From the Buggy to the Byte
Posted by tom | Oct 19, 2006How the Amish Tame Technology
Over 80 of us crammed in the Bucher Meetinghouse at Elizabethtown College with the lights of PCNTV.com focused on Don Kraybill as he sought to unravel why and how the Amish, like no other religious group, challenge/tame technology. So how is it done? Not just the forbidding of entertainment technology like a fundamentalist Christian or Islamic group (or family) or the Sabbath prohibitions of a Hasidic group. And not the violent countercultural actions of Luddites, but the daily interaction with the strong and powerful influences of the march of progress?
As background, Kraybill brought to our attention, the Amish population lives in 28 states and Ontario, Canada (with a recent planting of a community in Manitoba, Canada). And has been doubling every 20 years this past century with 60% of the estimate 180-200,000 living in OH, PA, IN. They are organized into 1500 Church districts and have approximately 25 subgroups including the Beachy Amish, Swartzentruber (which froze technology innovations in 1913), Swiss, New Order which contain much diversity in buggy color, dress, technology, style of home, and work. But they all hold in common a religious canopy over all society in which separation from the world (the Church should be a 'set apart' community, 'be not conformed to the world') is a central feature and technology brings outside connections.
The technological challenge and separation largely occurred in the 20th century when faced with the innovations of the telephone (1st rejection), car, tractor, airplane, radio, electricity from public to private areas, and public high school. During this time of separation, the population grew from 5000 to 180-200,000 by doubling every 20 years. But Kraybill points out, the Amish are not Luddites as they use a lot of new technology, but it is used selectively as a community evaluates a given innovation's impact on their community over time (e.g., 3 telephones may be shared in a church district. The owning of a phone is not a personal decision. Amish comment on cars, "Cars are not immoral but we're concerned about their impact on community over time." i.e., the mobility which they provide).
Taming technology is not the same as complete control and selective use gives rise to puzzles, such as using but not owning a car; having a tractor in the barn to power heavy equipment but not using it in the field; or having a shared telephone at the end of the lane but not one in the house. Although these puzzles may appear silly, inconsistent, irrational from the outside, from the inside they have an internal cultural consistency. Kraybill speculates that tractors may have been accepted for use in the field, if they came before the car. But the car serves as an example of mobility beyond the farm, e.g., running errands in town (or beyond). All mobile farm equipment is outfitted with steel rimmed tires to limit mobility.
Technological innovations are evaluated by an informal sociopolitical discussion process in which boundaries are challenged and loose networks of authority consider the impact on the community. "We have no pope, but 75-80 bishops in Lancaster Co. alone." There are a number of possible outcomes, note the Amish see a number of cultural inconsistencies in mainstream culture, e.g., why use a riding lawn mower and then go to the fitness club? Why not get your exercise when mowing? Why own a large, luxury home with not enough kids and time at home to take advantage of it? Why own another home (RV) and leave your large, luxury home entirely unused for long periods of time? How can you have a humane society in which families are placed in retirement villages away from grandchildren?
Here's the spectrum from low to high technology: 1. School (wall clock operated by batteries only technology, preserving/protecting children from technology, get along well without technology, 1 room with 8 grades); 2. home; 3. farm/barn; 4. business (more freedom to adapt than farmers); 5. mobile construction (will use electric power tools on-site, cellphones on-site); 6. outside employment (will use computers, forklift operator).
The motor vehicle threat involved increased mobility bringing more possibilities for urban contact, fragmentation, and individualism (note: the car is the prime American symbol of individualism/identity). The car compromise made ownership and driving taboo, but the hiring of car and driver acceptable when necessary and/or economically attractive (particularly for shared use). Public transportation always acceptable, but air travel acceptable only in special cases with prior permission, e.g., out-of-state emergencies.
The tractor threat arose because of its possible rationale for a reverse on the decision regarding the car, the loss of jobs in the field leading to the potential pursuit of factory work in the world, and industrialization of large farms. The replacement of rubber tires with steel one prevented it from being taken into town and it was consigned to the barn for high powered needs in the barn.
