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While I don’t think the rest of society needs to go to the degree the Amish have, I think there’s a lot we can learn from their thoughtful consideration of technology and whether it makes their life better. Among the HN crowd, I feel we get excited about tech for the sake of tech, but finding an appropriate and healthy skepticism about the effects of our inventions is probably the next level of maturity we need to develop.
> whether it makes their life better
It depends on the definition of "better". The Amish idea of better is serving God, avoiding or repenting sin, and thus attaining salvation.
Most people's idea of good life is pretty different, given the basic axioms it's built upon.
This is why attempts to build a life by imitating various highly admirable spiritual movements mostly fail. To reap the benefits of the lofty ideas and commendable ways of life one needs to consciously* adopt most of the spiritual teachings which have lead to the development of these ideas and ways of life. You either convert to them, or admit that it's too hard to follow the way.
* Amish only accept adult, conscious baptism.
I strongly disagree with this assessment.
First, one can look to the mid-Atlantic Quakers, whose own book of daily guidance is titled "Faith & Practice", which stresses the distinction between how one might behave in the world and what one believes about spiritual and religious matters. For (that branch of the) Quakers, you can live a "good life" without necessarily subscribing to any of their spiritual/religious beliefs.
Secondly, most people's idea of their good life is woefully lacking in self-reflection and self-knowledge. What really makes people happy? Civilizations and cultures across time and space all stress that what really makes people happy rarely involves material well being (although obviously a certain level is required to avoid that being the dominant shaper of the experience of life). Yes, we can admit that various gadgets and access to services brings us some level of joy in life, but that doesn't really negate the fundamental truth that what makes us happy tends to be purpose, not products, tends to be who we have in life, not what we have.
> Civilizations and cultures across time and space all stress that what really makes people happy rarely involves material well being
Well, the texts that survive those cultures stress that. But historically reading and writing were highly controlled political activities. So you should probably consider the political motivation behind those texts. The good life for a peasant farmer in the dark ages would almost certainly involve the accumulation of modest surpluses to be traded for quality of life enhancing material goods. But you can bet your cart horse on the fact that the texts which were being produced by the state - and delivered to the farmer in mandatory weekly Mass - strongly encouraged the redirection of that surplus to the state in the form of tithe or similar in exchange for ‘spiritual access’.
Given that the core religious and philosophical teachings of most of the "great works" over the last 5k years still stand in marked opposition to the interests of the state, and of power and wealth, I'd have to seriously doubt your explanation here.
It's easy to see that the interests of the state (which for Christendom was often coterminal and indistinguishable with the church) would want people to accept their lot, and be accepting of whatever inequities existed at that time and place. But I think you do human philosophy a disservice to suggest that people are incapable of thinking outside of that particular sort of box.
Even with Buddhism, the tradition most easily accused of encouraging people to just accept the way things are, it's actual practitioners and believers have fairly sophisticated explanations of why that's not actually their position at all.
Written statement and actual non-public statement are very different for all those religions you mention. If religion is opposing politics it’s only because it wants to be political power on their own…
Yes. It is like the a corporation puts out it's mission statement. That goal of the document is not to be accurate but to further the interests of the company
And the idealized quakers you're pointing to are essentially a dead religion. There are like 300k quakers globally and 80% of those practice a christianity indistinguishable from the evangelical mainstream of wherever they live (half are in africa). I would be surprised if silent meetings survive another generation, there are already very very few of them.
Quakers succeeded enough in certain ways that their values became mainstream, and they didn't differentiate enough from the surrounding culture to remain separate from it or powerful within it. Our liberal culture owes a lot to the quakers, I have incredible respect for their foundational beliefs, I used to be one, but they don't have much to offer us now.
They could be certifiably extinct, and they would still be an example we could learn from. The Stoics haven't really been much of a thing for a few thousand years, and over the last decade or so a new group of people have been enjoying that philosophy. The notion that faith != practice is a small but valuable contribution that at least branch of the Quakers have left in the world, and whether they continue to exist as a group, that's a valuable thing for all of us.
Also, I'd slightly dispute the "indistinguishable from the evangelical mainstream of wherever they live". There are branches of the Quaker tree that are evangelical, but for the one found in (at least) the mid-Atlantic and Pacific NW, evangelical Christianity is about the last thing I'd compare them to. Protestant mainline, sure.
Personally I don't really relate to the idea that you can pick through the bones of religions to make your own amalgamation. In the case of stoicism sure they're enjoying it but is it doing anything? Are they experiencing life in ways different from and better than they would without it? Is it improving the world according to their own values? For that matter, would it even be recognizable to the classical stoics? It wasn't taught by a living practitioner integrated into that life, how sure are we that it translated.
But anyway if you are going to do this, I don't think you should do it with religions that still do have living practitioners however few. If you value what the quakers are doing go be a quaker, see what the experience has to offer. Or at least wait until its carcass is cold before you harvest its carrion. Trying to extract value from a spiritual tradition you're not willing to live is ghoulish.
Protestantism in general has focused for centuries on what a person does during their life rather than what they believe (in contrast to Catholicism, which tends to focus more on the latter). The Quakers merely took that one step further (they are, after all, a branch of the Protestant subtree of Christianity) by acknowledging that a person could be good without believing (all or even any of) the things that Quakers believe.
It is not picking through or over the bones of Quakerism to grapple with and/or be inspired by this idea.
As for Stoicism, I am not sure that it is required to do anything other than, maybe, bring greater peace and understanding into the lives of those considering its values.
> Protestantism in general has focused for centuries on what a person does during their life rather than what they believe (in contrast to Catholicism, which tends to focus more on the latter)
no no no no no. some progressive protestant faiths perhaps, but the central tenet of most Christian and most Protestants faiths is faith, salvation comes through accepting Jesus Christ as your savior and repenting sin, for which you will be forgiven. It is a topic of debate among theologians as to what that says about works/acts but they don't generally depart from the idea that starting now you get a clean a slate, or as clean as anyone can.
It’s a bit more nuanced, watch this video in spare time https://youtu.be/tzLS4O7YaUg
> Trying to extract value from a spiritual tradition you're not willing to live is ghoulish.
I don't understand this sentiment at all. Identifying positive aspects in existing religions is perfectly fine (I'd even argue there is some amount of virtue to it). How is it possibly ghoulish to see good in other cultures/religions and bring that into your practice? One example that comes to mind are religions where consumption of meat is eschewed. If you find that the rationale that Jainism provides for a vegan lifestyle resonates with you, why can't you incorporate that into your life for those reasons?
Identifying, sure, why not, it's good to expose yourself to ideas.
Again though, and I think this is enough information to understand my position, I simply reject the notion that you can build anything worthwhile by picking and choosing bits you like from the collection of religions spread before you.
They are traditions whose fullness is only experienced as part of a community of other practitioners. By trying to extract an appealing bit and apply it to your own life outside of that context and separated from that practice, you're doing an entirely different thing and imo not what you think you're doing. I simply don't think this practice is worthwhile, valuable, or worthy of respect.
If you don't want to eat meat then don't eat meat. If a jain convinces you not to then that's as good a way to find out as any other. Does that begin to convince you that we are all part of an eternal cycle made up of different substances? Maybe you should convert to jainism!
I don't want to assume anything about you and I'm not really. But I often see this amalgamated spirituality concept coming from non-religious people. The idea that you can take the parts you like from anywhere, leaving the parts you disagree with. I simply don't think you can come out of this with anything meaningful, and in fact I think it's a trap. You'll think you've found wisdom when all you're doing is laundering your beliefs & preferences through the hard-won ancient traditions of the world.
There is courage necessary to commit to a path without possibly being able to understand it or even begin to know where it will lead. When you build your own religion you trade that in for mistaken confidence, and the feeling that you know what all the parts do and why they're there. You're not supposed to know why they're there! You're supposed to just live it.
All religions consist of a blend of faith & practice (there's that Quaker title again). In some, faith is ascendant over practice, and in others practice is considered more important than faith. If you lean toward the practice side of things, then presumably picking practices from different traditions would be less of an issue, so I would tend to conclude that for you, faith is the primary component of religious affiliation.
It is certainly true that feeding at the buffet of world religions isn't the same as being a committed member of a particular religious community. But that doesn't mean that you don't get some value from it, and potentially different value than that found by the more committed members.
I personally take great inspiration from Hesse's Siddhartha, the titular character of which explores a variety of spiritual and religious traditions, finds them all lacking and ends up being most inpired by a river ferry man. But that doesn't mean that the character gained nothing from his experiences with Buddhism, Jainism, ascetism and more.
Choosing and picking parts that you like and building chimera out of it is literally ghoulish. You don’t evolve something this way, you are willy-nilly feeding on something.
amish != quaker, right? so I don't disagree with your comment about Quakers but I don't get what it has to do with the Amish?
