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A common theme here has been, “What will we, i.e., all of us living on this Earth, do to live a human and humane life during the coming inconvenient apocalypse? Whatever its outward form, we will only be able to navigate and negotiate what is coming in community. And lucky for us, we already have communities that can show us the way. Perhaps the best known, but also quite willfully misunderstood, are the Amish. [1] What follows will include only one brief discussion of their theology. Instead, our project today will be an appreciation of how the Amish live in communities that will still be healthy long after modern agglomerations such as Atlanta and Los Angeles have ceased to exist as healthy, i.e., rich on the surface, going concerns. Our primary source will be What the Amish Teach Us: Plain Living in a Busy World by Ronald B. Kraybill of Elizabethtown College. My Shelf of Little Books (annotated list in preparation as a Coffee Break one of these days) has another denizen.
The Amish are generally mistaken for Luddites of a sort, if one neglects the legitimate grievances the Luddites had with the powers-that-be of their generation. The Amish are not anti-modern. But unlike us, proud modern antagonists of the Plain People, they always consider first what a new technology will do to them before considering what that technology can do for them, according to the hype of the moment. It goes without saying that we “English” lack the foresight and skill to even ask these questions. Above all, we English view work as something to be avoided. And therein lie the seeds of our destruction and our only home, planet Earth. [2] Moreover, that change is not always progress is foreign to our English ways.
Villages as Webs of Wellbeing. Or as a retired psychiatrist put it to Professor Kraybill, “It’s about the village…my research has shown that the most satisfied people in the world live in villages…the Amish act like villagers.” Indeed they do, and this happiness in small places has been shown to be true the world over. People who live in such communities have “dense social networks…(with)…robust social ties that enhance psychological well-being.” The important thing to remember here is that villages can be rural or urban.
It has been said that no one lives in New York City. Instead, New Yorkers live in their neighborhoods, or did before the Neoliberal Dispensation, on the heels of Robert Moses, homogenized the city into an environment that caters to rich people who mostly move money around. Even in the small city of my youth, the people lived in neighborhoods first and the city second. Now? I will be visiting later this week, and the decrepitude that followed the destruction of downtown and its satellites is disheartening. However, that downtown is coming back, slowly. But it remains to be seen if craft breweries and distilleries can revive what was lost. The short answer is they probably can’t. But perhaps the longer answer is that the mall that destroyed downtown is now an empty shell. Progress.
Villages can be stifling to some, who should move, but when they are healthy, they are supportive, generous, and nonjudgmental. The Amish have no homeless, or in the euphemistic world we live in, “unhoused.” I suppose we can be thankful the minions of Neoliberalism have not come up with “un-homed” yet. But give them time. I remember not so long ago when the real estate signs said, “House for Sale” instead of “Home for Sale,” ignoring the fact that home for some is a cardboard box under a bridge.
Smallness: Bigness Ruins Everything. The Amish and E.F. Schumacher are on to something. They also have no bureaucracy to speak of. No central headquarters, no synods, no president or chief executive to lord over a C-suite. We would do much better to practice, to the extent possible as do the Amish, subsidiarity as a way of life, with decisions made as close to their consequences as possible. That we as a people and a nation have never practiced this very well does not mean it shouldn’t be the goal.
And even the Amish are feeling the change. One Amish entrepreneur on his business: “My people look at large businesses as a sign of greed. We’re not supposed to engage in large businesses and I am on the borderline now and may be too large for Amish standards.” He will not need an Amish Anti-trust Act to do the right thing when the time comes. With bigness comes an insensate domination of daily life that everyone feels, except the dominant few. They view it as the natural order of things, in politics, economics, and science.
