I always thought of the Amish as a devout religious sect with thee courage of their faith’s convictions, notably that technology is a tool of Satan, and the way to be closer to God is to eschew the modern developments that slowly but surely corrupt us all. That describes an ethical culture to me, if one that I personally find extreme and illogical. Google tells me that “The Amish are a traditionalist Christian group of Swiss-German Anabaptist heritage known for their pacifism, simple living, plain dress, and reluctance to adopt modern conveniences. Numbering roughly 411,000 across North America, they primarily reside in rural settlements in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.” That’s nice. I’ve seen “Witness” several times, and assumed that Harrison Ford film more or less accurately portrayed Amish society.
I was also vaguely aware that there were variations withing the sect, based on, to some extent, relative isolation because of the general rejection of modern communication methods. Every local congregation operates under an unwritten set of rules called the Ordnung. These dictate daily life, acceptable technology, and community standards.
Today I realized that the Amish are not, in fact, a conservative religious sect that believes it can best maintain traditional values by rejecting technology. It is, in fact, a cult without integrity regarding technology. The Unabomber had more integrity.
According to New York Magazine (Stipulated: I am relying here on a source that I have found to be unreliable before, but unless the piece by Eric German is a flat-out lie as well as an attempt to defame the Amish, I believe it is trustworthy.), “The Amish Are Falling in Love With AI: Cars and TVs might be banned, but some sects are all-in on ChatGPT.”
What the hell? From the article:
“Holmes County, Ohio, has the highest concentration of Amish people of any county in the U.S. Visitors expecting to see traditional horses and buggies, bonnets and Abe Lincoln beards, won’t be disappointed. Still, they’ll find Amish entrepreneurs plugging into the digital economy and one clan of early adopters weaving generative AI into their knowledge work without much hesitation. Of course, none of this sounds like the tech-shy Amish life in the popular imagination. However, there’s no such thing as a single Amish approach to technology. There are some 2,600 Amish churches across the country, and each makes its own, separate decisions about what sorts of new hardware and software church members can use. The Wengerd’s church is Old Order Amish. Its married members dress plainly, don’t drive cars or own TVs, and don’t connect their homes to the electrical grid….Daniel is a minister in his church and has played a role in the congregation’s collective decisions to interdict smartphones and social media but to allow e-bikes, flip phones, solar-generated electricity, and religiously curated internet access. “I don’t want to paint a picture that we’re pushing for new technology and we don’t have respect for our traditions and our values,” he tells me. “We’re not just opening the door to anything.”
Sure they are. In fact, I can see no legitimate argument that a sect that embraces artificial intelligence can be taken seriously when it simultaneously rejects standard electricity, television and automobiles. Ethics is based on integrity, and requires holding to consistent standards subject to continuous testing and re-evaluation based on observed experience. Morality, in contrast, requires obeying clear rules of conduct that will be enforced by an authority, in the case of religion, God. The Amish appear to have neither a moral code nor ethical principles regarding technology. “We believe modern technology is a corrupting force in modern society and that it is not sanctioned by God, unless the technology is really cool and can save us time, like chatbots” is not a coherent code of conduct.
This is religion as Calvinball, the satirical “Calvin and Hobbes” game where the rules are made up as you go along. In Mark Harris’s novel “Bang the Drum Slowly,” a team’s baseball players fleece gullible fans by luring them into a gambling card game called “Tagwar.” It’s an acronym for “the amazing game without any rules.” It’s cheating.
Ethics Alarms 
Perhaps we do not understand what the role of moral restrictions is in tight communities.
Is there a good reasonable basis for why observant Jews keep kosher? Why they do not eat pork, shellfish, why meat and dairy have to separated strictly. What is the reason for the dress code of Orthodox Jews? You may suggest that is because it is in the Torah, but then the question becomes why it is in the Torah. OK another try, Orthodox Jews do not eat pork because eating pork in ancient times could infect people with parasites (trichinosis). Well, why did the neighbors of the Jews eat pork?
Similar questions can be asked about other tight communities. Why do the Jehovah Witnesses refuse blood transfusions? Why do the members of the Church of God Scientist refuse conventional medicine by rely on spiritual healing?
One explanation is that some of these moral restrictions that do not make sense on a rational basis, but exist as a costly signal of commitment to their community. These very rules help to tighten to community by advertising that they are different than the rest of the world. Orthodox Jews tell to everyone by their dress code that they belong to a community as Orthodox Jews, including their own community. For Amish it works the same way.
