissors, clippers, shears and battery-operated razors.

Defence lawyers argued the attacks were a result of personal disputes in the Amish community in Bergholz, Ohio.

They argued for leniency citing the hardship the small community had faced without some of the men during the winter.

Prosecutors recommended lighter sentences for Mullet's followers and suggested that family members serve at different times in order to care for the defendants' 50 children.

Mullet was not accused of participating in the hair-cutting attacks, but prosecutors said he encouraged the other defendants - six women and nine men, including four of his sons - to carry them out.

"There is no doubt that Mullet wanted, agreed with and encouraged all of these attacks," prosecutors said in a court filing.
 
Does anyone else find it remotely funny and ironic that Mr. Mullet was accused of inciting his followers to cut off beards and hair of the Amish?
Perhaps he was a frustrated wannabe hairdresser?

It just seems to me that Amish "hate crimes" is an oxymoron.
Though I do know that those Amish who are excommunicated and shunned from their families when they break the law of their communities are really punished and ostracized. There are any number of ex-Amish who have formed or joined Christian churches which are less proscribed than their former communities.
 
Ohio Amish latest to be afflicted in growing number of measles cases

More than a dozen members of the normally vaccine-adverse Amish community are waiving their religious inclination after being afflicted with the potentially fatal measles virus in central Ohio.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed this week that at least 16 cases of the measles are present around the Knox County village of Danville. Health department officials vaccinated 136 people Thursday and were expecting an even larger turnout on Friday, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

The outbreak was first discovered earlier this week when four members of a local Amish community returned from a trip to the Philippines. Each member was unvaccinated and, upon offering humanitarian aid to typhoon victims in the Pacific country, contracted the virus. At least 20,000 people in the Philippines have been infected with measles and at least 50 have died as health officials have struggled to contain the spreading.

Pam Palm, a spokeswoman for the Knox County, Ohio Health Department told NBC News that Ohio is trying to avoid the same fate.

“Not getting immunizations has been the way the Amish have felt in the past, but they certainly have responded in this situation,” she said.

The four returning Amish are believed to have infected more than ten others, ranging in age from to 2 to 48, Palm added, although definitive tests are still pending.

Small Amish communities quietly exist in secluded areas around the US, but perhaps most prominently in the farmlands of Ohio and Pennsylvania. A deeply religious community of just under 300,000, the Amish are known for their simple dress, long beards, and traveling in horse-carriages along rural roadways. They reject the notion of modern technology, believing that traditional work, like their reliance on Pennsylvania Dutch and community relations, is one of the benchmarks of religious devotion.

The Amish do not specifically prohibit vaccination, although a 2011 study from the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics found that only a fraction of Amish children have received immunizations compared to the general public.

“The reasons that Amish parents resist immunizations mirror reasons that non-Amish parents resist immunizations,” the study concluded. “Even in America’s closed religious communities, the major barrier to vaccination is concern over adverse effects of vaccinations. If 85% of Amish parents surveyed accept some immunizations, they are a dynamic group that may be influenced to accept preventative care. Underimmunization in the Amish population must be approached with emphasis on changing parental perceptions of vaccines in addition to ensuring access to vaccines.”

The Amish community in question initially planned to send another group of humanitarians to the Philippines to help with the ongoing aid efforts. Whether that has changed since the measles outbreak is unknown, although health officials have requested that anyone who does travel to the Philippines quarantine themselves for 21 days to prevent any bacteria from spreading.

“We can’t stop people from going to another country,” Palm said.

Measles has long been considered to be eliminated as a threat to US populations. Since 2010, though, there have been 160 cases around the nation. In 2014 alone there have been 129 confirmed cases in 13 states, Ohio being the most recent. Many of the cases were congregated in New York City and California among travelers who were either visiting the US or returning home.

“Vaccines are one of history’s most successful public health tools for preventing serious disease and death,” Jackie Fletcher director of nursing at the Knox County Health Department, told the Newark Advocate. “Unfortunately, our success also means that many parents don’t appreciate the importance of childhood’s immunizations, because they have never witnessed the diseases. These recent outbreaks are a good reminder that diseases like measles are only a plane ride away.”
http://rt.com/usa/154992-ohio-amish-mea ... cinations/
 
An aggressive vaccination effort in response to the 2014 measles outbreak among North American Amish communities in Ohio significantly reduced the transmission of measles and the expected number of cases, according to a new study, even though under- vaccination among the North American Amish and in other communities around the United States led to the highest national annual number of reported cases in 2014 in the last 20 years.

In their new study - Modeling measles transmission in the North America Amish and options for outbreak response - Dr. Kimberly Thompson and her colleague at Kid Risk, Inc., Kasper H. Kisjes, explored the impact of the 2014 outbreak response compared to no or only partial response. They concluded that "aggressive outbreak response efforts in Ohio probably prevented widespread transmission of measles within the entire North American Amish."

