We need to be thankful that pockets of extreme nonconformity exist to show an alternative to groupthink. People are so eager to mock or crush any diversity. Average people can't stand the idea that there are places in the world with extreme differences like (a) much higher or lower tax (using the U.S. as reference point), (b) drug attitudes far softer or much worse, (c) political structures (even the "evil" ones, speaking from the American POV), (d) far different cultural attitudes about sex, marriage, drinking, and every other moral issue. If the world didn't have all this diversity, we'd never know that there's an alternative to what we thought was the best way.
For me that's the most frustrating thing about the Westernization of the world. Your own culture is always invisible to you. You can only see it in contrast to something else. If everything becomes the same, then we lose the ability to even see those things, let alone think about them.
That's a great sentiment, the same that is behind conservation in general. Most people, however, don't enjoy being poor and western is the only culture with a proven track record of basic material prosperity.
Western culture has relative "material prosperity" because our ancestors invaded all the other places on earth and fucked them up. See: Africa, the Middle East.
In places we didn't invade such as Mongolia and Japan, they're actually doing quite well.
Before you look down on the rest of the planet, consider that Europe is one of the best places to survive on earth. It's temperate, it's fertile, it rains a lot, it's geologically stable. Is it surprising that life is easy in Europe?
Compare that to North Africa, which is one of the least hospitable places on the planet: a huge desert. Installing western culture in North Africa would not fix anything.
Many people do in fact enjoy being "poor", as you put it, as long as they have everything they need in life. The western alternative to "poor" for these people is to work crazy hours in a factory. What kind of prosperity is that?
In places we didn't invade such as Mongolia and Japan, they're actually doing quite well.
Americans occupied Japan for years, not to mention first destroying her military, and razing a few cities with fire bombs and then nukes. Mongolia's GDP (PPP) per capita is less than $10k. On average, a Mongolian is four times poorer than a French. The same is true for Russia which has immense natural resources, dwarfing those of Europe. Their ability to manipulate natural gas supplies hangs over the EU to this day. Soviets used to control what was once the breadbasket of Europe. Didn't do them much good. Actually, they managed to induce a famine there.
Europe is rich because of industrial revolution and stable governments (more stable than elsewhere anyway). Invading other places was largely made possible by the technological advances rather than causing them. Before, Europe was nearly conquered by Muslisms[1]. Twice[2]. It was regularly raided for slaves (in 16-17th century[3], no ancient history), and starved of precious metals for much of its history.
What kind of prosperity is that?
The kind billions of people living in poverty today would take in heartbeat. They do whenever given a chance. Going as far as risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean or Florida Straits.
People do not enjoy being poor. They enjoy to be rich and choose to live a poor life.
I heard, the USA has deserts, too. And have you seen Dubai recently? Everything can be fixed with enough oil. Another example: Russia. Nobody conquered them either and it is the biggest country on earth with only 143 million inhabitants, so I bet, they find a way to feed them. Still life expectancy for males is 62 over there.
Westernization might not sound very romantic to people having it, people not having it, might think very different. Ask people from West and East Germany and you will get the idea.
The biggest plus of westernization/capitalism is, that you can not use VW to produce tanks to conquer the world anymore, because they would rather not have their own factories in other countries bombed.
Adopting democracy, free markets, and property rights doesn't mean you also have to adopt wearing jeans, generic pop music, car-based infrastructure and everything else.
Alternatively, the Deep State in the US and the US-dominated parts of the planet means you're all going to live in America-lite with Disney's IP rules and Monsanto's food. You can keep the cookoo clocks and quaint costumes.
I've heard of the "Deep State" with respect to Turkey and Erdogan, but never in the American context. Can you elaborate a little on what you mean by that?
Amish are very nice people, warm, friendly and with strong convictions. I was lucky to have been invited once to share a day with them (a visited a community in Ohio, had dinner, talked to them). But nevertheless ,the whole "no electricity" thing is crazy. Depending on the area there are workshops devoted in converting electrical appliances to pneumatic power. Yes they take things like blenders, food processors, pull out the electric motor put in an a pnumatic one. Then, of course, run compressed air (or vacuuum?) lines through their house. Some reintepret it as "you can't be connected to the mains" so they charge batteries then use the batteries to supply power to the house or machinery. Think about the brainpower and time spent into doing that. There is not logic or careful analysis of "advantages of electricity vs disadvantages" it is plain silly.
