THUMBING THEIR NOSE

From the New Era

Amish taxis get close look from state PUC

Is this more of that indifference? The Amish regulate their own adherants, down to an exact measurement of the size of their hat brim, why can't they be more conscientious about our rules?

SOCIAL DELEMMAS

The Amish don't benefit from literature and film in the way the rest of society does because their issues are not examined. Example..... Witness was about the problems of a big city cop. The Amish were just props. Sure, the Amish were portrayed well, but what if Peter Maas' only tried to portray NYC well when he wrote Serpico. I'm not suggesting that there is corruption among the Amish in need of an expose. But that there's a lack of awareness about the consequences of exempting oneself from the evolution of thought that has occurred in western culture as a whole. Their position on tobacco and the havoc created by it, is an example of their inability to resolve a moral dilemma with an intellectual competence equivalent to the contemporary thought, most of us take for granted.
Today's medical science leaves no wiggle room on whether tobacco is a benign substance. The Amish church's failure to define their doctrine to respect that fact is a grotesque error suggestive of centuries old thought. It's the formal position that's important for the argument I'm making, ie; failure of members to conform to church doctrine isn't as damaging as an indefensible doctrine. It's this Dark Age mentality that contributes to the ugly turf wars that frequently plague Amish society. It also leaves Amish adherents vulnerable to proselytizing that is little more than what could be expected from Dark Age barbarians.

As a child I watched my older brother dramatically withdraw from our family, in large part because of an encounter he had with a neighbor, who managed to persuade him of the inferiority of our family's faith and way of life. ( How, "four centuries ago." )The irony is, we were Amish. The same people who are currently revered world wide for how they dealt with a horrible tragedy in one of their schools. And yet, it is very likely my thirteen year old brother was told that if he doesn't reject and Dis-associate from most of what my family was and did, he would burn in hell for all eternity.

INDIFFERENCE

From the Sunday News

Amish plow a new field as city landlords

Though Stoltzfus is generally diligent about maintaining his units, housing
inspector supervisor Butch Vega noted, "When we have a problem with him, we have
a problem."

The Amish promote an anti citizenship ideology, that's going to hit the fan at some point. Puppy mills are a good example, the reason they're as big of a problem as they are is because the Amish are so defiant of the law and popular sentiment. This indifference and general F U attitude has a way of getting turned back on them. During my sons' junior year in high-school at a school assembly called to celebrate a successful fund-raising event, faculty divided into two teams and competed to guess the most popular responses to survey questions solicited from the student body prior to the event. The third most popular response to the question, "what's the worst thing about Lancaster county?" was "the Amish". When the teams of faculty faltered in guessing the correct response, the students prompted them, shouting from the bleachers "the Amish, the Amish". My sons Amish identity aside, the failure of the faculty and students who organized the event to recognize how inappropriate that response was going to be as a part of the event was bad, but it's not nearly as damning as the fact that an event like that could occur and nobody stepped forward to mitigate it and to clarify that it was not a view school officials wanted to promote. When I called the school to complain the principal denied any wrong doing had occurred.

confusion

From the New Era

Mercy for Amish boy's killer

Why are the Amish trying to influence our judicial system? Either they are separate and apart or they aren't. It's one thing to be generous towards the perpetrator and completely another to advocate on her behalf in a system they have rejected in the first place.

I suggest they stay on the porch or join the system like everyone else.

If they really care about the judicious functioning of our society as it relates to them, why don't they advocate for an independent review of the police response to the Nickel Mines school shooting? Maybe if they fessed up to the sexism that lurks in patriarchal societies, they would find it easier to fight for equality and justice for girls instead of just seeing them as great martyrs. On the other hand it doesn't look like our super evolved non-Amish society sees little Amish girls as anything other than great martyrs.