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/297280.php
 
The Amish are so thrifty and practical that all animals are livestock and livelihood to them. If you use Amish + puppy mills in a search field, you may no longer find them charming.
 
I thought it was a place for making puppy flour. Luckily that wasn't the case.
 
There’s a grid of rural roads in eastern Indiana where, if you’re lucky, and you listen carefully, you might hear yodeling. When I first heard it 25 years ago, I had no idea I had stumbled onto a sliver of Switzerland on the Indiana prairie.

This yodeling is not the shrill sound popularized in Hollywood caricatures. It's a seamless, haunting harmony emanating from another century’s daguerreotype. The sounds are made by people whose heads are covered in crisp, black caps; boys in suspenders, around a coal stove. The youngest, barely old enough to toddle, will chime in with a few notes, while the oldest fills the room with a gravelly harmony.

For the Swiss Amish of Adams County, Indiana, yodeling is a part of their language. It's a dialect that stands apart, both from the non-Amish world, and even from other Amish communities. The question that haunts many here today is, how long can this dialect last?

There is a necklace of Swiss Amish settlements in eastern Indiana extending from Grabill in the north to Milroy in the south. At the center are Berne and nearby Geneva (each named after the Swiss cities, with Bern given an extra “e.”). The Amish here speak a completely different dialect than the vast majority of Amish in major settlements like Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and Holmes County, Ohio, who speak a more traditional mainstream dialect of high German. ...

http://www.atlasobscura.com/article...iana?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=atlas-page
 
Health Secrets of the Amish
  • In recent decades, the prevalence of asthma and allergies has increased between two- and threefold in the United States. These days, one in 12 kids has asthma. More are allergic.

    The uptick is often said to have started in the late 20th century. But the first hint of a population-wide affliction — the sneezing masses — came earlier, in the late 19th century, among the American and British upper classes. Hay fever so closely hewed to class lines, in fact, it was seen as a mark of civilization and refinement. Observers noted that farmers — the people who most often came in contact with pollens and animal dander — were the ones least likely to sneeze and wheeze.

    This phenomenon was rediscovered in the 1990s in Switzerland. Children who grew up on small farms were between one-half and one-third less likely to have hay fever and asthma, compared with non-farming children living in the same rural areas. European scientists identified livestock, particularly dairy cows, fermented feed and raw milk consumption as protective in what they eventually called the “farm effect.” Many scientists argued that the abundant microbes of the cowshed stimulated children’s immune systems in a way that prevented allergic disease.

    Then, a few years ago, researchers found an American example of the phenomenon: the Amish. Children from an Amish community in Indiana had an even lower prevalence of allergies than European farmers, making them among the least allergic subgroup ever measured in the developed world.

    Now a study released on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine advances the research. The authors did something new and important: They found a suitable comparison group for the Amish in another farming community, the Hutterites. The two groups share genetic ancestry. Both descend from German-speaking stock. But unlike the Amish, the Hutterites, who live in the upper Midwest, are as allergic as your average American.

    Why doesn’t farming protect the Hutterites?

    A likely reason is that while the Amish have small farms, with cowsheds located right next to their homes, the communal-living Hutterites house their livestock miles away. The Amish probably bring more microbes into their homes — and some may waft in directly — resulting in a microbial load nearly six times higher than that found in Hutterite houses, the scientists discovered. ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/o...-amish.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur&_r=0
 
The point about doing without technology is to not get distracted by the bells and whistles of daily life. ...

Here's an example of Amish appropriation of a modern IT-based service motif without the technological trappings. If you think about it, this example illustrates as much about Uber's non-novelty as anything.

Michigan man turns horse and buggy into 'Amish Uber'
An Amish man in Michigan is putting a new spin on ride-sharing with his horse and buggy service that he branded "Amish Uber."

Timothy Hochstedler of St. Joseph County said he started offering $5 rides in his horse-drawn buggy in the city of Colon after learning about Uber, the app-based ride sharing service.

"Uber is a cool thing, every single year something new comes in and Uber is hot right now, so we have the Amish Uber. We can deliver people to their front door steps," Hochstedler told WWMT-TV.

Hochstedler, who is not affiliated with Uber, said most of his customers are tourists, but locals also enjoy his services.

"Most of them aren't from Colon, but the Colon people have given me a few options like, 'Would you give me a ride to Curly's? Would you go to my house?' And, yeah, I'd do that," Hochstedler said.

Hochstedler's analog Uber is slightly more difficult to book than its app-based namesake: Customers have to wave him down on the street.

SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2018/0...orse-and-buggy-into-Amish-Uber/8951533570410/
 
That's all Uber is though, black market taxi with an app.

I don't want to brag but I once invented a way to do dating without a dating app.
 
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This is probably racist or something .. Weird Al's Amish Paradise

 
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