>There is not logic or careful analysis of "advantages of electricity vs disadvantages" it is plain silly.
I disagree. The Amish are engaged in a constant, ongoing negotiation with the technological world, and pneumatic power is one of many remarkably clever compromises.
Using "Amish electricity" provides you with the labour-saving benefits of domestic appliances, but without the temptation of entertainment technologies like TV that the Amish see as a threat to family life. Pneumatic power serves their social goals more effectively than electricity; It is very good at providing useful work, and very poor at providing idle distraction.
Many Amish people now have mobile phones, but they are kept in a shed some distance from the house so that they are only used when absolutely necessary rather than being a constant distraction. It is common for Amish communities to use non-Amish drivers to transport groups of them to work by van, which provides the economic benefits of commuting while avoiding many of the negative effects that private car ownership would have on community life.
>Think about the brainpower and time spent into doing that.
For the Amish, that's the whole point. They're not anti-technology, but they believe in engaging with technology on their own terms, in a careful and planned manner. Many of the prohibitions and taboos that seem arbitrary are arbitrary like a speed bump - they're designed to slow down the rate of progress and force you to think about what you're doing. These social constraints are a countervailing force to the natural tendency Schamus describes towards the easy and self-indulgent path.
> Then, of course, run compressed air (or vacuuum?) lines through their house.
This is fascinating to me and I respect the dedication to principles that it demonstrates, independent of any logical arguments one could apply.
I'm curious, where does the energy for the compressed air come from -- surely there's not an electric compressor out back? I had always understood the Amish philosophy re: electricity as an explicit decision to take things slowly, value hard work, etc by using human or animal power; how did the folks you met justify use of compressed air?
> surely there's not an electric compressor out back?
There is a diesel generator powering a compressor.
I believe (anyone please correct me here), this has started as a need to keep the milk (one of the top products sold by the Amish) cool. It was one of the government requirements for them to be able to sell it legally. So they basically desided that running a diesel generator powering a compressor somehow worked out ok.
Then someone had the idea to just use compressed air to deliver or store energy for other needs. Then a whole side business of converting electrical appliances to pneumatic power developed.
For example here is a picture I found of a pneumatic ceiling fan:
Unless they mined the ore and built the generator themselves, they're probably dependent on the rest of civilisation to some extent. They're probably about "minimising dependency" rather than full self-sufficiency.
I spent a weekend with a [Bruderhof](http://www.bruderhof.com/) community. It's basically the same thing as the Amish. I just asked :) They're very welcoming.
I don't think my kids would be better off without TV, and I suspect most people don't actually think that, either.
TV (just as books) is a tool for delivering entertainment, education, and culture, and it's reasonably effective at that.
I'm glad I had TV when I was a child. The thing I value most is that it inspired an interest in science, math, and technology. Thanks, Square One, Bill Nye, Beakman's World, Discover, etc! Later on in life (teenage years), it taught me about time management; you can allow yourself to be entertained for many hours and not actually feel better for it, but actually worse, as you've lost that time; you can allow yourself to be entertained for an hour and it will change your whole outlook on the day. Always be aware of what you are gaining and giving up for entertainment.
Anyway, I could go on about why I love TV (and these days, the Internet), that's the gist.
I agree - I think his TV example is a little over-simplified, especially given the enormous range of quality and content available. Some of the best story-telling is taking place in between commercials these days, just like Dickens and Eliot were printed between printed ads in serials.
I also bet that if you asked most parents whether they let their kids watch anything they wanted (to the extent they are able to control that...), they would say they do not and at least have a concept of what they want their kids to watch and what they don't allow their kids to watch. I'm sure many would skew positively towards the educational shows you mentioned, and I'm sure many are not encouraging or even allowing their 8 year olds to watch MTV spring break (old person reference? haha).
Still, I think the overall point that there are costs that need to be recognized is valid, but I would say it is manifested more regularly than the article suggests in the sort of regulation I describe above.
