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Good article in general, except for the title. I know many people and see many people online who understand these truths. The hard part is creating a viable a
by zepto 5y ago
Good article in general, except for the title. I know many people and see many people online who understand these truths.
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.
- jerf 5y agoThey could manage without our legal system, I'm sure, but I think there's some profundity in the military point. It does no good to create some sort of utopia if that utopia hasn't got an answer to smart bombs or paratroopers, etc. The fundamental game theory of the modern world's arms race has to be considered in any attempt to structure the perfect society.
- zepto 5y agoOur legal system is what protects their land and property from just being taken by other Americans. It also allows them to maintain a lifestyle with minimal interaction with the state.
- philwelch 5y agoOne of the fundamental purposes of any legal system is to protect people's land and property from being taken by others. 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.
- zepto 5y agoAgreed, and the American one at least has this in mind, broken as it may be. Not so many others.
- jerf 5y agoThere are ways other than legal systems to prevent that. I'm sure they would have no problem deploying their own police forces and providing basic protections against anyone less than a military force who would try to just take their land. 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.
- zepto 5y ago> I'm sure they would have no problem deploying their own police forces and providing basic protections against anyone less than a military force who would try to just take their land. 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.
- op00to 5y agoCould they? If they were outside the legal system I would simply steal their land and build McMansions on it.
- ksdale 5y agoAre laws the only thing preventing you from stealing?
- vkou 5y agoThey are the only thing preventing someone less scrupulous than me from stealing.
- kymaz 5y agoThat and getting shot.
- vkou 5y agoIf you're going to escalate in that direction, I'll point out that an organized group of criminals will happily escalate the issue to the point where 'Just use your guns for self-defense' is not going to end in your favor. 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.
- daniel-cussen 5y agoI have my doubts about how little this scum fears death when it's really imminent eg death row; how intrinsically lucky they are to escalate and escalate, always win and never lose; and how fearlessly they react when faced with a man who hasn't crossed the law trains his gun on them, for a legitimate reason.
- dahfizz 5y agoIf they were outside the legal system, they could retaliate in any way they see fit. You would have to commit a trail-of-tears esque genocide to claim their land
- ithkuil 5y agoThe legal system is equivalent to the military support when your talking about internal threats (rival groups with modern weapons or resources claiming their land for themselves)
- Bancakes 5y agoWe need Spartans and Athenians.
- h2odragon 5y agoCommitted pacifists may not feel as much need for the military.
- post_break 5y agoAmish are strapped. They have lots of guns. They also have a lot of abuse that they sweep under the rug.
- guenthert 5y agoCitation needed. Pacifism is one of their basic tenets (actually rejection of violence is).
- klyrs 5y agoOn domestic abuse: https://www.npr.org/2020/01/19/797804404/investigation-into-child-sex-abuse-in-amish-communities https://www.npr.org/2020/01/19/797804404/investigation-into-...
- logosmonkey 5y agoThey still hunt. I know because I spoke with a young Amish man a couple of weeks ago about it. He was out bow hunting because muzzle loading season hadn't started yet. I don't know if they have more modern guns though, I didn't ask that far. Also see https://amishamerica.com/do-amish-use-guns/ https://amishamerica.com/do-amish-use-guns/
- post_break 5y agoThe amish owned gun stores I've shopped in, the guns they use for hunting, the lawsuits against the NY SAFE act or trying to buy guns without a photo ID. Just because they practice pacifism does not mean they are against guns, owning them, using, etc. You can't think for a second if someone attacked them they wouldn't use them to defend themselves.
- zepto 5y agoYou may as well say that rejection of violence is a basic tenet of Americans too, given that violence is outlawed except in the case of self-defense.
- terr-dav 5y ago>The hard part is creating a viable alternative culture that can make collective choices about technology use. 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.
- zepto 5y agoThe tendency exists for sure, but there is nothing supporting the claim that it’s impossible. The Amish themselves are an example. Also there are other eco villages and communities that have managed.
- terr-dav 5y agoIt seems like they have chosen to abstain from capitalism and have been allowed to exist because they don’t represent a threat to the capitalist order. Also, by definition, if collective choices are being made about the use of technology, then it’s not capitalism.
- zepto 5y agoYou have a bizarre and manifestly incorrect view of 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.
- terr-dav 5y agoahem Cooperatives and unions are by definition not capitalist. 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?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dang 5y agoOk, we've replaced the baity title with the opening sentence. Thanks!
- bell-cot 5y agoThe Amish are ~0.1% of America's population. 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".
- inglor_cz 5y agoDepends on the threat model. Settlers of the 19th century had a legal system and were mostly able to defend their settlements, though not to take on, say, the Japanese empire. 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.
- Aerroon 5y agoBut why do we need to make collective decisions about technology? Why can't I decide for myself based on what I see and think? Why is it better if somebody else decides for me? 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.
- LunaSea 5y agoCountries can't defend themselves and thus exist if they don't have a strong military force and a strong economy. Said strong economy being most of the time directly linked to the technology level of the country.
- Aerroon 5y agoSure, but I, as an individual, don't have to follow along. If I don't want a TV I don't have to get one. If I want a TV I should be able to get one. It shouldn't be my government or community saying that I have to get one or that I can't get one.
- zepto 5y agoWhat if you want to transmit TV?
- squarefoot 5y agoThat is a different matter since the airwaves are a scarce resource that can't be used by everyone at the same moment, therefore it has to be regulated somehow. As an example, take the FM radio spectrum from 88 to 108 MHz; each channel has to be separated 100KHz from the next and previous ones, therefore one can have maximum 10 stations in 1 MHz, and that spectrum is 20MHz wide. The total is 200 "slots" in which fit all transmitters. Now thankfully at these frequencies radio waves don't propagate easily beyond line of sight, compared to HF which benefits from ground wave and sky wave propagation (allowing for example foreign stations reception), so -roughly- each moderately distant city can have its own 200 frequencies free of interference from the next city (state, country). Still, we have only 200 possible stations in a place where there could be thousands of people willing to set up their FM radio, which of course is not possible. Hence the need to regulate the resource.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Factorium 5y agoThe Amish are typically eligible for a lot of welfare programs, due to their low income. However, they also reject Government support as part of their ethos. 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.
- lupire 5y agowhich other groups?