Some discussion about Amish living here in other threads. Trust me, no fun if you ask me. Yes, nostalgia is great but the real thing is different. We lived off-grid for 12+ years and truth is, it sucked! Compost toilets are the pits.
I respect them totally but no way I'd want to live my entire life that way. There is a reason we went to electricity and indoor plumbing. Nice to have 21st century things like a toilet that flushes, running water and electricity.
BirdDog wrote:Some discussion about Amish living here in other threads. Trust me, no fun if you ask me. Yes, nostalgia is great but the real thing is different. We lived off-grid for 12+ years and truth is, it sucked! Compost toilets are the pits.
I respect them totally but no way I'd want to live my entire life that way. There is a reason we went to electricity and indoor plumbing. Nice to have 21st century things like a toilet that flushes, running water and electricity.
Like anything, there is more to Amish, so there are old order that are like what you explain, new order, and many various sects of it. Some own and use cars, have modern plumbing, etc.... Then there are other anabaptist groups that are similar to the amish but different, and again, many sects with different levels of modernity. Various Brethren and German Baptist groups all fall in similar groups.
For me, I would love to give up some of the modern things that consume my life, but at the same time it is how I earn a living, so makes it hard to do so. But I can still dream.
TJ
I PCS'd to Virginia from the NYC metro area in 1987, when high technology was an IBM PC AT and dialup modems to non-networked bulletin boards.
I moved to an area where I could leave my doors unlocked if I wanted to. Coming from an apartment in South Amboy that was broken into three times in as many years, it was a much welcome change.
The problem for me is: Back then, "cable was coming", and cell phones / internet wasn't even invented yet. ARPAnet existed and saw prototypes tho, just wasn't available to the public. Well... 30 years later and there's still no cable (DTV and Dish are only options), I barely get 2 bars of LTE at home, and you all know where my internet comes from.
It was cute back then, but I kinda feel like I live OCONUS, on an island (old joke, but even they have better tech than this now).
I, too, respect them, and am in admiration of their very hard working, close family oriented ethics and simple lives, but there is no way in the world that I would EVER want to live like they do. I am envious, though, of that simple life.
I'm far too reliant on the creature comforts of the world I grew up in.
Wife and I are still pretty simple even with modern luxuries. We stay at home with no close neighbors on 20 acres surrounded by national forest on three sides.
Go into town maybe twice a week for groceries. We're pretty much loners when it comes down to it. Our 3 dogs are our family, we love them like children actually.
May sound pathetic but we are happy, especially now that we no longer live off-grid and have real plumbing and electricity.
The Amish can have the no indoor plumbing and no electricity. May be a simple life but there is a reason most don't embrace it. It is 200 years ago. Could also go back to the ancient Roman way of living. They were actually pretty advanced for the time. (Plumbing)
I respect them living the way they want, just not the way I, or my wife, want to live in modern days. Feel lucky we were born in modern times with modern conveniences.
Isn't all of this (the desire for a simple way of life) a romantic view, though? The realities of such a life are probably quite harsh and society as a whole seems to want to get as far from that as possible: no indoor plumbing, having to go crack ice at 4 am to get water, having to go fetch wood, having to feed the animals, plant the fields, harvest the fields (unless some blight has been visited upon the fields and now there will be little to no food for the winter), etc. Can we not live in simpler ways within our comfort?
It is somewhat romantic, and we all might be in better shape...
But things progressed to where they are for a reason, imo.
Claire was able to treat the typhoid victims in the 1840's because she was innoculated in the 1940s. [for those that watch Outlander].