That being said, I think his overall point that western society as a whole has not properly confronted the true costs of technology is fairly legitimate (see all the data scandals, the NSA, hackers etc.), but I also see certain corrections being made already (see the article itself and all backlash to the data scandals, NSA, hackers, etc.), and that given the rapid pace of tech development in the past 20 years the reactions are not particularly slow - we'll see where it all pans out.
You're espousing an ultra-modern perspective, one that can only happen from an entire life lived in the presence of ultra-modern technology.
Such a perspective is limited only to the affluent and Western-oriented. That's a ridiculously tiny fraction of humanity. And even there it's only been for the last 20 years or so, I suspect closer to 10-15. It wasn't that long ago most people considered the Internet a tool for commerce, not a vehicle for connection and entertainment, people that used it as such were looked at as basement-dwelling perma-nerds.
The person I was replying to didn't seem to understand how people could think of technology, namely televisions, as an alien force that shouldn't be trusted. And indeed it shouldn't be trusted, until it becomes ubiquitous. High technology emerged in the fifties. It took over fifty years for it to suffuse our lives to the point where we could trust it.
I grew up with technology. Most of the kids I grew up with didn't. I had computers and video games and I spent all my time with them, all the time my mom would let me spend. She would kick me out and make me go play outside. She was right to do so, if I hadn't I might now be even more socially stunted than I am. These days parents won't do that. Kids today can spend an amount of time I could only dream of interacting with technology. We trust it now.
People in other parts of the world where high technology isn't ubiquitous would do well to distrust it. It rips through traditional ways of life like so much toilet paper. The people whose lives are disrupted often don't have anything else.
Mark Zuckerberg wants to bring the Internet to everybody. I hope he doesn't accomplish his goal too soon. The Arab Spring made a lot of people's lives measurably worse. Don't like your dictator, sure, topple him and feel real good about the democracy you think you're bringing to your country. What now? Until we, the West, inventors of high technology and snubbers of complex social problems, can answer that question, that delicate system of graft and corruption is keeping your country stable.
I don't think it's fair to blame the political situation of the middle east on technology. It contributed, sure, but how much would have happened anyway? And how many other factors are at play?
I think the comments so far are getting too caught up in the details of the article.
The point is not whether or not you like TV, or what choices the Amish have made. The point is to engage in a thoughtful decision process with technology, (or anything else in your life), and decide if it truly is helping you be the person you want to be, helping your family to grown on a personal level, and improving your community.
If you have truly thought it out and decided that any given tech is good for your life, great. But if you are just bringing technology into your life because it is new and shiny, you might want to consider stepping a level or two deeper in your decision process.
I like the article and and the point that it makes using the Amish people as an example.
But the Amish did not make a conscious decision to refrain from watching TV. No, the Amish shied away from electricity because of a religious belief that was in place before Television even existed. It is also worth noting that the Amish do not believe in education past 8th grade, and yet everyone would raise their hands if they were asked if they would want their children to go to college.
> But the Amish did not make a conscious decision to refrain from watching TV. No, the Amish shied away from electricity because of a religious belief that was in place before Television even existed.
That is not correct.
They evaluate all technology based on the impact it will have to their family life. They don't have a religious belief against electricity.
They believe electricity would be harmful to the social fabric of their life. And they are probably right.
TV - even if not based on grid electricity (solar power for example) would certainly harm their social fabric.
> everyone would raise their hands if they were asked if they would want their children to go to college.
I don't at all believe that college is an unalloyed good. For some individuals seeking some career paths, it can be, granted, but it has very large costs even if money is no object, and I doubt the benefits exceed the costs for most people.
Claims like the one that "we" want what we cannot possibly have at the price "we" are willing to pay are tiresome. Who is this "we"?
I'm perfectly willing to pay the price of living the way I do, and so are a great many people here. Most of us have given the technologies we use some thought and selected the ones we use to maximize benefit and minimize cost.
There's no data presented in the article, just some guy's some informal impression that he can get away with accusing most people of hypocrisy. I dunno... I don't feel like a hypocrite. Do the majority of people here? My informal impression is they don't, but that's worth about as much as the informal impression in the article.