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See the last paragraph of the parent of my comment. It wasn't about the Amish in particular, but "spiritual ideals" in general.
You missed whole point that not all people are spiritual or are atheists
Amish people slavishly follow a fucking book written 500 years ago in a language they don't even speak.
What self actualisation can one get from that?
I don't know, can artists get actualization from art when they're reduced to "prompt engineers"?
In practice I am not sure it is so easy to say "no thanks" to your adult baptism and abandon everyone and everything you've known up to that point.
It is difficult, but not unknown. The documentary Devil's Playground features several Amish who permanently left the church.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_Playground_(2002_film)
And also, sadly, many Amish flee physical and sexual abuse: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Amish+abuse&ia=web
Point is it’s virtually impossible without turning your life around and start from nothing in different place
Of course it happens, but I would guess many stay with misgivings.
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Your list of the extreme/woo edges is pretty well-rounded but it's Eurocentric and missing a few famous ones like Aum Shinrikyo, Sabbateans/Frankists, cargo cults, voodoo, etc.
Also putting Islam, Catholicism, and LDS in the same list as the others would be like me putting similarly more mainstream Orthodox Jews in that list, just because of some cases of organ trafficking[0] or a "child rape assembly line"[1] in a few churches, or circumcision (which is viewed as genital mutilation in most of the world). And the careful adoption of technology (which I admire for the same reason as Amish). So not really appropriate to cluster more mainstream with the marginal cults side-by-side like that because it's disproportionate.
According to Charol Shakeshaft, the researcher behind the 2004 US Department of Education study[2] (if you can find a newer one, I'd like to see it), educators likely do 10-100x the abuse as priests. She's appeared on Oprah and NPR.
[0][https://www.smh.com.au/world/organ-trafficking-rabbis-arrest...
[1]https://www.vice.com/en/article/qbe8bp/the-child-rape-assemb...
[2]https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/...
Is it really far out to put catholicism in there? More than 5% of catholic priests in the US between 1950 and 2002 were involved in sexual abuse cases. We know that sexual abuse numbers are vastly underreported and we can imagine that the religious/community aspects make it even more difficult.
In Ireland the church even operated mass graves for the children they neglected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_c...
This ex-Amish TikToker is incredible: https://www.tiktok.com/@yodertoter40?_t=8abRVLmk1ra&_r=1 Some of his content is benign, but he also discusses the epidemic of child abuse (including sexual), rampant sexism, and the general cruelty of Amish culture. They have been regularly desecrating his father's grave, who committed suicide due to Amish abuse.
I think any extremist and isolating culture will bring with it extremist behavior and thinking. People want to believe they have the right answer. Often this leads them to becoming very self-righteous and prideful and also very shame focused. I don't think this is something one would just limit to just this culture or belief system. And as that guy states, that is this just his own personal experience. I too dealt with someone ruining my father's funeral and would probably their grave if he had one and let me tell you, they weren't amish but they were self righteous and crazy. That said, I think the Amish can have quality work, are useful in preserving history but I personally would not want that life. I remember reading Running Out of Time as a child and always somehow associated it with life like the Amish. I know things are different of course but that's what I think of first. A bad association.
> They have been regularly desecrating his father's grave, who committed suicide due to Amish abuse.
What do you mean by "they?" Amish people in general? Or some specific people or group (that you have not identified)?
Consider how you'd feel about saying "they" to refer to some individual transgression by other groups.
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Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents, and especially not sensational ideological generic flamewar tangents. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://gomag.com/article/leaked-emails-from-the-group-that-...
The debate is being deliberately poisoned by promoting a few detransitioners to use against people who are actually happy having transitioned.
> There is a large and vocal community of “detransitioners”
The "large" part is arguably the attention given to them by conservative news organisations who are dying to put them on air, as their existence justifies their existing views without every having to pay attention to the numbers.
> The "large" part is arguably the attention given to them by conservative news organisations who are dying to put them on air
Probably just as much as the unjustifiably large attention given to trans topics by leftist news.
sure, the subject does get a disproportionate amount of coverage (you could argue it is the zeitgeist of the times though). But my point is that you can't battle that by taking an even smaller minority from the already small minority and try to use that to invalidate the claims of the small (greater relative to the smaller of small) minority. This is a tactic that has long been used in media to justify discrimination going back decades so why are we still falling for it?
transition is something for which you are presented the full pros and cons, and given the freedom to choose whether or not you want the effects of it; being born into an amish family is something you have no freedom to choose, and given the things the comment you're replying to is describing as occurring, i think it makes perfect sense to say that the latter is more ethically questionable
>transition is something for which you are presented the full pros and cons
What you describe is how it should be. Unfortunately, that's not how it is[0].
But this is very uncomfortable[1], so we look the other way.
respectfully, i have no intentions of listening to jordan b peterson, in the same way i have no intentions of reading a stormfront article. skimming the transcript, it looks like this person was presented with the full list of effects - is this not what i described? the ground reality is that if you go to your local planned parenthood or family doctor they will tell you all of the side effects you will experience on hrt; i have 3 different packets of information from doing this, all of which stress the ways in which my body will change on hrt i have no anecdotal proof yet for surgery but i can only assume you get told about possible complications that are reasonably expected
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I think your comment would've been stronger without the Stormfront reference. I agree that Peterson is a tiresome character but he's not a Nazi. Putting him in the same box as Stormfront is like putting Bernie in the same box as Stalin.
GP did not put Peterson in a box labeled "Nazis". He put him in a box labeled "people whose opinion I do not care to hear" and stormfront happens to be there too. For all we know Bernie and Stalin could be in that box too.
But conveniently, the example chosen just happens to be one of few well known Nazi/WS publications?
It just happened to be Stormfront, but could just have well been Daily mail, or El Reg?
Bear in mind that the amount of people that are trans are hella tiny and the amount of people that are trans and de-transition are hella tiny of hella tiny. That Jorden Peterson decides to dedicate two entire videos to the subject implies a bit of a bias.
What's interesting is not that there's few de-transitioners.
Rather, what they claim they personally got told before transitioning (very little), what their families were told (unsubstantiated lies about suicide as the alternative to transitioning), as well as how easy and frictionless the formalities of the process were.
> What's interesting is not that there's few de-transitioners.
it is interesting in terms of the amount of press they receive in conservative news feeds.
> Rather, what they claim they personally got told before transitioning (very little), what their families were told (unsubstantiated lies about suicide as the alternative to transitioning), as well as how easy and frictionless the formalities of the process were.
While these examples pose interesting and relevant questions about the seriousness of transitioning I feel like they're often used as a wedge to justify animosity toward the very few, through the bad examples of the very, very few.
When provided without the context of the numbers or any sort of balanced approach it becomes yet another set of misleading angles which have troubling parallels to social outcasts of the past.
> the context of the numbers or any sort of balanced approach
Why is the number of de-transitioners relevant?
If they're too much of a minority to care about, then why is the same not true of the trans community? If, justifiably, you should still care about minorities, then you should care about minorities of minorities too.
de-transitioners aren't the counterpoint to transitioning; they are the counterpoint to dogmatic promotion of transitioning over any caution (or treating any caution as a anti-trans dog-whistle/derailment etc).
The reason this gets a lot of conservative press is that trans is the new weaponized community, so conservatives get accused of transphobia a lot - defensively pointing out hypocrisy in this behavior is all part of the game, but both sides are playing it.
> I feel like they're often used as a wedge to justify animosity toward the very few, through the bad examples of the very, very few
But the "wedge" has its basis in the modus of "the very few", or at least its dogmatic members/allies, otherwise the animosity couldn't take hold. You'll have to explain to me what makes a given de-tranition a "bad examples" versus an inconvenient truth.
> Why is the number of de-transitioners relevant?
Because its often used as a wedge to pour doubt over the process of transitioning entirely which for many transitioners is an effective process.
> then you should care about minorities of minorities too.
Right. We care about people, we care about all of them, so why is it that conservative media over-represents de-transitioners and under-represents people satisfied with their transition? One fits a narrative, the other doesn't, go figure.
> The reason this gets a lot of conservative press is that trans is the new weaponized community, so conservatives get accused of transphobia a lot
conservatives by the very definition of their traditional views of society are often rather transphobic though. I appreciate that its an even harder pill to swallow than homosexuality for traditionalists but you can't pretend that there isn't significant resistance. I appreciate that some trans activists can be rather aggressive online (although that can be said about a lot of twitter regardless), but the suffragette movement also teaches us that simply asking the patriarchy nicely to accept change doesn't necessarily yield results.
> I appreciate that some trans activists can be rather aggressive online
This is the crux of the argument, and why there needs to be some "doubt" in the process. The problem isn't that there are a few aggressive activists, but that aggressive activists are leading the movement, setting the agenda.