Tolerance: A Light on a Hill. One of the most affecting passages in What the Amish Teach Us recounts an edit of a previous book by Professor Kraybill. It came from an Amish woman who read the manuscript: “I only found one problem, but it’s a big one…You said the Amish think everyone else is going to hell.” Not exactly, or so he thought about what he and written, “Taking their cues from the Bible, the Amish divide the social world into two categories: the straight, narrow life and the broad, easy road to destruction.” His interlocutor came straight back at him with, “But that’s what it means and we don’t believe that…We don’t believe in judging other people…Jesus told us not to judge other people because we will be judged like we judge them.” [3]
In response to his friend’s teaching, Professor Kraybill changed the passage to read “the larger social world represents the broad, easy path to vanity and vice.” With this “destruction” became “vanity and vice.” That is a perfect description of our “larger social world” in which vanity and vice, along with cupidity, are leading to perdition. We could also do without 99.99% of the judgments we as a culture and society feel compelled to make, usually from those who quote the Bible, Quran, Capital, or The Wealth of Nations to make a point they themselves do not understand.
Parenting: Raising Sturdy Children. This was the goal of all mothers and fathers not so long ago, and they did not need ChatGPT, the father of which can’t imagine raising his child without AI on call. Our “larger social world” describes this problem:
In recent years some baby boomers were surprised to learn that their grandchildren had enrolled in Adulting 101 workshops. From the University of California, Berkeley, to Temple University, Philadelphia, thousands of college seniors were enrolled in noncredit classes to learn how to survive in the adult world. Life skills – how to do laundry, cook a meal, change a tire, manage a budget, rent an apartment, and prepare taxes – had somehow slipped through their educational preparation. Adulting curricula address the unmet needs of students who feel unprepared to cope in a world of adults.
Not that I doubted Professor Kraybill, but the evidence is right here, from one of the premier institutions of higher education in this world and the best place to do cell and molecular biology: UC Berkeley Class Teaches College Students How to “Adult.” According to the organizer of this (non-credit) course, Belle Lau:
It’s much easier to start picking up adulting skills such as financial responsibility and healthy coping mechanisms while still in high school. “Asking for help and guidance and learning from respected adults is a great way to learn important life skills … Half the battle is just admitting that you are in need of learning how to be independent,” added Lau.
Imagine that. Adults teach, children learn. Who knew? Of course, this not only a one-way street, and it is not necessarily the fault of the students or their parents that it has come to this for them. A culture and society that takes little notice of family life as the foundation of production of all kinds (thank you, Karl) will end with this “failure of the system.” But this is distinctly not a problem in the Amish world, where children learn early and often from a young age how to do things for themselves, their families, and their communities, long before they finish their eight years of school. We do not have to follow their precepts about discipline and education, but neither should we be Tiger Moms or Helicopter Parents. The important lessons are learned only through real effort, as in…
Apprenticeship: An Old New Idea. Professor Kraybill asks himself, “How do Amish entrepreneurs learn to start and manage a successful business…to create enterprises that garner annual revenues of $1 million of even more…thousands of these operations…running every day across America.” The answer is apprenticeships, as in the case of an expert Amish hydraulics mechanic who completed an emergency job when his father was occupied elsewhere. Aaron was 14 years old, experienced and competent. While matters of child labor may arise, we English should remember that Aaron had already finished school and had learned his craft from a very young age under the watchful eye and tutelage of his father, and just as importantly, the entire community.
This old new idea is making a comeback in our “larger social world” and will be essential if we are to thrive through the inconvenient apocalypse. These Amish boys and men are architects and engineers who learned by doing. At some point this group may include Amish girls, if this is not already the case. The tradition is several thousand years old. It will once again thrive in a world that values and valorizes hard work, well done. All the while the Amish tame the beast of technology as they “selectively use, adapt, and create technology to serve the needs of their community.” We on the other hand, adapt our community to serve the needs of technology, which is exactly backwards, a maladaptation with serious consequences.
Forgiveness: A Way of Healing. In our larger social world, forgiveness has lost its meaning, so the Amish response to the West Nickel Mines School tragedy is fairly inscrutable. [4] Forgiveness for the Amish came as a matter of course, and it was directed at the family of the shooter immediately.” This was the healthy response. Nevertheless remembrance is essential:
They stand straight and tall. Five pear trees along a fencerow quietly face the sky, blending in with the seasons, unpretentious, without markers or names. Most who drive past them on that small country road speed by without noticing, but the locals know the secret. The Amish and their English neighbors all know that each somber tree testifies to a young life snatched out of his world on that tragic October day…just thirty yards away.