A more plausible reality is that we all have doubts that we've chosen well, when making choices of technology etc, and we're aware that both costs and benefits can be hidden and only show up at a later time. But that latent concern is quite different from what's being imputed by the article, which doesn't even get the Amish right: their rejection of many modern technologies is driven not by any consequentialist cost-benefit analysis, but by a deontological desire for plainness, self-effacement and submission to the rule or order of their anabaptist religion.
> Claims like the one that "we" want what we cannot possibly have at the price "we" are willing to pay are tiresome. Who is this "we"?
This "we" encompasses nearly everyone living in modern society as a consumer. Recall a past motto of McDonald's: "Have it your way." Whether we're aware of it our not, this sort of message seeps into one's psyche. We become accustomed to convenience and adept at ignoring uncomfortable truths.
As a result we don't often undertake the dramatic life changes required for us to live in a way that agrees with our root moral beliefs. For example, it is difficult to morally defend factory farms if one is against needless suffering and would rail against someone kicking a puppy.
Imagine that whenever you wanted to eat an egg you first walked through where that egg came from, observing whether it was a relatively content free-range chicken, or one so crowded by other chickens that it is caked in filth. The suffering would be in your face, and so difficult to ignore that you might actually change your purchasing behavior to alleviate your own discomfort.
However, just because such suffering is out of sight -- hidden by the neat packaging we encounter at the supermarket -- does not mean (of course) that it goes away. In truth, most of us are aware of the contradictions in how we live (myself included) but do not change our behavior. At our core we want convenience and comfort, and also to minimize our own suffering and that of others. But too often we focus only on what is easier (convenience and comfort) and ignore suffering that would require us to surrender even a bit of that comfort.
I wonder if this apparent contradiction can't be explained by re-examination of one the assumptions we're making. Namely, we assume human being is a singular, consistent self with a coherent set of goals. Perhaps, we're not. Perhaps, we're a bunch of more or less independent modules evolved for different purposes and activated in different circumstances. One module seeks to maximize convenience and pleasure. Another one to pass moral judgements. By eliminating direct exposure to the way chicken are treated we keep the moral unit offline while the convenience-seeker in us gets the best deal.
Vast literature from ancient Greece till modern day describe inner struggles that suggest humans may not actually have a coherent set of values and goals at all.
It seems to me that the Amish approach starts with prejudice and outright rejection and leaves no scope for experimentation and trial dry runs of new tech. The author of the article urges reflection, but completely misses the importance of experimentation.
> It seems to me that the Amish approach starts with prejudice and outright rejection
This statement seems extraordinary and contrary to their practice. They simply see everything through the lens of their extremist faith. I think they are nuts but I respect their approach.
For example, they often do have telephones. Many villages have one phone in a phone booth in the middle of the town. So everyone can see you use it. You can't hang out and impersonally communicate -- instead you stop by and visit in person. But if they need an ambulance, or to do a business deal with someone outside their community, they can.
They also will use some power tools, though they don't want them to be electric. I don't quite understand the reasoning, but whatever. Apparently there was a lot of experimentation, and not everybody chose the same solution.
They also let their teen agers leave the community and get drunk crash cars etc. Amazingly to me a majority decide to go back into the fold. Every adult has made a conscious choice to be observant.
In a small way many of use use the same process (though hopefully from a different starting point and with different parameters). I love my MBP but the app I run most is Emacs. I know what an IDE is but don't see the point. I laugh when I see reviews of iOS apps that are described as "visually stunning" -- typically they have a low information density and slow interface, which makes them unpleasant to me. This doesn't make me a luddite nor does it make IDE (for instance) fans nitwits -- we simply find different local optima in the possibility space.
They let their teens, with no education or real introduction, jump into all sorts of problems. Then they threaten complete shunning from the community, totally cutting them off from everyone they know.
How is it surprising people end up coming back under those conditions? If your first and only introduction to the Internet was just 4chan/b/, you might conclude the whole place is just for cp, gore, and other nonsense.
The Amish approach is harmful, unfair, essentiality wicked, to force children into such things. Unfortunately, I'm unaware of a principled alternative.
Deontology is a good idea from a consequentialist viewpoint. An omniscient being with infinite computing power, capable of accurately calculating from first principles the consequences of every action, could operate as a pure consequentialist. We are not such beings, and therefore we necessarily adopt packages of deontological rules that have turned out on balance to lead to good consequences when other people have followed them.