The notion of the suffragettes not "simply asking the .. nicely to accept change" can equally said of any terrorist group willing to commit to violence etc to "yield results". I can't see how that relates to suppression of de-transition stories.
> but that aggressive activists are leading the movement, setting the agenda.
I think that's much harder to prove. Also its not like these aggressive activists are in a vacuum. The anti-trans lobby (which is conservative in nature) are AS if not more aggressive, especially given their interests in scaling back trans-rights. In many cases they are seeking to remove the equality and liberty of the trans community where in previous decades they've been entirely ignorant of it. The result is an increasing popularity in bigoted trans tropes where MTFs get accused of being perverts and FTMs are patronised and treated like lost lambs.
> I can't see how that relates to suppression of de-transition stories.
I never said we should suppress de-transition stories but rather present them in the context of the numbers. Conservative news feeds tends to present them in isolation without the context of success stories (which are much greater in number) because they feed into the anti-trans narrative and demonstrate the axe of patriarchy that conservative news feeds have a vested interest in grinding.
> In many cases they are seeking to remove the equality and liberty of the trans community
Can you describe what these are? stuff that flew under the radar before aren't defacto rights.
> present them in isolation without the context of success stories
the question is was the also lack of caution in the case of success, it just happened to turn out when. The criticism here is rolling the dice in the first place, not the probability of success.
> The criticism here is rolling the dice in the first place, not the probability of success
Sure, but a principal component of my complaint is that they're being dishonest about the odds by focusing on the 1 in 1000/10000/100000 case and giving limited airtime to the 999/9999/999999.
I agree that both stories need exposure but lets remind ourselves of who the target audience often is. A child wishing to transition and a parent seeking to reject it. Right now I would argue that conservative sources have a strong parental bias in this generational battle. However I share concerns that people might move through it too quickly, this is why ethical transitions tend to have a relatively high bar (e.g. live as your gender for at least a year prior to any transition). This is why a hot topic right now is access to puberty blockers which is a compromise solution to allow adolescents to postpone puberty (but not transition) until they have a clearer understanding of who they are.
> Can you describe what these are? stuff that flew under the radar before aren't defacto rights.
I feel like we only have to look at somewhere like Florida to see the start of discrimination with issues such as access to healthcare (e.g. Medicaid) for transitioning or freedom of expression, in the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act [1] (colloquially known as the "don't say gay" bill). Note how it means that children who have gay or trans parents will be prevented from being able to talk about their home lives and thus; express themselves.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Parental_Rights_in_Edu...
> they're being dishonest about the odds
Can you demonstrate this is the case - does showcasing a minority case imply that case is common?
> A child wishing to transition and a parent seeking to reject
It doesn't matter what either parent or child thinks. In other context we are quite happy to say a child cannot consent to important things, even with parental consent. This is entirely about the medical gatekeepers.
> hot topic right now is access to puberty blockers
.. and the new thing is to suggest that there is zero risk with chemically postponing puberty - which mirrors the notion that there is zero risk of regret with transitioning, i.e. total suppression of caution/dissent.
It's all misinformation using some boogeyman as justification: "don't worry about X - that's just a lie spread by transphobes/conservatives/republicans etc". But there can be truth in the panic.
>> Can you describe what these are?
> access to healthcare (e.g. Medicaid) for transitioning
I'm not sure there was a standing precedent for this - there are other forms of healthcare also excluded/discriminated against.
> freedom of expression, in the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act
I don't think that is a FoE issue; there is no such right for anyone to interject into general education, plus there are plenty of topics excluded from education. gay/trans parents can talk to their own children as much as they want - what you are suggesting is they should have free and clear access to other peoples children without any oversight from their parents? Does that mean anti-trans/gay parents get to air their own views in from of their children too?
Exactly! Therapist would never push something like that onto mentally ill person with schizophrenia or autism! And child can give fully informed consent, just like with circumcision!
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What lack of religion? It's just a different god.
Take the DEI deans' refusal to participate in the debate on DEI at MIT.
> There is a sense that this is an issue that is kind of above being debated
That is basically the definition of 'sacred.'
https://www.thecollegefix.com/a-debate-on-dei-will-be-held-a...
> I think the decrease in religion and lack of faith in God is a major reason for the pain in modern Western society
I'm never going to agree with you about that. But had you phrased it is "a decline in obvious purpose and a loss of a sense of community (which may once have had religion at its center)", we could maybe find some common ground.
Well, you know, there's a reason opiates are used as a pain killer, but that doesn't mean it's their lack that's causing the pain.
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"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Bullshit.
I'm sorry if this violates HN protocols. But this is an outright lie and needs to be treated as one.
It is not a lie, this is not bullshit.
Please see my other comment with links to evidence of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35348789
this is false.
Sadly, this is not false.
Here's a paper on "gender-affirming" mastectomies from researchers in the US. The cohort studied includes girls as young as 12 years old at the time of surgery: https://journals.lww.com/annalsplasticsurgery/Abstract/2022/...
Also here's a piece from Reuters about rates of "gender-affirming treatment" in children, taken from health insurance data - the section for "top surgery" includes girls as young as 13: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-tran...
outliers.
that's not the recommended treatment.
hormone blockers are.
the right wing debate is however to criminalize the recommended treatment.
Now that I have provided evidence, do you concede that you were incorrect, and that it is a true statement of fact that girls as young as 12 years old are having their breasts sliced off because they say they want to be boys?
again: this is not the norm and not recommended practice. so you are reiterating the exceptional, pathological outlier corner case of medical malpractice.
and you do that in a context which uses this strawman to "justify" hindering and prohibiting well established treatment for severe and medically diagnosed adolescent gender dysphoria, specifically puberty blockers and after a sufficient period of time also cross gender hormones.
and adolescents can consent to that, yes.
why do you argue against this medical best practice like you do?
Are you aware that shortly after the initial publication of SOC8, WPATH issued a set of changes which removed all lower age limits that were previously recommended, including for irreversible surgeries?
See https://web.archive.org/web/20220919141138/https://www.tandf... for the detail of their correction notice.
glad you're bringing this up
the wpath soc is a very accessible document with a very nuanced and careful approach to treatment of adolescents and children, it explicitly deals with the potential fragility of such decisions - and the cases which are very stable early on and benefit from early access, and how to discern them.
they didn't take out the brains or caution. they just took out the inflexible and useless rigid age barriers.
its really worth a read, chapter 6 is the one relevant here
They took out the age limits because they wanted to reduce the risk of those who follow their guidelines being taken to court for malpractice. This is about protecting their own practitioners, not about providing the best care to patients.
See this video of the conference where this was revealed: https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1571999221401948161
These people are harming young children who can't meaningfully consent to such irreversible treatments. And then hiding behind these guidelines so they don't get sued. It's sickening.
they need to protect themselves from the sickening legislation which is threatening medical practitioners with litigation.
religious worldviews drive a legislation to "eradicate transgenders".
the wpath requests a multimodal treatment team to support medical interventions with lasting effects, and the consent of caretakers / parents (unless it's harmful to the dependent adolescent) and age appropriate consent and no measures they are unfit to consent to.
all protection that's needed is in place.
what your attitude is doing is it's forcing gender dysphoric youths to go through the irreversible body changes induced by their puberty.
why? how does getting a beritone voice and a quarterback frame help a trans girl?
how do breasts and a small feminine silhouette help a trans man?
No, they're protecting their members from being sued, as that video revealed.
The "trans child" is a medically and politically constructed entity, that has arisen from the rhetoric of activists. Children cannot meaningfully consent to these "gender affirming" medical interventions that will scar them for life, make them infertile and lose sexual function, and have an impact far beyond anything they can comprehend.
I think you've made your point clear and I think you are not open to have your view changed.
I personally know trans people, living happy lives 20+ years into their transition, and all of them knew early on, and all of them had benefitted from and wished for much earlier access to gender affirming healthcare and back in the days early access simply did not exist, because of the FUD and pseudo protective position you propagate.
my thoughts and prayers go out to you.
> traditional Catholics
Yeah the people who help enable the largest child abuse ring in history are not 'fine' people. They literally support an organization that IS PROVEN to SYSTEMATICALLY protect sexual predictors and have done so for 100s of years.
>Yeah the people who help enable the largest child abuse ring in history are not 'fine' people.
You're right. It's horrible what public school teachers are allowed to get away with...wait, that's not who you were talking about? Better check your numbers again.
Unlike catholic churches, school system had mandatory reporting of sexual abuse for years. And if a teacher was accused of sexual abuse, it was not an actual norm to move him to another position with access to children.
>if a teacher was accused of sexual abuse, it was not an actual norm to move him to another position with access to children.
You don't say...
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/crime_courts/2017/03/22...
https://www.sfreporter.com/news/coverstories/2018/01/03/pass...
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-10-19-me-6252-s...
