I've eaten hundreds of meals at Amish dinner tables. I suspect Peggy has eaten...none.Originally Posted by Zoebird
Yet she somehow knows what they talk about...
I consulted with an Amish friend of mine just last week about some sustainable agriculture legislation we are working on here. He knew more than most of our highly-paid consultants....
Could you post a picture of an ape baby ultrasound? Are you saying babies are on the same level as an ape? Not sure of your point.
Zoe, please re-read my post. I never said they were ignorant, or stupid, or illiterate. What I said was, they are a closed society with fairly strict rules, and IF a kid wanted to pursue art or dance or music, or science, or electrician or nuclear engineer, or travel, or yoga instruction, or a zillion other career paths, they had to basically leave their community and seek it elsewhere. And even though I haven't sat at 'hundreds' of Amish dinner tables, I'm pretty sure their parents aren't encouraging them to pursue these other careers. I'm pretty sure farming and related skills, equipment repair, animal husbandry, etc...are the approved careers. I'll bet fashion design isn't one of them.
I never said they don't set aside their 'rules' to make items for the tourist, but that is a reality of the modern world they had to adjust to. Same with hay balers and such. (Pulled by horses) These are necessary evils they had to incorporate to survive. And I'm sure they know what regulations they need to follow in order to sell their product. Again, I never said I thought they were stupid.
Despite your related stories, I know Amish aren't regularly using computers, going to college, traveling anywhere, watching movies, and integrating their community in the big wide world. I didn't say they live in a cave, I just said they live outside the normal society. And no, the young aren't prepared to live outside that society, which would account for such a small number leaving. When you have to go by horse and buggy you can't get very far from home. And when the modern world, i.e. the world in which their community is located, expects you to at least have a 12th grade education, or beyond, then no, you aren't prepared to live in that world. You said oh but they do continue their education in things beneficial to their community. Well duh! But there really isn't a lot of call for buggy repair in the modern world. OK, that's exaggeration, to a point. Sure, the girls are all taught the good homemaking skills, and I'm pretty sure each community has at least one midwife. That has been true for most communities worldwide since ancient times. These are needed skills in that community. But how many of those girls are encouraged to fence, or target shoot, for instance, or get involved in politics, or fashion design, or evolutionary biology, or anything a smart girl might find an interest in? How many girls do you think are even encouraged to pursue buggy repair, or engine repair (for the hay baler). I'm guessing zero. This is what I mean by a repressive society.
I don't know why you all are getting so upset because I don't happen to admire a closed religious sect that shuns the modern world that is all around them. They just seem stuck in time. Quaint, sure, but not something I admire. What the english see is not the everyday lives, which they keep very private. I never condemned them, just said I don't admire them. And i feel sorry for any kid in that society who yearns to pursue anything other than the narrow list of approved career choices. Not much choice there.
Not really sure of your point in posting the picture. I'm assuming since this thread is about government intrusion in mandating an unnecessary medical procedure before a woman can seek a legal procedure of abortion, you posted the picture as your 'proof' that we are killing babies. And so I remarked that a picture of a fetus doesn't prove anything. A picture doesn't prove viability.
http://www.ehd.org/prenatal-images-index.php As you can see, embryos at the stage when most are aborted don't really resemble 'humans' if we are going by pictures to judge.
It was surprisingly hard to find ape embryo ultrasounds. Maybe because they don't seem to give signs of being pregnant until fairly close to delivery, I don't know. There were lots of pictures of ultrasounds of ape hearts and other internal organs on vet websites. I did find one embryo picture but then lost it and couldn't find it again. It did look remarkably like your photo, but with a tail. (we too have 'tails' in the beginning)
On the topic of intrusive government programs, are the Amish exempt from Obamacare? I thought at least some branches proscribed insurance, as well as most medical technologies.
The fiction that if we just knew what fetuses looked like, we'd all assume a pro-forced birth stance is apparently behind these intrusive, paternalistic laws. And anyone who thinks being a frankly unwanted child is less painful than an early-term abortion isn't applying logic, IMO.
