This is a common misconception about the Amish and other plain people, eg stricter Mennonites. They don’t have a universally agreed about set of rules. Each community sets its rules differently. Most Amish don’t reject technology wholesale they slowly evaluate individual technologies for what effects they would have on the tight knittedness of their community and closeness to god. For example most Amish places of business have electricity, battery powered lights are common as well as gas powered fridges. They generally don’t reject modern medicine. However, they generally don’t have electricity at home because they don’t want to be reliant on the grid at large. If and how much solar and wind power are adopted in Amish communities will be an interesting thing to observe over the next decade or two.
Now there are some communities who reject all power that doesn’t come from “gods creatures” and will reject e bikes and stick to push scooters and buggies. But e bikes totally fit in a lot of Amish and plain communities.
The Amish aren't really about rejecting technology just to be luddites, but rather to about trying to preserve their traditions and culture. One of the ways they do that is to avoid adopting new things (technologies, processes, etc) until the community leadership agrees to it. There are Amish that have cars, electricity and computers because their communities have determined that those technologies are acceptable in certain situations and allowed them.
Seen that way, electric bikes may not be a big change from the regular bikes some communities already allow for transportation. Appearance is a very significant part of Amish culture though, and changing those norms just to fit a technology is exactly what they don't want to do.
I'm not Amish, but e-bikes actually make a lot more sense if you understand why the Amish rejected electricity in the first place. It's because, up until very recently, the only practical way to actually obtain and use electricity is to have your house wired up to an electrical grid that delivers on-demand power supplied elsewhere. This is a no-go for a religious community that views decentralization as the only path to holiness.
Remember: the Amish don't hate new technology because it's technology and they want to live in a fantasy world. They hate technology because it's a centralizing force.
What changed? Simple: solar. Solar is (mostly) decentralized electricity: once you buy solar panels you are dependent only on the continued existence of the sun for power. This actually fits into the Amish lifestyle extremely well for the same reason why it fits into the lifestyle of Nigerian Youtuber Africa Everyday, for entirely coincidental reasons[0].
[0] Most Nigerians would jump at the chance to have reliable centralized electrical infrastructure. The Amish are energy poor by choice.
Most Amish sects do not prohibit electricity. It is not uncommon for them to have electrical devices powered by solar panels. I don't think most have anything against internal combustion engines. As your own link notes, they might use such engines to power air compressors.
What concerns the Amish is being too dependent on the outside world. Tying to the regional electrical grid would make them too dependent.
They aren't isolationists, though. They will still buy from and sell to outsiders. Using things like gasoline or diesel generators to power air compressors is OK because it isn't seen as requiring becoming too closely tied. Probably because if their gasoline supplier becomes unreliable, they can buy from someone else.
In general, the Amish avoidance of technology is greatly overstated. They don't so much avoid it as take a very cautious approach, making sure they know how it will impact their society before they let it in.
They have a few people try it out, while the rest observe how it goes, and they watch how the outside world handles it. Only when they understand what changes it will bring, good and bad, do they decide if they are going to adopt it or skip it.
They are kind of like where the rest of us were 20-50 years ago (it varies depending on the particular technology) except they are avoiding the mistakes we were making back then when we were rushing to embrace the latest stuff.
In a few decades, there will probably be Amish equivalents of Facebook and Twitter but without being full of trolling and misinformation, because the Amish will wait for us to figure out how to control that before they make their versions.
Here's a good article on Amish and technology [1].
I grew up in an area with quite a few Amish, and it is interesting how tech from the past 10 years has affected that community.
Like the article says, not all Amish follow the same rules, nor do they abstain entirely from electricity (only some do). For example, it’s very popular for some Amish to have phones and do business with locals via FaceBook.
Would be wild to see one of my old neighbors now, cruising down a dirt road on an electric bike, holding onto his straw hat.
> So the Amish are allowed to use electricity, just not from the public grid? Generators seem like a weird loophole to their own rules.
That depends greatly on the congregation. Each congregation sets its own rules on how to deal with technology. "Not inside the home" is a very common technological limit. Cell phones might be stored in a shed, fed by solar chargers, for use out in the field. A workshop might have electricity from a wind/solar installation or even a diesel generator, but not the attached house.
I don't know a lot about the Amish, but my understanding is that it's less about the technology itself and more about its effects (as is the focus of this article) and also the dependencies it creates.
The Amish are OK with using electricity as long as they can generate it themselves. They don't want to be dependent on a utility to provide it.
To summarize tptacek's link, the Amish generally refrain from using the public power grid, but they use electricity from their own generators or even solar panels. The idea isn't to ban things that are modern or things that save time, but rather things that make members more influenced by the world and less dependent on their own community.
> It’s a common misconception that Amish communities entirely shun electricity and technology.