See there's a certain group that just loves to harp on about the catholics (and yes they certainly should be ashamed and given every legal penalty for what they did) but want to give other groups a pass. They like to pretend that this sort of coverup isn't a systematic issue whenever you get a large group. And they like to ignore all the cases where female teachers have "relationships" with their students....
https://www.foxnews.com/us/florida-teacher-accused-sexual-re...
https://nypost.com/2023/03/25/nyc-teacher-accused-of-sex-wit...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10984483/Female-tea...
Shall I go on? There are easily hundreds of unique cases that I could link. Somehow though I suspect that you will fall into the usual pattern of dismising these all as being from "bad" sources or say that it's just not the same...somehow.
Catholics actual policy was to move sexual abusers to different parishes and not tell anyone. That is the actual norm. And that was not just a new thing. Catholics as organizations run pretty atrocious institutions (orphanages, schools) where kids were routinely abused.
Yes, catholic church is waaay worst then school system in this regard. And largely for systematic reasons - the expectation of obeisance and expectation that one should protect the institution make them more suspectible to abuse.
The catholic cover ups were not just outliers. They were result of lack of transparency and of impossibility to challenge superiors.
Moreover mandatory reporting within school syatem is an actual law. This alone makes the two system different.
>Yes, catholic church is waaay worst then school system in this regard. And largely for systematic reasons - the expectation of obeisance and expectation that one should protect the institution make them more suspectible to abuse.
Hmm...
https://mercatornet.com/a-horrifying-report-on-sexual-abuse-...
https://www.wect.com/2020/08/10/part-one-cover-up-culture-we...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/has-media-ignored-sex-abuse-in-...
https://letsspeakup.com/cover-up-practices-of-school-officia...
https://www.mvskokemedia.com/the-cover-ups-continue-at-morri...
https://www.city-journal.org/abuse-in-schools-no-conspiracy-...
Not systematic? Not the norm?
I'm just punching words into google and pulling up results. I could go on and on with this. Funny how you want to just brush this off.
https://www.news9.com/story/6119d3000078b30be8872b0d/-12-gir...
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-01-05/lausd-an...
https://www.ocpathink.org/post/child-abuse-cover-up-alleged-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/nyregion/babylon-high-sch...
I wonder why there is so much vehemence about one and not the other? I'll say it softly. Could it be because one is religious and the other is secular? I wonder why the public schools get a pass when they've been doing the exact same things?
> with educated elites
Which educated elites? Was there a survey? Did you talk to some? What did they say when pushed on this?
I am concerned that you have formed a view of a fictional person that is an amalgam of newspaper headlines and think pieces that were designed for clicks.
No there is not. This is drivel. Laughable nonsense.
You're worked up about the current manufactured bogeyman of the present. This too shall pass.
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Such stories exist for literally all medical interventions. Do you know how many elderly people deeply regret elective surgeries like hip or knee replacements? How many have tragic stories and want to make sure others don't fall into the same trap?
The major difference between these cases is that the regret rate for transitioning is way, way lower than almost all other medical interventions. This is because we have a long process before anything permanent is done. If you wish to pay so much attention to de-transitioners, will you also look at the data and pay attention to the many, many more people who regret other medical interventions?
Should we ban knee and hip replacements?
For reference, can you give rough percentages of regret after a sex change vs an average medical intervention?
The NIH has done a meta-analysis of studies and came up with a regret rate of around 1% with a 95% confidence interval:
> The pooled prevalence of regret among the TGNB population after GAS was 1% (95% Confidence interval [CI] <1%–2%; I2 = 75.1%) (Fig. (Fig.2).2). The prevalence for transmasculine surgeries was <1% (CI <1%–<1%, I2 = 28.8%), and for transfemenine surgeries, it was 1% (CI <1%–2%, I2 = 75.5%) (Fig. (Fig.3).3). The prevalence of regret after vaginoplasty was of 2% (CI <1%–4%, I2 = 41.5%) and that after mastectomy was <1% (CI <1–<1%, I2 = 21.8%) (Fig. (Fig.44).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/
As a comparison, this study (which is not a meta-analysis, I couldn't quickly find one of those) for knee replacement surgery regret after one year had around 18%:
> Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is a common and effective procedure that is expected to be performed in increasing numbers in the future [1, 2]. Previous studies have shown 6–30% of patients are dissatisfied after the surgery, both in the presence and in the absence of postoperative complications [3–12]. In Sweden, about 8% of patients without documented complications are non-satisfied [13–15].
> Of the 348 patients who responded to a letter asking if they were satisfied or dissatisfied with their surgery, 61 (18%) reported discontent.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6961288/
The latter number is of course a lot less reliable, but you'll find something similar - definitely above 1% - for most interventions.
yes! and of that 1% more than 90% report that the unhappiness is driven by societal factors: rejection and oppression by their families or their faith communities or both, or at the workplace.
no. the "DeTrAnSiTiNinG" narrative is a bogeyman narrative to narrowly get above the 50% needed in first past the post votes, with fake "concern" about "parental rights" which are purportedly "taken from concerned Christian parents". That subreddit is an artificial cesspool to feed that narrative in a context which is much less restrictive in its policies than HN. the trans communities in the US are in panicking paralysis for becoming the scapegoat.
the reality is that treatment of gender dysphoria according to current standards of care is nothing less than a blessing for those few adolescents who happen to fall into that narrow diagnostic corridor. And they get _no_ surgeries if treated in a responsible setting. they get puberty blockers. the adolescent is reviewed and accompanied in the whole family situation to assess for potential psychopathologies (emotional abuse, munchausen by proxy, in simple terms: is this real or are the parents nuts) and _only then_ and after a long period of confidence building the adolescent grows into making permanent decisions about their life, as a then young adult.
those adolescents who are lucky enough to receive such treatment at an early age have the chance to transition into a new life in their identified-with gender as completely inconspicuous well integrated happy adults.
for gender dysphoric youths it's the best thing since sliced bread.
Please define what you mean by "large" in this context.
Tens of thousands of people organizing to discuss the life-destroying issue seems pretty large. Considering ranitidine (Zantac) was recalled for a small potential of causing cancer, it's odd that such documented negative experiences has not resulted in a banning of procedures (at least for children) until far more research is conducted. But hey, that's what happens when politics overtakes science.
There is large and vocal conservative community trying to create hysteria over trans people and their transition.
The mistakes the trans activists made were going after the kids, and demanding access to each and every female-only space for males. If they'd done neither of those things, the conservatives would have nothing to say at all.
Frankly, this is a lie. The only ones going for kids were anti trans activists - because attacking trans kids is easier.
This has nothing to do what trans activists done or not done. This was about conservatives needing an ennemy and feeling disgust over trans people existing.
It is not a lie. It is an observation of the specific topics being criticized by conservatives, and also by radical feminists.
this is a counterfactual misrepresentation of gender dysphoria and the medical community recommendation for it's treatment in adolescents beyond tanner stage 2.
the misrepresentation is part of Mr. Trump's talking point to "eradicate transgenderism" and it's dividing families from gender dysphoric family members and driving individuals into suicide.
stop spreading it. https://www.wpath.org/soc8
I'd be ok with an "Amish" inspired web development movement. Traditional HTML backed by CGI-BIN served by Apache on a Linux or BSD server would be great.
You will never get two people to agree on when web technological progress should have been frozen.
Here is an essay that essentially address this: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
Plus people have rose-tinted goggles. I see people saying now they're sad Flash Web sites are dead. What? Everyone hated Flash Web sites. That is like saying you miss squeegee men in New York. You might not like the means taken to get rid of them or what New York has become but nobody actually liked that experience.
Miss flash websites? I don't really see that opinion very often. Missing flash on the other hand it fairly common because it was a tool that lowered barriers to entry for animation and game development that doesn't seem to have a good replacement in the current web.
Hey, right here some people are saying they’re good. You just had to wait a bit
The ones that miss Flash websites are the ones that learned to use flash and nothing else. That was their art tool that they could use and now they have nothing. I have a friend that still complains about it.
Did you ever created a simple arcade game?
There is indead still nothing, that beats flash in this regard.
And flash games were somewhat popular with users as well.
I didn't do anything in flash since it cost money and I had none at the time. I was making games with other tools and programming languages. Played a lot of flash games too. The homepages made purely in flash was realy annoying though.
"The homepages made purely in flash was realy annoying though."
Most of them, yes. Because they were "programmed" by people not good in programming or UX design. But flash enabled even newbs to build awesome stuff - and it had powertools for the pros. The workflow I had back then, I never found again in any other tool. So it has nothing to do with not wanting to learn something new - there still isn't something alike. And that is quite sad, despite the flaws of the flash player and adobe.
(oh. and flash was for free for students and also easy to pirate)
I'm more of a programmer type, had already worked with assembler on Atari and was used to that way of working.
