Read and understand the way
humanity will be living as we progress.
A lot of this is a throw back, but at the same time child birth today is
generally successful. Their not
preparing youth for roles in our integrated society is not a good idea. However,
we also fail in that regard for over half of our population. They can do better and we need to do much
better.
What is most important that they
are all ideally positioned to operate in the post industrial agricultural
economic model, although even then they are not obviously leading us out.
In time we will master our
agricultural biome and manpower will be augmented with inexpensive robots quite
up to the challenge of supporting our efforts.
During the growing season optimizing the majority of production does
need skilled human involvement and generally plenty of it. The problem has always been to find a balance
between the large numbers needed for production and the scant numbers needed at
other times.
My solution is to use the
operation to capitalize alternative production outside those periods of intense
activity and let folks figure it all out.
This also includes employing all age groups in the internal money
economy. Thus adults can leave an
established position to contribute elsewhere in the knowledge that on his
return on retirement for example, he has a place to slip into and continue to
participate.
In the Amish way, everyone has a
place and no one is exploited. That was
not the historical history of agriculture which is why it became so unpopular
and difficult to change. Now I think
that we can.
We must recall that the promise
of modernity promises great rewards for the best and brightest and a decent
living for the top two thirds of the population. Unfortunately, it is pretty clear by puberty
just who is going to make it. The bottom
third knows this and having a natural failsafe in place optimizes their
ultimate contributions.
Modernity as it has historically
developed tore families apart and separated them from their natural
community. The Amish have evaded this
fate by been simply slow to join modernity and by preserving families through
their agricultural lifestyle.
Amish enjoy unexpected boom in numbers
High birthrates and decline in defections spur growth
By Colton
Totland
-
The Washington
Times
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Practitioners of one of America ’s
fastest-growing and dynamic religious communities still get to Sunday services by
horse and buggy.
The country’s famously technology-shunning “Old Orders” Amish may appear
vulnerable in an age of iPads and instant
global communication, but a comprehensive survey suggests that the
nation’s Amish religious
communities are in fact thriving, with a settlement founded every month on
average in dozens of states across the country.
A combination of traditionally high birthrates and falling defection
rates among adults — more than 4 in 5 people raised in Amish homes now
opt to stay within the community — has led demographers to predict that the
number of Amish communities
in the United States will double over the next 40 years.
Amish families
are dispersed across 29 states — stretching from Montana to Florida — within
456 autonomous settlements, a sharp increase from the 179 settlements listed in
the 1990 census. Analysts see no reason for this trend to slow and project the
number of believers to approach 1 million by the late 2050s.
The religious census, authored by a team of researchers from Ohio State
University , cites those
high birthrates and an unprecedented retention rate within the communities as
the main reasons for the rapid growth.
The Amish shun
contraception, and families average six to seven children. Despite the
temptations of the outside world, more than 250,000 people live within Amish settlements,
the study reports, and about 85 percent in the younger generation continue the
way of life once they reach adulthood.
“The Amish are
successful at socializing their sons and daughters into the faith,” Joseph
Donnermeyer, a professor of rural sociology at Ohio State and the study’s
lead author, said in an interview. “The Amish aren’t
isolated, they are a dynamic culture. They’ve just evolved in a different
direction than mainstream America .”
The Amish were
part of an ultraconservative Anabaptist movement born out of the Protestant
Reformation in the 16th century, and are known in mainstream society for
traveling via horse and buggy and refusing or strictly limiting their use of
electricity and other modern conveniences.Amish settlements
emphasize close-knit communities where households, not churches, hold communion
on a rotating basis, and where the main occupation traditionally has been
farming because it allows men to remain near their families.
The Amish believe
in adult baptism — the main reason the movement broke with other Protestant
groups in the 1600s, when churches began baptizing babies in part to monitor
population for tax and military purposes. Mr.