Forgiveness, a lost art in this modern age.
Suffering: A Higher Plan. The Amish also ask why bad things happen to good people. To them “it is not God’s will that people kill each other…(nor does God)…stop all the evil in the world. God doesn’t stop people from making evil choices.” No, evil choices are almost always political, especially in the religious conflicts of our human history, down to the present day. But sometimes bad things happen “just because,” and in this case the Amish have been true to themselves and the world at large in their response.
Because of their history with a small founding population and few members joining from the outside, the Amish have more than their share of special needs members due to sub-optimal genetic diversity. These children, who become adults, are taught and cared for in hundreds of Amish schools established for them. While modern genetics is largely beyond their ken, the Amish seek professional care from the outside world.
Nearly forty years ago Dr. D. Holmes Morton began his clinic for special children in what was previously an Amish cornfield. This clinic has served more than 4,700 patients from 42 US states and 17 other countries. The clinic has about 2,000 patients a year and has managed nearly 400 genetic variants that cause disease. The genetic disease database OMIM contains 217 hits using “Amish” as the query. Thus, while there are no Amish doctors, the Amish cooperate with modern genetic medicine for the good of all humanity. Despite the hateful “backwards trope,” the Amish “are willing to blend scientific advances in genetics with their traditional views of suffering and divine providence.” Altogether, they are admirable, these Plain People.
Negotiation Never Ends. Finally, the lesson the Amish have for the rest of the world is that negotiating with modernity is our essential task if we want to live in human community in a humane world. The so-called smart phone has given them fits, though. All I can say is that we English are sorry to welcome you to that club. Is technology for humans or are humans for technology? This is not a difficult question, and so far the Amish have come up with the better answer.
Last week I quoted from Wendell Berry’s poem “Amish Economics.” The Amish live every day the wisdom in Berry’s “The Idea of a Local Economy.” [5] From a local economy, the necessities of a humane life come naturally. Can a local economy serve every need? No. But neither is it clear that every household should need at least two cars, or even one, in a sane world. That requirement is something our previous Tech Bros have foisted upon us in the name of technological necessity. We can do better, and what community life does is provide people with the inspiration to fight back (this is a thoroughly bipartisan uprising, by the way). To quote the Agrarian poet and critic John Crowe Ransom (1930):
This much is clear: If a community…is groaning under industrialism (which has become Neoliberalism a hundred years later), and well aware that it is an evil dispensation, it must find a way to throw it off. To think that this cannot be done is pusillanimous. And if the whole community…thinks it cannot be done, then it has simply lost its political genius and doomed itself to impotence.
Whatever the Amish are, they are not impotent. Holmes County in Ohio is also one of the most beautiful places in all of Creation, well-tended by those who live there. We would do well to follow their lead to a humane future rather than continue on our merry way to nowhere.
Notes
[1] I had mercifully forgotten about Weird Al Yankovich’s Amish Paradise, which will appear only in this endnote.
[2] This mistaken view is the continuo of Wendell Berry’s work in all genres. An appreciation is in the works as promised, if I am capable enough to avoid the simple expropriation of his teaching that seems quite common in these few weeks after his death on August 31 at the age of 92.
[3] Matthew 7:1-3. Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? KJV.
[4] Twenty years ago, after a psychotic break, Charlie Roberts, a local English, raided the West Nickel Mines School and shot ten Amish girls. Five of them died. Roberts then died by suicide. His father was a retired police officer who often acted as a taxi for his Amish neighbors and friends. He and Charlie’s mother remained a member of the community.
[5] I was fortunate to hear Wendell Berry read and discuss this essay before it was published. I have my notes twenty-five years later, and I still cannot find anything to disagree with.
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