Flash sites were at least usable and otherwise easily disabled, unlike the JavaShit hellscape we find ourselves in today.
No they weren’t. They were much worse, weren’t accessible, and often blared music and sound effects to boot.
I think the <blink> element is where we we should freeze it!
Then you will be happy to learn that modern browser vendors all decided to freeze the blink element. :-)
Comment was deleted :(
<marquee>
“The peak of your civilization. I say ‘your civilization’ because as soon as we started thinking for you, it became our civilization, which is, of course, what this is all about.”
— Agent Smith, The Matrix, 1999
I think we can all agree that the web never got better than this. [1] It's been downhill ever since.
I thought it was going to be something fun like Hamster Dance. This is... Dark.
Needs a "This site best viewed in Netscape Navigator 3" banner and a visitors counter to be peak Internet for me.
>You will never get two people to agree on when web technological progress should have been frozen.
I am fairly sure most of us can agree with: Not yet.
What is this web technology progress you refer to?
And yet the Amish have figured out how to make it work.
It works because they just outsorced things like defense or healthcare.
Is easy to brag about how you don't need technology when somewhere a team of extremely sophisticated machines are deployed pointing towards the sky to save the day in case that you would be bombed. An entirely independent Amish nation would be probably eaten by their neighbors or by the market in months. More people died in the Ukranian war in a year than the whole remaining Amish population.
And their life style proven to be very fragile acting against things like Covid. They suffer also still from occasional outbreaks of Measles and Polio [1] that were eliminated in the rest of US by the use of vaccines. Living in a different century can seem idyllic, but it has a price.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid-amish-idUSL2...
Yeah I see a lot of people on the right whine about "home steaders".
Well I read Lucky Luke as a kid and guess who ended up saving the settlers every single time? The cavalry. Sent by the Feds in Washington.
Is it working? Give "Amish abuse" a search in google, limiting people's access to communication can also make it hard for them to get help or to realize that they have access to other options a few miles up the road.
Oh yeah? What Web sites are they hosting?
Those were the days. Slackware in a box of floppy disks. Now where the heck is 6 of 14?
It doesn't really matter where #6 is, #4 and #8-9 are corrupt anyway.
I don't know why, but I could see this as a youtube comedy sketch.
> finding an appropriate and healthy skepticism about the effects of our inventions is probably the next level of maturity we need to develop
This happens automatically with age. The HN crowd is older now. Just look at the skepticism around AR and VR. The problem is there’s no actual exploration and experimentation paired with the skepticism.
Job of the young: discover and be blinded by the new
Job of the old: remind the young that there's little new under the sun, and a cost to everything.
Speaking as an older person observing peers, the problem with older people in this case is that lazy stereotypes and terrible assumptions replace discovery and actual verification.
The end result is “get off my lawn” and “new things annoy me”
> Among the HN crowd, I feel we get excited about tech for the sake of tech
I feel like HN has a healthy skepticism about IoT at least. We seem to generally agree that fewer devices should have internet access.
Yeah, HN is ironically the most tech-skeptical crowd I've frequented. Maybe it's a part of the libertarianism inherent in hacker culture, which is less diluted in HN compared to other platforms due to a lesser influx of new non-techy users.
I've always thought that much of the skepticism is due to working in the industry, so HN'ers know how the sausage is made.
Honestly there is also a lot of hipster contrarianism in it. Like the comment saying the web was better when everything was served from cgi-bin.
And crypto thank God...
It is good that different groups in society behave differently. People not using technology like hunter-gatherers and Amish provide safety net, and people jumping to everything new are the explorers. Both extremes are needed, and HN crowd becoming skeptical of technology, or Amish using new rechnology would make them the same as average, and be less useful for the society.
They're not necessarily against tech - but all the tech they have must be self-maintainable without outside engagement. So you could imagine a contemporary Amish-like culture around right-to-repair but it would still be very low-tech.
The Amish are also very wise to separate peacefully/voluntarily from others based on values... decreasing conflict/trouble/tensions.
https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/child-sexual-abuse-amish
> Child Sexual Abuse in the Amish Community: A Hidden Epidemic
Turns out, a closed-off, hierarchical community isn't something to emulate.
Doesn't help that a lot of them only get an eighth grade education:
https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2012/03/professor-william-fi...
> The Amish community’s adherence to a lifestyle more typical of the 19th century, which includes driving horse-drawn buggies and living in homes with no electricity, is driven by religious beliefs. But the Amish’s adherence to educating their children in one-room schoolhouses, and then only through the eighth grade, is largely the result of a 1972 Supreme Court decision, Yoder v. Wisconsin. This 40-year-old ruling has “frozen them in place” and threatens the younger generation’s ability to earn a living in an increasingly complex society, argues Professor of Economics William A. Fischel in a recent paper.
https://www.amishheritage.org/services/education/
> In 1972, the United States Supreme Court decided in Wisconsin v. Yoder that Amish children do not have the right to any future other than one inside the Amish Church.
https://lancasteronline.com/features/former-amish-want-to-ov...
So it seems their "thorough consideration of technology" is in the context of a culture that's not going to change because it would threaten the established hierarchy. That's the threat, here: Something like this might start out well-intentioned, but once the institution is in place, well, any excuse will serve a tyrant, eh? Any excuse will serve the organization.
All that says is there’s no such thing as utopia. They have problems like anyone else. Our society is full of sexual abuse, violence in the home, murder, suicide, drug addicts in the streets, valueless people, money obsession, loneliness, ignorance and stupidity, etc. Our institutions are corrupt in many ways, wealth is power, and we are just as hierarchal as any other organization because it’s unavoidable.
So I think it’s unfair to dismiss them because they have sexual abuse in their communities and have values other than education. They don’t want to change much but it’s not a conspiracy to maintain the hierarchy. It’s to maintain their way of life that they’ve found creates meaningful, stable, happy lives with authentic connections to each other. We lack this as a society so much that we have multi-billion dollar industries trying to bottle it up and sell it to our desperate people.
They don’t do everything right but they get a lot right.
> So I think it’s unfair to dismiss them because they have sexual abuse in their communities
It's fair to dismiss them because they have an institutional habit of covering it up.
> and have values other than education.
This is wrong. Not educating someone keeps them under your control. That's abusive.
> It's fair to dismiss them because they have an institutional habit of covering it up.
Well, they take care of it themselves and don't get the legal system involved. They have their own ways of dealing with it. They don't support it and it's not like they're actively facilitating it. You may agree or disagree with this but there are many different communities in the USA that prefer to act this way.
> This is wrong. Not educating someone keeps them under your control. That's abusive.
They get enough education. I'd wager most of them are better educated than the majority of public school attendees, most which graduate with a < 8th grade level of reading and match ability. I think we should look at our own broken system more before criticizing them and holding them to a different standard.
> Well, they take care of it themselves and don't get the legal system involved. They have their own ways of dealing with it.
They allow it to run rampant. That's explicitly called out in the article I linked to.
> They get enough education.
They don't. Again, that's explicitly called out in the articles I linked to.
At this point I can only conclude you're posting in bad faith.
That's a single article with an agenda.
> Turns out, a closed-off, hierarchical community isn't something to emulate.
Very true. There is a quote, often misattributed, about how power corrupts. To lazy to google it, sorry.
> Doesn't help that a lot of them only get an eighth grade education:
That is 5 years more than some ultraorthodox jews get, check out link [1] here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35336142
> That is 5 years more than some ultraorthodox jews get, check out link [1] here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35336142
Proof that happy religious communities are all different, but ugly, controlling, abusive groups share many of the same characteristics.
I recently learned that the Bible wasn't translated into Russian until the 19th century.
The Church/elders always go for information control.
Russians peasants could not read and write at that time. Educated minority could read and write ... and those actually learned foreign languages too. Even by the start of WWI, the illiteracy in Russia was super high.
You have to be open too all -- like a public toilet.
I completely agree. I don't really understand the hurry?
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For all the flaws that others have pointed out, I kind of like the idea of the entirety of industrial civilization crumbling to the ground in a dirty messy heap over decades - and the armish being none the wiser. Just continuing on as normal. Maybe only occasionally stopping to say "I don't see as many planes as I used too... oh well back to work."
The story mentions many of them worked for the local greenhouse, so that's not a very realistic fantasy.
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I would actually love to become Amish. Is it a community that outsiders can easily join? Or do you have to be born into it?
I think a lot of people romanticize the Amish... they are pretty much an oppressive cult with quaint appearance to the outside that does not carry over to the inside. The Amish in my former area were infamous for puppy mills[1], but there were also talks of rampant sexual abuse and domestic abuse[2]. There are a lot of problems in closed-off communities and they can be rife with abuse. While working at the hospital I often interacted with Amish patients, many were there because of drunk driving (they were racing buggies).
