The Amish: Lifestyle, Community and Choice

I have always seen the world from one perspective. And I have always thought it was the only correct one. An everyday with school, work, traffic, stress, shopping, TV and not a least an everyday where time plays an important and decisive roll. But is our way of living the only way? And is it the right way?The small, but yet so strong, society of Amish-people is the example of a society that looks at the world in a totally opposite way. The almost 230.000 Amish people are spread over often isolated areas in USA and Canada, notably Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ontario, and their population grows rapidly.Their look of life inspires me in one way, but still leaves me with so many questions and a big unintelligibility. The Amish emphases the simple life, the life where time plays no roll, on hard work, community and they fight against egoism and vanity. And all these values circles around their strict religion, a special form of Christianity. The Bible is their compass, their guide and their red thread in life and it settles down their rules and basically their entire lifestyle. But their lifestyle is not only a timeless world of community – it’s also a world with no electricity and old-fashioned clothes, a world where all kind of modern equipment is forbidden, a world with a society that stopped developing in the 19th century. And that causes problems; because the Amish are now an isolated society that lives in its own little bubble, separated from the rest of the world and its development, because they refuse it.They have therefore no experiences with the real world. And they will probably never get it.