+1
I have no trouble believing where you are getting at in general Peggy, it is afterall some people's reported experience just growing up in small towns, the insularity etc.. I really think it is common knowledge that community and culture especially small scale and tight knit, and not just government, can be repressive (although little is as brutal as government is when it turns totalitarian).
Heck most people probably experience this to some degree just in their families. There are approved and unapproved paths (and this goes far beyond simple morals) and THAT'S JUST THAT (after all how many parents would say: music, art, dance, yoga, travel - how are you going to make a living? how about getting a business degree? .... and that's the mild form).
But .... I don't actually know that much about the Amish in particular. I think the decision to stop at a certain level of technology has some wisdom (heck anti-civ types would take us back much further than that - for anti-civs: what is the fate of women in a society with no technology when it seems so many used to die in childbirth?).
Trees don't grow on money
The Amish in general don't "stop at some level in technology". They aren't trying to live in some past world.
They do however adopt new technology very mindfully, after evaluating how the technology will influence their culture and their land. I've known Amish farmers engaged in decades-long research projects to see how various tools and methods play out over time.
There could be something important for the rest of us to learn from this. If more of us took the time to sit down to dinner with our Amish neighbors, instead of caricaturing them....
Wednesday I leave for a long weekend in Lancaster Pa. There is a big quilt show that I have been attending every year for 20 years. We generally stay in Bird-in-Hand and Intercourse.
This of course is in the middle of a very commercial area of Amish farms. The first years we went there were gas lamps in the fabric stores and the streets rolled up at 5 pm except for a few restaurants. One of the first years we were at a fabric store and they had a stack of quilts on a bed. They would turn them back for customers to see and the owner of the store only had one helper and happened to mention that they had to wait for help to get them back right on the bed. We volunteered to help and spent an hour helping a young girl turn quilts and move quilts as many had been sold and they invited us to share lunch with them in the back of the store. More like a back porch. These were older women and they had a system. Some liked to piece the quilts, some liked to quilt and the more gregarious and least shy worked in the store. It was a wonderful experience for us. There were no men as they were in the fields plowing and were going to another farm for lunch as they bought the equipment with them to help. They shared equipment. They had no phone in the house, but even back then there was a phone in the garage. My mother in law had quite a conversation with one of the women as they shared a love of weaving and both had grandchildren and she would go there several times a year and always stop and chat with her.
Fast forward and over these twenty years we have seen gas lamps in the stores give way to electric lights, yet the young women still work there. Many of the farms have struggled to stay solvent so they often sell to the public.
I do think they are very aware of politics since many laws apply to them as well- I have seen many an Amish man sitting reading the paper. The kids go to schoolhouses on scooters and by walking, carrying their lunch pails. Like any farm area, the school year is somewhat dictated by crops going in and coming out, and selling and putting food up.
It makes me sad to see this area north of Lancaster so commercial now, but south of Lancaster there is little commercialization. Believe me, you don't want to get stuck in the backroads in the dark unless you know where you are going as there is not a light for miles. The stores are open later, even till Midnight Friday night, and the stores have websites. But everything that can close will do so on Sunday. I would personally like to see that happen here- our lives are too hectic and a family day for everyone that can would be great I think.
Now we have Amish and Mennonites flocking to the East of Lake Ontario because land is cheap, and there is also a newer community in Southern NY and there have been a few problems as some of their ways are foreign and like any small town, there are lots of people doing things they way they always have with people they have always known.
If I have to say one thing about the Amish is that they take care of their own. If a barn burns down, they are all there raising a new one. They share tools and skills. If a person gets too old they find something for them to do. There is a fabric store we have gone to for all these years and the once robust female who ran the place had a stroke and she still is at the store, talking to customers from a stool. Through the years many of the young women we encountered were less shy than the local home schooled Christian girls I have run across who seem to me to be more isolated. They seemed to be more confident and less scared.
We could greatly benefit by adopting some of their ways. Of course, my observations are just that, observations based on my limited view of my tiny slice of the world.
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