-- [ From: David Christenson * EMC.Ver #2.5.3 ] --
This is getting farther and farther from feminism, but my last note on
this thread is...
> On Tue, 2 Sep 1997, DAVID CHRISTENSON wrote:
>
> > -- [ From: David Christenson * EMC.Ver #2.5.3 ] --
> >
> > > Quakers are often confused with Shakers and with the Amish (or is
it
> > Omish, as
> > > you spell it?), though. I believe that the Shakers are more-or-
less
> > > anti-technology.
Just to note that I didn't write this - I did quote it, however.
Anyway, this thread sent me to do some looking-up about the Amish last
night. Was surprised to learn that even the more conservative Old Order
Amish accept natural-gas appliances, and many Old Order Amish use
gasoline-engine farm implements and machines - some use tractors. These
things are not seen as a threat to their close-knit agrarian lifestyle.
Like most people, I'd been mistaking frugality, the desire to maintain
community, and a dislike of things deemed "worldly" for a bias against
technology per se.
I was also surprised to learn that the Amish are growing, not shrinking,
as a national community. But they require good farmland, which is
getting scarce. So Amish could very well travel in space someday, in a
second migration - but they'd probably need Harrison Ford to run the
ship. Epic material here.
I *did* say:
> Perhaps the rest of us could learn a lesson from such selectivity.
And Alan Briggs responded:
> Certainly, although one must also look at the broad picture... Public
> transportation, bicycles, and rollerblades do not exist in a vacuum.
I suppose the Amish, in borrowing the technology of the larger culture
and using it for their own subcultural purposes, were really the first
cyberpunks. :-)
BTW, the Amish are most definitely *not* feminist.
-- David Christenson - ldqt79a@prodigy.com"Yet, throughout the book there exists the whole gamut of strange facts which we ourselves had been aware of for years, all carefully mustered to support a theory doomed by every process of logic to be forever incomprehensible." - Ray Palmer
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