I have no direct evidence, but I've watched & read things explaining this in a way that makes much more sense, including this use of ebikes.
The Amish shun things that break their ideal society. They choose to have a single phone in a public place to encourage familial and closely knit interactions only. They avoid cars because cars encourage long distance interactions over local ones. They choose to have a computer for running their business that is not used for entertainment, to encourage closely knit interactions. They choose to not have a fridge so the family gathers for meals at specific times, and you can't just raid the fridge on your own.
The technological restrictions are means to an end, not the end goal.
What it boils down to, is whether or not taking advantage of a technology puts them under the influence of those outside their community. For example, if they use electricity then they have to be involved with the affairs of the town, and not self-reliant. But they can choose to use a diesel engine to power equipment for their farms, as they have the ability to make their own bio-fuel. And they use modern refrigeration and battery-powered lights on their carriages for safety reasons.
In short -- does a technology pull them away from their faith, or is it needed for a greater good? Not to mention, that each Amish community is independent and sets their own rules (there is no central Amish version of the Pope, for example).
Every community seems to be different. Different sets of rules.
In the town where I grew up there are Mennonites, and now more Amish people. Apparently - the reason they don't use electricity from the grid, is because it's possibly made on 'Sunday' - ergo - they can't use it.
They all have generators to make electricity for their barns, equipment etc..
I’m sorry to say my first exposure to the Amish was through Weird Al’s Amish Paradise, which I now recognise has some unfairly unflattering passages.
I still wouldn’t endorse the bible-based aspects of the Amish lifestyle, but I see that their approach to technology isn’t all that irrational. They are taking a very methodical approach to what we might call dependency management. They seek independence, and they realize how dependence and risk can arise from the deep supply chains inherent in technology. Hence they do not reject electricity outright, but do reject grid connections.
Their approach is also to thoroughly impact assess technology on their community. They assess holistically whether a technology will help or hinder them, in a social as well as economic sense.
I think we could learn some things from the Amish when tempted to chase new tech.
This really isn’t that surprising, each Amish community has its own rules and almost all adopt/reject rules based on how it impacts their church and relationship with god. For instance many Amish drive around trucks for work. But they’ll have rules limiting it to picking up supplies, many even have cell phones.
That said, other communities reject all forms of modern “comforts”. Medicine, cars, electricity, manufactured foods, etc.
The Amish community is pretty large, hundreds of thousands.
It’s not surprising some would adopt e-scooters.
My favorite amish interaction was asking why one had a wagon full of maybe 20 containers cheese balls. Apparently, it was allowed and their entire community loved them, but it was a 20 mile ride to town so they buy in bulk (this community usually rejected almost everything, so kind of surprising)
> It is common for Amish areas to avoid dependence on the outside world, and thus the communities that do use electricity will often rely heavily on solar panels and other local forms of electricity generation.
> That aligns well with electric bicycles, which have small batteries that are easily charged by equally small solar panels.
> Mullet’s bike shop is entirely off-grid, with two dozen solar panels on the roof to power the store’s electricity. Public e-bike charging stations are also becoming more popular in Amish country, which are simple to create with a series of outdoor weather-protected 120VAC outlets.
It's really cool that what Amish actually care about is avoiding over-dependence. To me it kind of feels like all the people here who self-host their emails etc. — it's not because they shun the technology itself, they just want to be in control of their entire stack.
In some ways, doesn't this put the Amish squarely in the "hacker" demographic?
Perhaps it is because it is a USA thing, but I do not understand the limits they talk about in the article. These Amish cannot use electricity... but they can use solar power? Why is regular electricity in their faith worse than the same energy harnessed via solar power? What is the difference from their point of view?
Amish do not avoid tech, they test it and see pro/cons and then they take a decision if it will get adopted or not. They have a lot of tech enthusiast that will try new tech and then the elders will decide to keep it or not. And they strive for self-sufficiency 100%.
Yeah, that's what I meant by their theology/philosophy. As I understand it, they evaluate technologies on a case-by-case basis, the key judgement being whether the technology makes members less dependent on the community, without regard to "how modern" the technology is. And the decision is on a per-community basis, and their communities are quite small (although they do generally fall into larger regional groups that share many decisions). The Amish near where I grew up have what appears to me to be a fairly modern lumber mill that must be powered either by grid electricity or (more likely) internal combustion generators.
From what little I know about the topic, the Amish are careful to only allow the change that doesn't threaten their culture. So they might have no problem with renewable energy (they have been using wind to pump water for a long time), but they might have a problem with connecting to the regular electrical grid and becoming dependent on it.
Now there are some communities who reject all power that doesn’t come from “gods creatures” and will reject e bikes and stick to push scooters and buggies. But e bikes totally fit in a lot of Amish and plain communities.
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