A key text in the Holiness Code of Leviticus is Leviticus 19:2 “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy”. Holy here means set apart, and that implies that the people of Israel had to be different than the people around them. That includes denouncement of (aspects of) the secular culture. This text is also quoted in the New Testament in 1 Peter 1:16. Romans 12: 1-2 also urges Christians to live differently than the secular world:
1Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
The trouble is that many communities inherit a legacy of moral rules that they poorly understand due to a lack of reflection. Practices are being followed simply out of tradition, as this is the way everybody in their community does things. And if you do things differently, and reject authority of the parents or the elders, that basically results in you leaving that community.
Here we may invoke Nietzsche’s ideas about master morality and slave morality: are you following certain morals because you inherited them and follow scripts handed to you without reflection or out of laziness (slave morality), or do you make your own decisions and chart your own path through life (master morality)? OK I will not further open the can of worms presented by Nietzsche’s philosophy in this comment.
Are the Amish unethical? I think they are simply faced with challenges that they are not thinking through as they are stuck in traditionalism which may preclude rational ethical thinking.
Is there a good reasonable basis for why observant Jews keep kosher? Why they do not eat pork, shellfish, why meat and dairy have to separated strictly.
Cees, how is this relevant? It would be useful if Jews decided, “We won’t eat pork, except for bacon, because it’s really yummy.”
My argument is that their are a lot of moral rules that cannot be justified on a basis of reason, but are followed to signal a costly commitment that proofs that they are part of the community. For the Orthodox Jews that means food restrictions and dress codes, for the Amish that means dress code and abstaining from electricity and mechanized vehicles. The traditions hold the community together, think about “Tradition” in Fiddler on the Roof; that community does not survive as such as they all move to the United States.
The challenge is always to keep these traditional societies running while the world around them changes; these changes may make the moral codes out of date and irrelevant. The church that I am a member of ninety years ago condemned dancing, card playing, movies, theater and jazz music. Even stricter Puritan communities eschew television (I have been around those in the Netherlands) because that brings in the godless world with all its temptations, have to come to grips with computers (as they need to handle spreadsheets at work) and cellphones. People have been excommunicated from their churches for possession of a television; at the same time members of the same community can access porn on their laptops and cellphones. That illustrates the limitations of these moral codes, as they often do not withstand the test of time.
I am a bit hesitant to use the term “hypocrites” for those with old-fashioned moral views; my preference is to reserve that word for people who preach one thing and do the exact opposite, or people who act virtuously for the sake of moral status (also known as virtue signaling).
What would you call a “tradition” that rejects 100 year old technology but embraces more advanced technology with far less safety and certainty? What is a rational explanation for that? It’s like the politicians who say they believe that life begins at conception as the Catholic Church preaches but then promote abortion. Here we’re talking about an extreme and pervasive tradition that has far more impact than wearing beards and black hats.
The Amish tradition may work well in an agrarian society with closed communities. If you have no electricity at home and work with horses, you typically do not need a computer. Communication with old-fashioned flip phones does not require AI. In their own communities, in their own homes they may keep modern technology out of the door.
However when members of the Amish community find work outside their village, in manufacturing or at an office, they will have to use all that modern technology that they eschew in their communities. ChatGPT and other AI tools are used at the office and become well integrated with Microsoft Office and with the Internet; we are not even aware anymore that we use AI.
The sociology does not work in favor of the Old Amish, and new technology renders the Amish’s old morals out of date.
???? Technology always rendered the Amish’s old morals out of date! Why would AI be any different from any of the technology tyhey have been rejecting for all this time?
I’m fascinated that you are tying yourself into logical and ethical pretzels to avoid the clear conclusion. The Amish traditional refusal to adopt technology didn’t work in a agrarian society. Modern reapers saved time and money. Modern power tools would be valuable in raising a barn. Meanwhile, AI is hardly crucial to farmers.
It is one thing to notice that a tight religious community has moral rules that do not make logical sense, and another thing to call them hypocritical. There were anabaptist traditions in the Netherlands as Menno Simons was Dutch; they went into an ultraliberal tradition, and nothing is left of the Mennonite tradition in the Netherlands. We need a sociological approach to understand Amish communities, instead of writing them off due to apparent ethical contradictions. I think their sense of community is laudable, and I hate to see it go. I also do not see any harm to the society by these strict religious communities; I think they enrich the USA.
jack, one random reporter talking to one random family, which doesn’t sound Amish, is a bit light t generalize cult status. There are Quakers, Mmenonites, Friends, and a bunch of other variations. Amish vary from church to church even. Amish would likely have a factor dealing with any level of PC.
Jack, you sound a bit stressed take the dog fr a walk and just breathe
Question: Did you read the article? It’s not an unusual format: he uncovered a widespread practice, and used one chatty participant to help explain it. He did not just use a single source to jump to a conclusion. So from my angle, I read the article, use a quote or two to summarize and explicate its story, and if you question my overview, I include the link so you van make your own judgment.