If you want to embrace their ideas of simplicity, you can do so without needing to join them. Plant a garden and grow some of your own food. Choose minimal spartan furnishing for your home. Sew your own clothes. Learn woodworking.
[1]: https://www.stoponlinepuppymills.org/amish-puppy-mills/ [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IUz0zCiVLI
From https://lancasterpa.com/amish/amish-frequently-asked-questio...
> “Can an outsider join the Amish church/community?”
> “A local Amishman recently remarked, “You do not need to move here to adopt a lifestyle of simplicity and discipleship. You can begin wherever you are.” Yes, it is possible for outsiders, through conversion and convincement, to join the Amish community, but we must quickly add that it seldom happens. First, the Amish do not evangelize and seek to add outsiders to their church. Second, outsiders would need to live among the Amish and demonstrate a genuine conversion experience and faith that results in a changed lifestyle. Third, it is extremely difficult for anyone who has not been raised without electricity, automobiles, and other modern conveniences to adjust to the austere lifestyle of the Amish. And to truly be a part of the Amish community one would need to learn the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect.”Hey, if it's really something you would love so much learning Pennsylvania Dutch and giving up electricity are no big deal. Don't let your dreams be dreams.
> I would actually love to become Amish
I hope you're an adult male. They don't treat women and children well, and their justice system is designed to suppress crimes rather than prosecute them[1].
1. https://www.amishheritage.org/this-devastating-lawsuit-destr...
Ask yourself: Would you like to be devout Christian? Because that's what the Amish are. If you oppose abortion and are generally a vaccine skeptic, you'll fit right in. This ex-Amish helps Amish escape the community: https://www.tiktok.com/@yodertoter40. He talks about trying to visit an Amish church, and how they forbid people with tattoos, to give you an idea of how ascetic they are.
I think what you really want is to live off grid in a homestead. You don't need to be Amish for that.
> I think what you really want is to live off grid in a homestead.
What led you to believe this is the true desire of a total stranger on the internet?
Adopting a primitive lifestyle is a sentiment that shows up a lot on HN; converting to Christianity does not.
63% of Americans self-report as Christian. Many denominations are as devout as the Amish (though they lack the aversion to modern technology).
Why do you assume the need to convert?
Amish is a religious sect tied up with an ethnicity. The religion is a deeply integrated part of amishness and amish people wound never consider a non-christian to be amish.
Devout Christians in tech are extremely rare in my experience. HN is a tech news site. Have you experienced otherwise?
I was thinking, "hm, why are there no Black Amish", then I was thinking "ah there are Rastafari", and now I am putting "Amish fighting a Rastafari" to midjourney.
I'm curious on HN's thoughts about why it is that Amish(and similar groups)have succeeded where hippie type communes failed? They've been going strong for centuries while most of the non-religious equivalents fell apart quickly. The stated goals seem to be similar to me in terms of them being mostly self-sufficient communities that look out for each other
> why it is that Amish(and similar groups)have succeeded where hippie type communes failed?
They manifest characteristics that enable stable communities. Sex within marriage, no divorce, marriage and sex for procreation, reliance on extended family and local community, no industrialization/urbanization, social isolation, religion as unifying principle. Hippy communities on the other hand tended to be built around sexual promiscuity or at least lack boundaries around sex and marriage, and subsequently suffer commensurate relationship/family breakdown. Not to mention that hippy communes are converts to agrarian life and when the going gets tough there’s no millennia of continuity to rely on but there is the memory of the city and the supermarket.
Most of the (many) histories of hippy communes that I've read suggest a very different reason for their (typical) breakdown.
Most/many of them were founded by 1 (sometimes 2) relatively wealthy individuals who had the means (often familial) to acquire land and do the initial capital purchases necessary to get things off the ground. When/if these individuals lose interest in the commune, let alone leave, the implicit agreement that bound the community together starts to fall apart.
The communities that have survived for decades after being founded in the 68-75 period almost uniformly do not have this property. Twin Oaks (VA) is perhaps the prime example.
You could cite The Farm (TN) as a counter-example, but that would mostly be a diversion - The Farm survived because its founder (Steven Gaskin) never lost interest in or left the commune.
Ha. The reason so many stay is because it is more difficult than ever to leave.
Think about it. Technology has left these people a literal century-plus behind. The longer the Amish exist, the higher the rate of retention will be.
Furthermore, once you leave the Amish community, you are forever renounced by your family and friends. So you're left adrift without any support in a world that has left you behind.
This leads to the question you seem to have ignored. Is longevity itself a positive trait? If an abusive cult existed for hundreds of years, would you call it a success? Hacker News readers should place a higher value on innovation and less on blind faith in tradition, in my opinion.
https://abcnews.go.com/2020/amish-teens-tempted-drop/story?i...
I've lived next to Amish briefly and have friends that still live among them as non Amish.
Im not going to argue with you because its just going to be anecdotal, but I can tell you that the kids are not brainwashed if thats what you're referring to. The "shunning" is also exaggerated. It looks like you just watched "Amish mafia" on TV. Most stay Amish because it really isn't a bad system at all.
They use plenty of technology, its just approved by the community after careful consideration.
They have their problems but their focus on the family is vastly superior to most of the modern day degeneracy devoted to chasing whatever fleeting pleasure is popular at the moment. They will be around for a very very long time.
> Furthermore, once you leave the Amish community, you are forever renounced by your family and friends
This is not true. Watch Devil's Playground for counter-examples.
Your whole comment ignores seemingly the entirety of human history other than the (sanitized) history of Western Europe and the US.
> Sex within marriage, no divorce, marriage and sex for procreation, reliance on extended family and local community, no industrialization/urbanization, social isolation, religion as unifying principle.
All of these things have been present in the most war-torn and unstable societies (ex: much of the Middle East, some of the areas around present-day China and Russia).
> Hippy communities on the other hand tended to be built around sexual promiscuity or at least lack boundaries around sex and marriage, and subsequently suffer commensurate relationship/family breakdown.
There are cultures that existed for hundreds of years without the concept of monogamous marriage. Monogamy doesn't guarantee familial stability, nor does promiscuity. Domestic partnership (what we would call marriage) was a familial and economic relationship, not always a guarantee of sexual exclusivity.
The second-largest empire in history, the Mongol Empire, had an enormous amount of polygamy and sexual promiscuity.
The Ottoman Empire, Ethiopian Empire, and many other large (and long-lasting) empires practiced polygamy.
Even ignoring all of that, in the US, most people cheat on their significant others[1]. There's no reason to think that's a modern phenomenon, either.
1. https://today.yougov.com/topics/society/articles-reports/202...
What a strange post. You realize those empires that practiced polygamy were brutally oppressive, yes? Women didn't so much have a choice as in forced into polygamy because they were treated as property and that's about as far away from the hippy movement as you can get when it comes to individual freedoms.
> You realize those empires that practiced polygamy were brutally oppressive, yes?
OP was talking about stability, not oppression. The Amish are oppressive, though not seemingly in a brutal way. Many societies with similar values to the Amish were also extremely oppressive.
Regardless, I gave examples of incredibly brutal societies that valued monogamous marriage and sex for procreation. My whole point is that these variables have nothing to do with whether a society is stable, but it's also true that they have nothing to do with whether a society is nice to live in.
Afaik, being married as an Amish can be quite oppressively too. No way out if your husband beats you. No divorce means exactly that - no matter how bad it gets, victim gets blamed.
You think the Amish or the early Mormons treated their women better?
Most polygamous societies were still predominantly monogamous - the majority of men had only one wife, multiple wives was generally something reserved for the wealthy elite. For example, even at the height of Mormon polygamy in Utah, only 15-20% of Mormon families were polygamous, the other 80%+ of Mormons (mostly) believed in it but didn’t practice it.
I think the argument is that putting constraints on individual sexual freedom promotes social stability in the long-run; the existence of constraints is more important than their precise details.
The Mongol Empire is the last example you want to use about stability.
Regardless of whether sex was monogamous in most ancient societies, it was nonetheless ceremonialized, (somewhat) feared and (to the extent possible) regulated. The rules changed, but the presence of rules was consistent. It's not easy to find a culture that took sex as lightly as ours. But it's also not easy to find a culture that believed the Earth orbits the Sun. Ancient cultures often believed in some form of vitalism and had spiritualistic beliefs about the consequences of sexual activity. Those practices are not so easily mimicked by converts raised in the atomic age.
From your article:
>88% of women and 73% of men say kissing another person while in a monogamous relationship is cheating
It doesn't follow that most people actually have sex outside their exclusive relationships.
I would agree that the post you replied to places an excessive emphasis on sex. Hippie communes that I've examined often failed to effectively manage expectations regarding the work required and the quality of life that could be achieved.
My ancestors are Mennonites. I visited them in Missouri when I was fifteen. There is something appealing about their lifestyle, but after experiencing it for a couple of weeks, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't choose it.
