If you have a chance to visit Philadelphia and Gettysburg, you will follow state highway 340 & go west. Don’t miss one little town called Intercourse. It is an Amish town. In case you haven’t heard of Amish people, Amish is a branch of Anabaptist. Because of their religious belief, they don’t serve in government & arm forces. They were persecuted & kicked out from Europe. They came to America & settled in Pennsylvania & eventually spread among mid-west states. I passed Intercourse twenty-five years ago. I visited the town for the whole day & very impressed what I have seen. It is a unique community and it is so much difference from the outside world. You wonder why & how it can exist in a modern society & keep its life style. Amish people don’t use AC electricity, radio, telephone, car, no bicycle either. But kids use scooter (toy type). They use horse & buggy for transportation. It is almost but not a complete independent society. For example, it depends on outside hospital for emergency & it has to buy gasoline from outside for its tractors. They can use gasoline but not ac electricity. Ironically, dc battery is ok. I can understand their logic. If they allow ac electricity in their house, the authority can’t control the use of radio, TV & a lot of communication gadgets. But if battery is ok, sure they can use transistor radio. In fact, if battery is ok, you can hook up a dc-ac converter to get 120v ac. There are a lot of contradictory & idiosyncrasies in this kind of society. It is like the society in China. The coexistence of communism & capitalism creates a lot of jokes. In fact, there is some similarity between these two societies. It boils down to the choice of life style. In both cases, they are state imposed. We, in this modern time, do select our life style individually (not by state). For example, some people choose not to use FaceBook, iPhone, cellular phone, tv etc. Some choose not to eat meat, beef, pork etc. This leads to the next question: Is religion also a choice of life style?
The Amish society can not survive without the protection of the modern government. The reason they got kicked out from Europe is that they couldn’t defend themselves. They don’t fight for other people & don’t fight for themselves either. We heard a lot of jokes about Quakers & some people resent the double standard they use. For example, in autobiography of Ben Franklin, he described a group of Quakers was on board of a war ship. When the ship encountered a British ship, they all got scared & moved to the lower deck. After the fighting was over, they came out and criticized the whole thing should be resolved in a peaceful manner without firing cannons. The religious belief can be so strong that you forget the obvious logic. Another example is that Jewish people don’t fight on certain days of the year. So the Roman picked the day & conquered them. This might be the reason why Jewish people don’t have their own country for so long. I doubt they still follow that good old habit. Otherwise the Moslem can easily wipe them out.
The western Europeans seem very open & tolerant these days. Perhaps Amish people can move back to where they came from. But they are content here in the US. If you wander around in Pennsylvania next time & somehow you enter some place looks like a 現 代 桃 花 源, it must be an Amish town. Don’t panic, you just look around & enjoy yourself. I guarantee you will get out safely & will not get lost next time either.
4 comments:
I saw these people before. These are religious people to the extreme. Their brains are hardwired and cannot be persuaded by reasoning.
Here is my thinking about religion. When human makes group decisions, there are two possibilities, one is by careful reasoning based on logic and another is by instinct. Through human evolution, most decisions had to be made very quickly without enough information and/or knowledge to optimize them with the best logic. But divergent decisions or indecisions will hurt the group badly. A unified action is necessary, especially to deal with human enemies. The best way to make every individual to be submissive to one action is to have a religious leader who claims that his decision is from God. To reach this level, you need to preach God in the first place. It worked. At least it worked better than quarreling or voting. So in many human minds there is a strong instinct to choose a religion. Even nowadays, religious people live happier and more productive (in terms of children*) than non-religious people. Russell said something like “The saddest thing in this world is that fools and fanatic people are all very determined and the intellectuals are often in doubt.”
* All religious leaders want their constituents to have many children. The Amish is a good example. Their families are huge, to have 10 children is pretty common. They provide good pedigrees for genetics. That’s how I know. The gene of cystic fibrosis was found from one of their pedigrees. Catholics, Mormons, Muslins, …, are all against birth control.
MarkYang’s analysis is very interesting & revealing. The only thing I am not sure is whether religious people live happier and more productive than non-religious people. To debate on this, we have to define what happy is & what productive is. I don’t like to get into this since it is going to be a never-ending activity, ie a black hole. In history the religious people promote intolerance, raise hatred & wage so many wars against other sects, it was hardly productive to the society. Are they happier? I don’t think people enjoy killing & be happy about it. If the current conflict between Israel & Arabians is religion based, it is certainly not productive & will never lead to a happy ending.
The quote by Russell is from his 1952’s book “New Hopes for a Changing World”. The remark is to the point. In page 5,” One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”
The translated Mandarin book “世界之新希望”, “在我們這時代最令人痛心的一件事,就是那些覺得有信心的人們都愚昧無知,而那些有想像力和理解力的人們都猶疑不决”.
Although most religions are against birth control, but Protestants are not. Is there any explanation? Perhaps the focus on the concept of life is more important than the genetics. The most plausible explanation is the ‘Interest’. The decision of a group of people usually is based on the best interest to the group. For example, at the beginning Chairman Mao said ‘人 多 好 辦 事’. After a few years, it is ‘one child only’ policy imposed on the whole people. How do you explain this? It is to the best interest of the country at that particular time.
Modern society can’t function without electricity. The use of electricity is so pervasive that most people can't function without it in daily life. But how can Amish live normally without the electricity? They seem to survive without telephone, car & Internet. Amish people attend school to 8th grade only. Higher education is not necessary for them. There are no professional people in Amish society. The more we find about Amish people, the more questions & more puzzles we get.
The key word is "modern". They do not live in modern society. They keep the life style of 18th century. Our ancestors did not need electricity. People can live very well if they have a large piece of land with enough rain.
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