Considering that, I don’t think your comment is warranted.
FYI: I’m taking your lack of a response as a “No.”
I have heard, from a Lutheran pastor, that the essential question the Amish face when considering new technology is “is this good for the community? That is, does in reinforce the community bonds?” Motor vehicles and farm equipment, electrical grid, radio, TV; these connect them to the outside, rather than to other members of their community. Cooperative care for livestock, building, community social events, all reinforce the community. They’ll run a woodworking shop on a diesel generator rather than the electrical grid, because the resupply of fuel is intermittent and under their discrete control, whereas the grid is just there all the time. As for AI, I suppose the argument is that they can take it or leave it at any time, but if so, I disagree too.
Twenty or so years ago I was shopping for American made solid wood furniture. One of the web sites I found featured Amish produced Mission-style pieces of quite decent quality. I wondered about the process – apparently some Amish partner with others to handle the ‘English,’ modern, technology elements of sales and marketing, while keeping the production as low tech, as Amish as possible. I wondered at the time if this was a creative adaptation, or hypocrisy. Since they are not actively preaching to me or proselytizing, holding themselves out to me as morally superior, I’ll just say it’s not my place to judge.
It’s our duty to judge. Developing coherent societal ethics and values mandate that everyone be able to point oout ethical and unethical conduct. If we don’t, the result is ethics relativism, and the “it’s my truth not your truth” garbage.
One of the Amish favorite Bible texts is Matthew 7:1 “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Mennonites will not sit on a jury or take oaths.
I wrote about that, and it’s in the “biblical rationalizations” section of the list. The story is about those who used a prostitute judging her. Not what the line is usually cited to mean. If you judge her, then others will judge you for the same conduct. That’s fair. When I’m hypocritical I should be called on it.
Oooh Jack!
Thank you for giving me permission …..
I’m giving myself permission. That quote is a dead end for ethics. Please don’t use it here. How are we supposed to analyze ethical decisions without “judging” the conduct of others????
That’s what I’m here for…
“I wondered at the time if this was a creative adaptation, or hypocrisy.”
The Amish partnering with someone they think is sinning according to their own code.
A Jew relying on a “Shabbos Goy” to sin by working on a Sabbath to do tasks the Jew cannot so the Jew doesn’t have to sin.
A government hiring an expendable but willing participant to commit war crimes so the official military doesn’t have to.
I’m open to being convinced that hiring someone who doesn’t agree with your definition of right and wrong to do a wrong they don’t see as wrong on your behalf is not the same as doing wrong on your own….but it will be a heavy lift.
One thing I’ve read about the Amish is that they emphatically do not consider themselves special, and reject any special treatment from the outside world. They compete for business based on the quality and value of their work. They also do not consider rejection of technology to be a suicide pact, but a process thoughtful adaptation.
For instance, Amish dairy farmers humbly submit to USDA inspections to sell their products, and run thoroughly modern facilities to process, pasteurize, and bottle their milk. They don’t expect the outside world to bend over backwards so they can live in the stone age. They acknowledge the reality that technology exists, and even that they do not live in a bubble, but depend partially on the outside world.
The Amish also see how technology can be used in a corrosive manner by society, which should be obvious. Thus they are very deliberate about what is allowed. It is a utilitarian balancing, not a dogmatic rejection.
The article seems selectively sourced. Out of 400,000 Amish, they found one family that uses AI to build apps for running their business. About half might have some limited internet, and they “estimate” that 20% of those with Internet may have tried AI (10% of the overall).
Why would the Amish begrudgingly accept the Internet? Well, they acknowledge the reality that modern customers will not tolerate mail-order catalogs and correspondence for after-purchase support. The Amish also unironically admit that using the US Post Office is a reliance in the outside world. Thus the Amish accept the incremental encroachment of phones, email, and online sales to compete in the modern economy. They want an honest, sustainable lifestyle, not charity and pity from outsiders to maintain an unsustainable lifestyle. At the same time, they apparently accept internet use primarily at work, but value face-to-face time at home, rejecting solitary fixation on individual smartphone screens (or the whole family glued to the communal TV).
Now, not all of it is perfectly consistent or defensible. Their reliance on generators with fuel imported from the middle east rather than the electrical grid is a stretch, for instance. I think they value treating electricity as a finite resource, rather than an unlimited magic that comes from the wall socket. Using horses and buggies for personal travel, while accepting trucks to make and receive deliveries at work is also stretch.
However, it is just all about making choices and balancing values to make an honest life in the modern world.