Sometimes I think about the Amish lifestyle and I'm drawn to it. No doubt the reality of hard work would soon hit me in the face if I ever tried it. Still working our doors and living the simple life certainly sounds freeing.
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...
Having lived around the Amish, I've taken some inspiration from them in various aspects of life. I feel they have a lot to teach us in regards to living a content life. Being here now, I obviously don't subscribe to their philosophy wholesale, but I do sometimes ask myself what the Amish might do in certain situations.
Just one example: If I can accomplish a task with unpowered hand tools, I'll do so, even if it's less "efficient" than buying/renting an internal combustion engine or electric powered device that would do the same. I've built many things this way and have taken greater satisfaction from not just the end result, but the creation process. Other healthy side effects are increased independence from external industry, skills development, less cost to the environment, and sometimes free exercise.
I appreciate you for relating your experience. It's not ambition or challenge that is lacking, we are what's commonly called 'Amish'. This is just how we do things.
I'm sure this creates more questions than it answers, however, I hope it lends some context as to how we've both arrived at our own respective happy milieus.
In times of frustration with the modern Internet, I've often sympathized with the Amish.
For those unfamiliar, the Amish are a religious-society that avoid the conveniences of modern technology. They live in houses without electricity, and travel by in horse and buggy. It's sort of like they hit a point in history and saw where the world was going and decided, "nah, we're ok, we like how things are now."
When frustrated, I imagine a new-Amish. A secular society, who lives their lives (mostly) off the Internet. I'm not exactly sure what that would entail, nor do I think I'd actually want to live that way. It's just a fun thought experiment.
Although I don't advocate living like the Amish, I think that reality is mostly not like what you describe.
Only a TINY percentage of office or factory workers are really working on problems related to farming, food, or "satisfying basic necessities" problems.
Most are working on problems much higher on the Maslow hierarchy of needs - for example, a LOT of work is devoted to advertising, and very often I believe it's zero-sum. A lot of other resources are devoted to entertainment, government, finances, etc.
I’m processing your comment because i think i agree. The problem is that ‘minimalist’ is a little squishy. It would be hard to argue that the Amish aren’t self-reliant. I’m just trying to figure out if they would be considered minimalist. They are low on consumerism, but they have sprawl. Relatively large farms with lots of animals and barns and equipment. Dunno.
In my own little vision for a self reliant future i see room for lots of stuff...buildings, equipment, many tools, small ag, etc. Definitely in line with your comment.
Nevertheless, you are still free to do it. Maybe join the Amish, for starters (although afaik they don't shun all technology).
In any case, you can get together with a group of friends and live the way you imagine. There are enough people who dream of that kind of lifestyle, that you should be able to find a group that is large enough.
You're making a ton of assumptions about a guy and his wife. The whole point of the Amish life style is to make life a bit more difficult. The trade-off is that everyone in the community feels more needed and is bound closer together by sharing work load. Sneaking in occasional uses of modern technology doesn't defeat the purpose.
The Amish are a very interesting people, I respect them very much. I wouldn't want to live that way, but you have to have some admiration for people who can hold on to their principles like that in the face of modern conveniences.
I'm thinking about converting to being Amish to escape computers in the current life. The last thing I want is to spend the afterlife messing with computers. I've had my fill of mismatched libraries, opaque error messages, arcane compiler output, bizarre Maven problems, grotesque Gradle garbage, complex C++ complaints, mundane Make malfeasance, befuddling Macintoshes, loopy Linux, and Windows in general.
Sure, but I'm not recommending anyone join the Amish, just pointing out it is possible to live without a lot of technological informed in your life if you truly believe you'd be better off that way. It would be extremely dumb, but it's possible.
You seem a little aggressive here. Trying to go to a more primitive lifestyle now, in 2024, is largely futile. If it were, say, 500 years ago or 2000 years ago, "modern" life back then would have been simpler - and participating in society would involve many of the agrarian practices I've mentioned. With it comes horrible things like serfdom and slavery, too. Modern life has its benefits as well.
And I have met a lot of Amish people, they seem pretty content. They build furniture and barns. Drive horse carriages.
This is just my vision of an "ideal" life and more importantly an ideal _society_ - it's not as though I'm actively trying to move out to the woods or become Amish.
I just wish for less endless technological advancement and more self-sufficiency.
I keep hearing about this version of the singularity future where people lead intentional lives and eschew technology to produce handmade goods, as a way to find meaning in a world in which everything is automated. It seems the Amish are already there.
I don't think many people with direct dealings with Amish or similar communities would consider them 'more pure'. Heck, I have had a few and the best I can say is that it is very complicated.
There is a lot to admire about Amish communities. They aren't really anti-technology, they're just into a different kind of technology. That has given them strong competitive advantages in areas, for example, they still export farm equipment to third world countries where animals still do a majority of farm labour. Some of their wagons are technological works of art...they just use different technology. The Amish/similar approach to family and group is quite interesting.
I remember going on a tour of a similar group's community. Afterwards, we had some refreshments in their community dining room and we got to mingle and talk to some people. I ended up in a conversation with these two gentlemen about farm implements. Within about thirty seconds, I realized that I was among fellow nerds. They reminded me more of startup founders than I ever would have expected. They were very innovative and obviously very smart. I am not convinced they even think their views on technology make sense, but at this point, I wager it's more about holding onto a way of life than genuine belief.
I might be wrong and hope that wasn't offensive, but that's just a nerdy outsider's point of view on their technology.
There are also downsides. Personally, I find some of their views patriarchal and oppressive, but I was not raised Amish, have never practiced any of those religious and so that's a very uninformed opinion.
Whenever they come up, I find the Amish highly faszinating, and looking at the comments here, I don't seem to be alone in this. They look as if they found their perfect life style and are happy with that. If they are, I can congratulate them and wish them all the best moving forward.
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 :)
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...
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