At 22:11 9/2/97 -0500, 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.
>
>I'm not so sure about Shakerism - isn't is a subsect of Quakerism?
Absolutely NOT. Shakers -- a celibate sect that prospered in the 19th
century by taking in and raising orphans (much better for the kids
than the local 'poor house') is a very definite separatist group.
Only a few Shakers still alive -- and they are VERY old now.
>(Nixon was a Quaker - imagine that.) But the Amish aren't really anti-
>technology. They're just selective. They don't want technology that will
>change their lives in what they feel is a negative way. So they shun TV
>and ownership of private autos, but I believe they're O.K. with public
>transportation and bicycles. Seeing Amish teen-agers on rollerblades is
>startling, but it makes sense in their world view. Perhaps the rest of
>us could learn a lesson from such selectivity.
This depends on the group. Some Amish are more tolerant of 'new' ideas
than others -- though none accept 'worldly' things. Some refuse to
allow their kids education beyond 8th grade lest they get 'ideas' and
leave the community. One group we lived near would allow farm tractors
IF and ONLY IF the tires were not inflated.
>
>BTW, if anybody knows of any Amish science fiction, I'd love to hear
>about it.
Leigh Brackett posits a kind-of-Amish community in _The Long Tomorrow_
(1955) but only as a place adventurous kids escape from. And she does
not name it as Amish, I'm just extrapolating here.
>--
>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
>
Martha Bartter
Truman State University
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:38 PDT