The telephone threat posed the possibility of direct outside connection (note: gossip across shared lines with non-Amish neighbors was one of the early concerns in the development of telephone technology), violated separation from world, reduced visiting (social glue is face to face visiting, if you can call, why visit), hides symbolic dress (don't know what they're doing when they're talking w/you, body language is cut off). The telephone compromise: declared the home phone taboo, but allowed the use of public and community phones (e.g., booth at the end of the lane in an out building/shanty). Also there has been a growing business use authorized by local bishops. Cell phone use still uncertain as they are easily hidden, hard to supervise, permitted for contractors, hard for young people to put away when they join the choice. The recent additions of internet and camera features are negative features.
The electric threat once again relates to the connection with the world, in this case bringing convenience and media/TV. The electric compromise permitted the use of 12V batteries but declared the 110V public utility grid taboo. This led to the creative exploration of air and hydraulic power especially during the rise of Amish manufacturing equipment in the 1980s. In addition, generators for special 110V use (e.g., electric welders, paint shops, woodworking shops) and solar panels for business electric and batteries (e.g., buggy signal batteries). Air power has been creatively used for powering food processors and home made ice cream makers.
Amish creations and inventions include the hydraulic plow, fiberglass buggy body, hay bale plastic wrappers, inverter for 110V electricity (e.g., solar panel to run small screened word processor at a business. Note: small screen prevents use as TV or internet search engine. The Amish are currently developing a classic word processer/computer with unalterable programming already inside without ability to connect externally), golf course cupper; air water pump (to replace the windmills of 1950-60s), white hay bale wrappers.
Various tensions between use and ownership exist: 1. can't own a computer but can use one as a secretary in a real estate office, using a riding mower as a groundskeeper at the hotel, hiring a car/driver, using power equipment at work, external electric power permissable in rental property, outsourcing computer/internet services.
The screening of technology involves the selective use of technology by attempting to discern its potentional impact on the soical patterns of the larger community. This gives rise to various symbolic meanings (e.g., the Amish buggy) in a particular social and historical context which holds the visible/invisble and the individual/community in tension. How does change occur? 1. Outright rejection, e.g., TV; 2. Creeping use and rejection, e.g., computers immediately embraced by Amish accountants, later rejected for use by the community but appears to be re-emerging; 3. Acceptance, without discussion, e.g., chainsaws, roller blades, 4. Grumbling and acceptance, e.g., possibly cell phones.
This case by case decision process in which the leaders tenaciously hold to previous decisions result in riddle-like zigzag patterns, e.g., push mower not a power mower in use by one sibling as another is using a Honda weed eater. Who decides? The innovators test boundaries as ordained leaders choose to wait and see or to make a decision as a group. Note: gender may have something to do with decision-making as only men serve in leadership and moretechnology can be found in business/farm than in the house). Informal toleration can reach a point of no return, e.g., what if 75% of community have cell phones in their pocket? Formal decisions to reject must be made before that point, as it was with the computer.
I'm posting these notes as I've found the collective decision making to constrain the advance of technology by the Amish quite challenging. Those of us who belong to Christian traditions seeking to transform the world, instead of separate from it, might consider the ways in which our interaction with technology is transforming our communities of faith, families, and individual lives in unhelpful ways. More on this later. Maybe Don Kraybill would be a helpful speaker to consider bringing to CMU to provide a counter-narrative to the unashamed embracing of the march of technological progress.
Tom, I found this very interesting. Having a strong community to start with makes it possible to reject technologies such as the automobile and telephone, which it would be very hard for an individual acting alone to reject, or at least to gain the benefits of rejecting. That is, if I wanted to give up cars and phones and visit all my friends in person by walking to their homes, I could not, because they all live too far apart, having embraced those technologies.
Posted by Peter V, Oct 20 2006, 09:32