I like this article - agree with the others that it gives the luddite concept a little too much love and doesn't properly recognize the huge benefits of mass media and tech, but still, the basic realization that self-determination in the face of enabling technology, media, culture etc. almost always requires real hard work and sacrifice is something worth contemplating - perhaps more importantly, interesting to consider that the utilization of all society/progress has to offer is in some cases the opposite of self-determination.
I don't think the core of this article is about technology at all. My main takeaway is that often we imagine that the futures we're working towards can be accomplished through incrementalism. But it really requires far more radical action than that.
I don't think anybody is arguing against modern medicine. The argument is to question the real value that technology adds to your life, family, and community. Modern medicine clearly has value.
And your answers may differ from the next person's. And that is fine - the point is to think about it and make a choice, instead of just a blanket assumption that all technology is always better.
How do they reconcile it with the Ordnung's prohibition on the use of mains electricity? Almost all modern diagnostic, surgical and other medical equipment requires it.
I've recently watched a video titled "on the purpose of Life"[1], from YouTuber Robert Murray-Smith, who usually posts videos about tech and science, mostly graphene-related stuff.
He makes a nice point that trying to assign a purpose to everything we do, and to Life itself, may be a mistake. He takes animal behavior as a comparison. Animals usually don't act in order to achieve a high-level goal. They do things because that's what they are built to do. Most of their actions are consequences of basic impulses, emotions and instincts. Now I understand we are highly sophisticated mammals with big brains, and as such we are capable of acting on a rational basis towards an abstract notion of a goal often simplistically called "happiness", for instance. Yet we are still very much animals, so it may be very wrong to think all our actions should be based on this mode of behavior. If we do we may face the absence of a definitive answer to our quest for purpose, which would explain our tendency to jump into goals made up by religion, or into philosophical wanderings which can sometimes be quite unsettling.
What a person, or any person wants is never a singular objective. Our motivations are complex our ideals are vague, is it really so surprising that we all own televisions and at the same time think it's bad for us? As humans we are conflicted and irrational by nature
We tend to only pretentiously believe these things only for other people and never ourselves. It's this attitude of "Oh I know exactly what I want, but yeah I get how other people can get conflicted." I think what makes this article seem so intriguing is the fact that the author starts it off by throwing this irrationality into our face with something we all are conflicted about: television.
I think we are living in times where people see your rightousness and appreciate it but when you take that to its logical extension i.e. upholding it at significant cost, you are labelled as a fanatic/nutjob/weirdo. As long as you pay lip-service and don't really take much real action, you are "normal"/one of us.
And I don't think it was always like this - freedom fighters who had strong beliefs and died to free my country, are hailed as heroes but when somebody actually lives those morals today, people shy away and call him/her as fundamentalist or whatever populist label is convenient.
If one chooses 100% serendipity all of the time, creativity ensues, and the vast panoply of `what we want` gets ever more diverse.
Being open to all possibilities is like being at a fork in the road choosing to travel them both.
Destiny is choosing one road, and shutting out any chance of ever tasting and experiencing other paths.
It's the old story of stoics vs epicureans; only not so extreme. There is a lot more room to wiggle in terms of choice these days, because the gatekeepers of old have vanished. If the world was your oyster 10 years ago - you can bet your ass it's 1000% that now.
Wonderful post. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by Blaise Pascal:
"All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves."
If a buggy is going 5m/s (18km/h) then pitch difference between approaching and receding buggy is about a half of a semitone. So I'm pretty sure you can hear it.
Yes! That one really haunts me! They're completely cut off from nature and live in shoeboxes, albeit with lots of hedonic (and Wii-inspired) tech.
And then (minor spoilers) when someone finally does make a bold stance against the lifestyle they've created, they convince him to just bottle up that passion and sell it chunks to other drones, so that he can afford a bigger shoebox and do less menial labor.
I couldn't make sense of the role of the bicycling though. Why would someone benefit from people turning the wheels? In what economic equilibrium is that the best use for humans? Any energy source is better applied directly to generation rather than running through a human first as (packaged) food.