> It's not easy to find a culture that took sex as lightly as ours
Classical Greece springs to mind. Possibly high Roman culture also.
Neither Greece nor Rome is a valid example. There were not the restrictions we're used to. But taboos abounded, particularly e.g. the stigma against cunnilingus. The Romans in particular gave us the phrase Quis custodiet ipsos custodes which was motivated by some noblemen's jealous guardianship of their wives.
> The Mongol Empire is the last example you want to use about stability.
Pax Mongolica was a thing.
The Pax Mongolica was more short-lived than many hippie communes! In fact the original Kaliflower Commune persists in San Francisco, some 56 years after its founding, while the Mongols were unified in the 1210s and fell into civil war (the Toluid Civil War) in 1260.
As was the Yuan Dynasty.
> All of these things have been present in the most war-torn and unstable societies (ex: much of the Middle East, some of the areas around present-day China and Russia).
No, they have been condemned for females and tolerated for the more powerful.
> There are cultures that existed for hundreds of years without the concept of monogamous marriage.
Yeah, and then they died out.
Did any survive?
Polygyny still exists, and is still legal, in over 50 countries worldwide-most of those are Muslim-majority countries, but there are also some non-Muslim majority countries which have legal polygyny for their Muslim minority (e.g. India, Singapore). While Christianity traditionally opposes polygyny, it is popular among some Africans who mix Christianity with their traditional practices, and some Christian-majority African countries have legalised it due (in part) to pressure from those Christians.
I forget how many wives the Emir of Dubai has had-a few, simultaneously. From what some of his ex-wives have said, he’s an abusive husband, but Dubai sure survives. And while most marriages in Dubai are monogamous, I’m sure he’s not the only man in Dubai with multiple simultaneous legal wives.
> Sex within marriage, no divorce, marriage and sex for procreation, reliance on extended family and local community, no industrialization/urbanization, social isolation, religion as unifying principle.
Do Amish women have the ability to attain financial independence? If not, I would add that to the list.
Do Amish men have that ability?
All evidence says no, they don't. Their financial situation is very tied to the entire community.
You think women not being financially independent is a stabilizing factor for communities? I can't tell if this is sarcasm or if your mindset is stuck in the 1800's just the like Amish's is...
Descriptive =/= prescriptive.
The Christian living aspect is definitely the major part of it. There are also over 100 Hutterite colonies, many that have survived for over a hundred years with new ones getting planted all the time all over SD, ND, some in MN and many in Alberta and nearby provinces each with roughly 100 people or so. Hutterites are essentially Amish who embrace technology for farming, manufacturing, etc. Their origin story is a bit different but they are both Anabaptist Christian sects with Germanic-language roots.
... and for those who don't know and are too lazy or busy to look it up, "anabaptist" means "adult baptism" - the idea that you did not need to be baptised as a child in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.
How many communes with this kind of "Christian living" have failed, and how many have succeeded? Since you know it's "definitely the major part of it" you'll surely have data beyond anecdotes, right?
This is a religious based commune that fell apart in about a decade, something that has happened again and again. The difference is that religious communes started earlier, so we've forgotten most of the numerous failed attempts.
Comparatively we can meet people who lived in failed hippy communes, but the successful ones aren't likely to interact with you.
> This is a religious based commune that fell apart in about a decade
They didn't fall apart, exactly. They're still living as Amish and they're moving to be closer to their families:
> “We wanted there to be an Amish community here, but seems like everybody Amish is more from Ohio or Pennsylvania, where there are more trees,” Rudy Borntreger, the community’s bishop, or elder, explained. “I think it's so open, nobody wants to join us. Now more people decided to move back to Iowa and Minnesota, so kind of for unity's sake.”
The article mentions the main reason people left may be Rudy himself.
Yeah, I would strongly challenge the premise of the question.
Is a temporary commune even a failure? Is a long lived one necessarily a success?
Are there 50 year old hippie communes we haven't heard of?
>Are there 50 year old hippie communes we haven't heard of?
Yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farm_(Tennessee)
There are probably others too.
Twin Oaks (VA) is probably the other prime example.
And then of course, the kibbutzim in Israel, though almost all of them have radically transformed themselves since they were founded.
The Farm only lasted 12 years as a commune, before switching over to people earning their own income and paying rent. Still perhaps comparable to the amish though.
It still calls itself a commune.
Well if your commune is a runaway success I guess you just become a communist country.
They didnt make the girls do everything while the guys just smoked their lives away.
The amish men actually do back breaking work, which instill a sense of sharing. They also organize in locked couples, smaller structures more efficient to avoid drama, and focus on reproduction: the hippies cant reproduce, they cant even focus on one child, let alone agree on who will have to be responsible for parenting.
The idea the hippies had was that all structure was stupid. The idea the Amish have is that there s only one old structure worth living by. Ofc the Amish will survive and the hippies dillute in chaos: the first preserve entropy to a minimum, the second pushes it to a maximum.
There's an even simpler way to describe it: the goal of the hippies didnt seem to be self preservation of their structure, while the Amish have an absurd obsession with it.
Indoctrination to a rigid set of beliefs (often from birth), backed by threats of shaming or shunning, are more difficult to leave behind.
Also sex abuse and the normalization of controlling behavior are more common in these self-isolating communities, and even more impactful on a person who has little to no contact with the outside world.
So you're saying sexual abuse is more prevalent in the Amish community than in the greater society?
What are you basing that claim on?
Those show that sexual abuse happens in the Amish community. That is not in question. You can make that claim about almost any community after a certain size and be correct.
They don't show it happens more often compared to the rest of society. And with the exception of NPR (somewhat), I find your sources questionable.
Even if it’s not more common, young people in isolationist authoritarian communities are literally more trapped than victims in the greater society. I’m not sure how this observation offends.
I'm not sure where you saw any offense.
I'm asking you to backup your claim and you interpret that as offense?
> young people in isolationist authoritarian communities are literally more trapped than victims in the greater society.
I'd say victims of sexual abuse find themselves trapped and isolated in general. As to whether Amish victims are more trapped than non-Amish victims, I haven't seen any evidence to point one way or the other, so I won't make a conclusion about that.
You are leveling non-trivial claims against some folks so you need to offer commensurate evidence to substantiate those claims.
I think that really depends on how you define religious and commune. There are lots of informal communes (hippy or otherwise) in the 5-20 person range all over the United States that have nothing to do with religion. More than enough people for a small homestead that shops mostly at a supermarket, but not nearly enough to have a few dozen men to spare to put up a barn which is kind of the bare minimum for sustenance communes like the Amish.
There's also a century of history of large kibbutzim in Israel that are somewhat religious but fundamentally organized around agriculture or industry.
Twin Oaks in Virginia has been going for over half a century, and other such places exist all over the US.
Israel has religious and secular kibbutzim as well.
Some hippy communes failed, or just decided to break up, but religious communes fail as well.
You said it yourself: Religion.
People absolutely require a system of metaphysics. It is one of the most basic and natural needs of mankind; it is how all men come to account for the world and their existence in the world. People in general have little time for philosophy, so a folk metaphysics must be simple and easy to understand, and must be connected to a straightforward system of moral principles.
Communal hippie living is a lifestyle that one typically grows out of.
The Amish -- like the Hasidic Jews, and like various other religious movements -- are an essentially metaphysical community. The metaphysical principle comes first, and the rest follows. The way they live life is wholly on account of how they interpret their religion's moral principles and strictures.
It's easy to leave one lifestyle for another. Not so easy to leave a religion that you were raised in, and which you have built your entire world-view around. There's a certain IQ threshold for that, as it requires the de novo construction of a new metaphysics.
> There's a certain IQ threshold for that
Um, you might want to check the average IQ for Ashkenazi Jews, Hassidic Jews are primarily Ashkenazi.
> People in general have little time for philosophy, so a folk metaphysics must be simple and easy to understand
Yah, it's quite clear you know basically nothing of Judaism if you think their metaphysics are "simple and easy to understand".
>There's a certain IQ threshold for that, as it requires the de novo construction of a new metaphysics.
I am sure that a lot of atheists are flattered hearing this, but come on, they heard about it online, or even from the community's conniptions about outsiders. For that matter "what if what I see with my eyes is what is real" does not take a big I.Q. to think of.
Maybe but our perception should not be assumed to be correct.
The mathematical physicist Chetan Prakash proved a theorem that I devised that says: According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness.
I'd be surprised if our eyes give us a truthful perception of reality. They give us a functional understanding that allows us to thrive here but nothing more.
Similarly, being high intelligence is not evolutionarily fit for any given problem because it costs more energy than just being good at that problem.
(And saying "IQ" when you meant "intelligence" is a sign of a midwit.)
