You are here: Articles About Spirituality :: The Amish Had It Right

The Amish Had It Right

In a recent discussion about 2012, an acquaintance of mine said that Sweden was populating vaults with seeds and copies of all manufacturing documents and manuals for hi tech devices so that if any disaster ensues, humans would be able to regain their technologies. This really made me think. I sometimes wonder what good those manuals would do. So we’d recreate the pollution, oil spills, suppression of clean technology due to greed, mass animal and bird die off, deforestation, trash islands in our oceans, and so on? When I look around at all the trash, traffic, smog, and how people treating other people grows more cruel every day, I sometimes think the Amish had it right in more ways than one.

The Amish do well, even with restricted technology, while so many other areas of society are crumbling. The Amish have a much smaller carbon footprint because they drive buggies and not cars, horses plow fields, not tractors, they don’t have trash pick-up, so maximize recycling, just to name a few. Incredible to the rest of us, they don’t have cell phones, computers, and other objects that take thousands of years to break down in our landfills (which I doubt they ever go to!). I’m appalled at the daily hate I read on the internet, yet their family and community is the dearest thing they have in their life. They feel technology creates a monster, and in so many ways, hasn’t it? We are literally killing this planet and all for more “stuff” that we can pack into our oversized houses, cars, bodies and life. More things to distract and distance us. Most “technologically developed” countries are getting fatter by the minute with our technology processed fast food and producing so many drugs to fix our hugely self induced problems that some states in the U.S. have 80% of their entire populations using legal or illegal drugs!

And what if a real disaster does strike us now or in the near future? While the Amish know how to feed themselves, we rely on markets and stores, all trucked in from somewhere else and fueled by oil. While they would remain as they are, living long and productive lives, our own “civilized” existence would crumble right before our eyes, and within a week or two. We’d have no communication with the family that’s moved somewhere else, no heat outside of what we could find to burn in a fireplace, assuming we had one. Without gasoline we’d have no transportation outside of our bikes, skates or horses. What would we eat when the store shelves cleared out? How would we pass the time when our Kindle and iPad batteries run dry? And let’s not even think about survival when those who have consumed what little they have would be coming with guns and sticks to take what you have. It would be utter and complete chaos, killing and starvation en masse. Our technological dependency would be our death!

But what of the good that technology has brought us such as improved health care, the wonder of space travel, the marvels of art, music and architecture? There is no doubt that the human spirit can and should always endeavor to reflect their inner “All That Is” nature. We come from the Source that is a Creator, which in turn makes us Creators. This I have no qualm or question with. I think where humans go wrong is allowing fear based, greedy, power hungry entities to take control of the masses which is often done through religious and corrupt leaders. Unlike so many mighty religions on this earth, the Amish do not go-door to-door to convert. They do not seek to change your opinion and make you just like them. They do not kill in the name of God. We can see from the past that incredible thinkers, scientist and artists were deeply controlled, if even to death, for acting or thinking against powerful religious bodies. People, such as pagans, who wanted to find a deeper balance with the earth, were “heathens or witches”. South and North American Indians who pursued harmony with nature, who sought a deeper understanding of healing through spirit and earth’s plants, were to be converted or killed. So much good has been lost due to these hard doctrinal faiths. These are just some of the ways in which humans have and still do go wrong. And because of the atrocities of the past from mainstream religious control, scientific and technologically driven man now steers wildly in the opposite direction. The balance is still yet to be achieved because we’ve progressed so much in one area and not the other. And with no true balance, man will continue to fail both himself and the earth.

Yes, medication relives so much suffering but so much of that suffering can be mitigated. I personally know many people that not only take pills for their woes, but then need more pills to fix what the first pill caused as a side effect. Just last week I was speaking to my art teacher whose boyfriend was on eight medications and he was only in his 40’s. We medicate our children at a shocking rate and yet, exceptions aside, they are not “cured” of anything other than being annoying high strung children. We do not seek the deeper meaning of our depression and anxiety. So yes, the medical profession is helping us but to what end? So that we don’t feel what is really ailing us? We are living longer (those in developed nations) thanks to technologies, but why are we so afraid of death in general? There are other, so called less civilized cultures, that celebrate the passing of this life into the next. Parties, not funerals are held. We fear death because we are not prepared and what you don’t know, you fear. We are sick because we haven’t the first clue about how our energy bodies work, and how to eat and live harmoniously. We use computers to communicate but we have every ability to astral and mental travel yet don’t even know what those concepts look like. We think we are enlightened but we live in a kind of Dark Age that doesn’t appear to be such so we haven’t the knowledge to rise above it. We are in the controller’s perfect prison because the bars are invisible. We feel sated that we have our technology, medication and the illusion of freedom and this state will continue until we evolve (not just technically, but spiritually). Man’s creative genius should be celebrated but tempered with true spiritual enlightenment with the utmost respect for our environment and each other.

I think, in summary, that our technology has surpassed our spiritual development and there lies the self evident imbalance. And maybe the Amish know that their technology is paired perfectly for where they are at spiritually.

Anne