Pennsylvania County Commissioners Rule That an Amish Family Must Hook Up to the Grid
1 Amish family in Lancaster County, Pa., has 3 horse-pulled buggies they store in a befouled. They all have electric lights powered by rechargeable batteries. One of the buggies even has battery-powered windshield wipers. Jeff Brady/NPR hide explanation
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Jeff Brady/NPR
One Amish family unit in Lancaster Canton, Pa., has three horse-pulled buggies they store in a befouled. They all have electric lights powered by rechargeable batteries. One of the buggies even has battery-powered windshield wipers.
Jeff Brady/NPR
Many outsiders presume the Amish turn down all new technology. But that'south not true.
One Amish man in Lancaster County, Pa., checks his voicemail nearly iv times a day. His shop is equipped with a propane-powered forklift, hydraulic-powered saws, cordless drills, and a refrigerated tank where milk from dairy cows is stored.
The difference between Amish people and most other Americans is the deliberation that takes place earlier deciding whether to embrace a new technology. Many Americans assume newer engineering is always ameliorate, and perhaps even inherently expert.
"The Amish don't buy that," says Donald Kraybill, professor at Elizabethtown College and co-author of The Amish. "They're more cautious — more suspicious — wondering is this going to be helpful or is information technology going to be detrimental? Is it going to bolster our life together, every bit a community, or is it going to somehow tear it down?"
There are 40 unlike Amish affiliations around the state, according to Kraybill, and they often achieve different conclusions in answering those questions.
"Some of the subgroups are very bourgeois, very isolated and doing very well protecting their way of life because they basically reject much more engineering than the more progressive ones," he says.
Kraybill says the process takes place from the footing-up — people try out new technologies and then leaders ultimately determine whether they are acceptable or non.
In Lancaster Canton, the Amish population is OK with using electricity, but they reject the grid that brings it into most Americans' homes. That's considering they want to maintain a separation from the wider world.
The Amish believe this life on earth is part of their journeying to heaven. Kraybill says if you're merely here as a pilgrim, "Then you don't want to get besides engaged and too embedded in this world... because yous may lose your ultimate, eternal goal of completing the journey to heaven."
In contempo years the Amish take begun embracing new technology at a faster charge per unit. 1 reason is because more than of them are working as entrepreneurs instead of on a farm. This shift creates new problems that technology frequently has an answer for.
Ben is an Amish man living in Lancaster Canton. He wants to exist known simply by his first proper name. In some Amish communities, using your full name in the media is considered showing off, or trying to speak for all Amish.
He owns a deli and says he tracks all his finances with paper and pencil. "I would really love to have Quickbooks, because it's a pain to rest my checkbook," he says. Only that would require a computer, and Ben is reluctant to leap into the digital world. He plans to think long and hard before making a conclusion.
Ben plans to follow this communication: "You shouldn't exist the get-go in your neighborhood to adopt the new engineering and neither should you exist the last."
The business organization possessor says evaluating new technologies is something that takes identify between the push of progress and the pull of tradition. And in the background there's ever i big question: Will this new engineering science hurt the Amish way of life?
While that evaluation process tin be slow, changes that accept taken place so far have allowed Amish businesses to abound. Homestead Structures, in New Holland, Pa., constructs modest buildings such as storage sheds and pool houses.
There are 19 employees in the big shop and they use drills, saws and blast guns. Simply the power for those tools doesn't come up from the electric grid. At that place are solar panels and a diesel fuel generator for the electric tools.
The Amish
"We seem to be able to compete with other companies that use electrical off of the filigree," says owner Stephen Stoltzfus.
His visitor has a website that an outside marketing firm maintains for him.
"Nosotros have telephones, in the office," says Stoltzfus, "And for our bookkeeping nosotros have what they call word processors."
Stoltzfus is amidst the Amish businessmen who have entered the reckoner age. A company that outfits computers for Amish people touts in its advertising what the machines do not have: "no Internet, no video, no music."
All these contortions — finding ways to enjoy the benefits of technology while maintaining tradition — may seem similar cheating. Just Professor Kraybill says there's another term for it: "Amish hacking."
"It's non hacking the Internet, simply information technology'southward learning how to get around the restrictions in ways that are acceptable within the moral order of the customs," says Kraybill. And even that requires a level of deliberation foreign to many Americans.
The Amish don't automatically cover what'due south new, they evaluate it and decide if it's a good fit for the lives they want to lead. Kraybill believes that is where the Amish may take something to teach the residual of usa.
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/09/02/217287028/amish-community-not-anti-technology-just-more-thoughful
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