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But that's exactly my point, or at least an exemplification of it. If you want to marshal arguments for believing in things which are totally hidden from us, you're doing things like quoting "mathematical physicist Chetan Prakash." I would argue that believing in anything but immediate reality is what takes the most verbal or mental exertion.
Ah, now I see where you are coming from. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Yes, I agree totally.
> There's a certain IQ threshold for that, as it requires the de novo construction of a new metaphysics.
That IQ threshold isn’t very high as witnessed by the proliferation of supposedly novel midwit metaphysics propounded on the Internet.
“It’s all random and emergent man” isn’t any kind of impressive intellectual construct.
Just dumping the old one does not require much IQ or anything, really. It's the establishing of a long lasting replacement that's hard, as evidenced by the very few successful world religions.
I guess what they say about knowing the tree by its fruits rings true. There’s something about the surviving of tradition and ways of living that if they did not work and were not fruitful would have faded away into obscurity. We can’t specify anything formulaic to them but the longevity of their way of life speaks something to its truth somehow. Having generations survive and multiply and retain unity and order is not some default random outcome but something intentional and directed. I’m starting to appreciate more and more the conditional improbability of order which speaks of something greater than any one individual can account for. Fascinating people I’d like to learn more about.
We were in a hippie commune when I was a kid. My parents got tired of choosing to be poor. Getting down to eating canned zucchini and frozen catfish by the end of winter was not great.
Damnit. Is it not possible to farm enough and preserve enough to eat happily through a north american (46ish latitude) winter? Maybe with a greenhouse to extend the season somewhat? You're killing my self sufficient, off-grid homestead dreams.
It can be done. But it requires a lot of work. When you aren’t in the fields planting/fertilizing/harvesting (which takes up a lot of time on its own), you’re gonna be slaughtering animals, preserving foods (through canning, salting, etc), doing repairs to the farmstead. You’ll be up frequently from before sunrise to after sunset. You’ll have some leisure time, but not a lot. You probably won’t be traveling as much (a trip to your state’s capital or largest city will be a big deal). Modern gear like tractors definitely helps, but it introduces its own complications (namely fuel and maintenance, how will you be paying for that?). Pesticides can cut down on crop losses, but they can also literally kill you (seriously, pesticide poisoning is one of the most common forms of suicide, and some insecticides are basically nerve agents). And all this effort can be for naught if there’s a late freeze (you did can your extra food, right?).
That’s not to say there isn’t value in a lifestyle like this. But it requires a lot of effort that many people either don’t want to or cannot put in.
Do a bit of earnest gardening and evaluate your yields. Consider these in proportion to what you buy at the grocery store each week, and the land/resources required. Math it out. Probably not impossible, but certainly not trivial.
The Amish don't have communes. Community is not equivalent to communes. The amish believe in private property, yet have a strong community life.
The Amish have rigid hierarchies. People who are drawn to communes frequently don't want to live with rigid hierarchies.
Amish culture is not all that different than general American culture structurally. Communes are.
The Amish aren't getting a lot of recruits, so the folks that are there were born, raised, and indoctrinated, which also helps with sticking.
I think most "culture startups" fail.
Only after it has worked for a few generations can you know one is sustainable.
There are tons of successful long term non religious cooperative living arrangements of various sorts but yeah most not fully isolated substance farming because that is hard.
Amish communities also aren't self sufficient though. They'll happily sell and buy goods with outsiders and even sell amish furniture via websites (not sure if they use an intermediate). A ton shop at the Costco near me.
If there's a correlation between the religiousness of a commune and the longevity of it, I'd guess that it's due to the fact that it's harder to maintain cohesion with openly expressed dissent and doubt, and religious-based groups have an additional tool to combat that compared to secular ones (i.e. invoking divine fiat).
Hard work. The Amish are willing to do it.
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They treat other humans as property rather than humans [1]
[1] https://medium.com/the-collector/10-rules-you-had-no-clue-am...
Well, companies have "human resources" departments...
Why do you consider them failed? Many are still around, and new ones start all the time.
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Sheep vs cat herding. Not in any disparaging sense. One is historically collectivist, the other thinks they can or want to be - but usually end up like a Kundera novel.
If you are using Safari, you can switch to reader view to get past the paywall.
Last summer we were preparing to demolish a family property in a rural part of New York and invited some local Amish to take some furniture and other things we no longer needed.
Two of the middle sons (aged 18 and 19; they have 5 brothers and 7 sisters) came with a giant wagon pulled by huge dray horses ((https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh...)) and took it all away. They said the wagon is usually used for harvesting hay and corn, and sometimes for long distance moves of up to 40 miles. It's basically a hay wain used for other tasks as needed.
They took all of the old furniture including a sofa and a large table and box springs. They put the sofa on the front so they could sit on it on the way back to the farm, which they said is a bumpy ride because the wagon wheels are ringed with iron and most of the journey is on pavement. They also took the doors off the hinges which they said their father was going to use for a workshop as well as an old woodburning stove which must have weighed 200 pounds 90kg) and had a nonstandard exhaust. They managed to heft it out of the old cabin and onto the wagon, and said they would be able to do some metalwork to make the pipe fit in the workshop ceiling, as well as the doors which were narrower.
After the wagon was loaded they pulled out tobacco pipes and lit them and started smoking while we chatted. My dad said "I used to have a pipe like that" and the young one chuckled, and replied "Don't see English smoking pipes. Except some old fellows. Maybe like you." We all had a laugh.
The Amish moved to the area about 40 years ago. The winters up there are brutal and they live a tough life starting at a very young age, but this community has revitalized family farms and helped to stem the population decline in that part of New York.
Amish in general do not usually smoke tobacco (they are more on the teetotal side of things). So those kids were probably being a bit rebellious, which is usual for their age.
Some church districts are okay with it though (both for smoking and/or agriculture), so it's possible they came from such a district too. Most in such districts smoke cigarettes.
So, it's not that the Amish smoke pipes just to be old-timey.
Or maybe they are practicing rumspringa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa
"Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage"
Or in todays language:
"You aren't free if you are bound by your desires".
This is a quote by Emmanuel Kant and I think it applies well to the Amish.
Well, maybe, but then again how free are you when living in a highly restrictive community with a lot of rules on your personal conduct either.
Are we still talking Amish or General population with cancel culture, overreaching codes-of-conduct, „positive“ discrimination etc?
You don’t seriously believe that being asked not to make discriminatory statements at work is anything like the level of control that the Amish exert over their members, do you?
You don’t seriously believe that cancel culture is being asked not to make discriminatory statements at work, do you?
Maybe you could define it for me, since that seems to be the first hurdle that makes these discussions unproductive.
I commented on what it is not, an oversimplified reduction of the term. I suppose defining what it is requires the context in which it is used.
For that, knock yourself out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture
OK thanks for the link to Wikipedia. Here's what I think: the term "cancel culture" is amorphous, and deliberately so, so people upset about it can act principled while engaging in blatant hypocrisy and motivated reasoning.
By "blatant hypocrisy" do you mean some kind of motte-and-bailey? You are suggesting people upset about cancel culture are cancelling others themselves?
You could put it that way. I haven’t encountered many people who “hate cancel culture” but are upset about what happened to Colin Kaepernick, even though it seems plain enough to me that he lost his job for expressing a political view. I’m sure they could invent a distinction when challenged on this but I don’t think it would rise above post hoc reasoning.
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I grew up in Mitchell, I know the area and the people.
Those are some tough, resilient folks. They work with their hands through hard winters. They love their family. They don't have many material goods, but they have good hot meals with family and friends and they all go through life together.
It's not an easy way of life, and it's not a common way. But it's not a bad way.
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Why shouldn't they make money for reporting local news?
By repotting I take it you mean reposting. Noting someone else's original content and fluffing it up is sort of fine. Provided the fluffing involves original investigation then all OK but I doubt this is.
The original source is generally the best source to quote, not an aggregator.
Given that R and T are at lot closer on the keyboard than S and T, I'm pretty sure that "repotting" is supposed to be "reporting".
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This is not an aggregator.
The bottom of the article states that this is the original source.
The previous poster meant “reporting” not reposting as you interpreted.
Reporting, not reposting. Forum Communications did a big push against marijuana legalization in ND a few years ago when I think they should have stayed neutral. And I don't like some of their columnists
So because you disagree with them you prefer they didn't exist?
You don't think they have a right to their opinions, and the right to make some money?
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You are not appreciating just how far right some of these small rural outlets have swung. Some of ‘’em make Pravda look legit, and I’m only barely exaggerating.
To be fair, there are many excellent news outlets which were further to the right of Pravda.
Wait, are you seriously implying that if someone is far right they don't have the right to speak?
I do not believe corporations should have the right to free speech. Look into the crap Sinclair is doing making local anchors a go in corporate-written screeds word for word , while speaking as if it was their personal opinion.
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