Donnermeyer said that since World War II, the percentage of Amish youngsters
who have reached this final stage of baptism has skyrocketed, and reflects in
large part the growing distance between mainstream society and Amish ways. More
than a century ago, the gap between the Amish way of life
and those of surrounding rural communities was not large. Now, the chasm
between the Amish way
of life and that of the “English” — the term often used to describe non-Amish neighbors —
has become much harder to cross.
“There’s a bigger lifestyle gap
today,” Mr.
Donnermeyer said. “I’d say the baptism rate now is about as high as
it’s going to get because there’s a ceiling now where it can’t go much higher.”
The Amish traditionally
are associated with Pennsylvania as well as
Midwestern states such as Ohio , which together
account for about 40 percent of the total U.S. Amish population.
In Ohio ’s Holmes County ,
42 percent of the population is Amish. LaGrange County
in Indiana is another largely Amish area, with
37 percent. The Greater Holmes County settlement, which sprawls across six counties
(Holmes, Wayne, Tuscarawas, Coshocton, Stark and Ashland ),
is the largest settlement, with nearly 30,000 Amish, followed by the
Lancaster/Chester County settlement in southeastern Pennsylvania .
“My guess is that in 15 years, we’ll witness a county whose population
is majority Amish,
and Holmes County is likely to gain that
distinction first. Perhaps LaGrange County in Indiana
will not be far behind,” Mr.
Donnermeyer said.
Even so, the Amish continue
to expand into several other states. New York in particular has gained more
than 15 settlements in the past three years, and Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Kentucky
each now have more than 20 settlements.
Amish families
have started arriving in states even farther afield, including Colorado,
Arkansas, Montana and Maine .
“The Amish are
taking advantage of land prices, so they are often locating in rural counties
that have been declining, both economically and in terms of population
size,” Mr.
Donnermeyer said.
Amish community
leaders also say they see growing clusters of farms and settlements, with newly
married couples tending to stick closer to the parental family farm.
“You want to keep a community together,” Fannie Erb-Miller, editor of
the Amish newspaper
the Budget, recently told the Columbus (Ohio ) Dispatch. “But you
have to go where there’s enough land to hold you. That’s more of a challenge
these days.”
The migration of Amish families to
these counties can mean significant changes for those communities, according to
the study, despite the principle of Amish communities
of keeping to themselves. Despite the potential for conflict with existing
communities, Mr.
Donnermeyer said, the impacts of the Amish have been
seen as generally positive.
Amish migration
“slows down the population decrease and could even turn it around. The Amishhave very low
unemployment and [are] good entrepreneurs. They have positive economic benefits
to counties,” Mr.
Donnermeyer said.
Many Amish families
no longer consider farming as their sole occupation because they often cannot
find and maintain enough land to sustain themselves. In response, many families
have turned to other crafts, such as carpentry and construction, to earn
income. The emphasis on being close to family remains, however.
“The preference is to be self-employed,” Mr.
Donnermeyer said. “It’s an imperative among the Amish that they seek to
find economic activity that does not weaken their sense of community. It’s only
in the biggest communities where the Amish can be seen
working in factories.”
2 comments:
Well, will we see SWAT raids by the FBI, the FDA and the whole alphabet of jackbooted thugs trying to tear down these communities and force them to adopt the codex alimentarius?
I don't see any Govt toleration for different values in the USA of today, especially if you are dealing with raw milk or home-grown produce..
For sure that the Amish Population is booming, I mean the society I live in here in Quebec is completely regulated every day by the media, by heavy consumerism and it's a handful of people like who see through all of it, who realize how much in the end, we have no free will and cnanot make our own decisions. However, being a writer, my views on things such as homosexuality, biligualism, sexualization of women are different than the average watcher of 5 o'clock news. It brings me to tears how we force other humans to believe in certain things. It sickens me the way people are intolerant, how people spend so so so much money and care not for their education. Thank you for this blog, I'll link it to mine, which is here. I post lots of political messages about society, as well as health recipes and a few of my creations :) http://chloeflanagan.blogspot.ca/
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