Bla bla bla

The Amish approach business with an attitude that holds lessons for the non-Amish world, says Erik Wesner, a researcher who is writing a book about Amish business practices.

yea yea yea. It's so damn chic to critique our own culture! What about the Amish? Are they worthy of the honor of critique? Based on the evidence, apparently not. Real nice of them though, to serve as lab rats in our quest for a better society.

Wesner is the college's Fall 2008 Snowden Fellow and has been conducting research at its Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies.

It sounds legit. But, how many of the books are going to be purchased by business people, or is he engaged in unadulterated voyeurism? Is his work going to be legitimate science, or will it only pose as science, while exploiting the otherness of the Amish?

"Mine is more of a business wisdom according to the Amish [approach] with a transference to things the non-Amish can do," he said.

If we are transferring lessons from Amish culture to our culture, we have to first evaluate how our values differ from theirs. In the Kraybill school of thought, a spade in non-Amish culture never transfers into a spade in Amish culture. What's an accepted negative in our world gets passed off as benign in the Amish. The resulting portrayal is that the Amish live in a wonderland world. Now we're going to use those fantasies to critique our business world? Horse poop! This is nothing more than the most base form of voyeurism masquerading as scientific research!