The Internet Amish

The Amish have a communal, anti-individualist orientation that is the motive for rejecting labour-saving technologies that might make one less dependent on community.

For example, modern innovations such as electricity might spark a competition for status-oriented goods, or photographs might cultivate personal vanity. So these are rejected.

They have a point. In many ways I too reject status and vanity as well. Or at least I try to.

But the thought horrifies me of doing so within a strict community that creates all the rules by which I must live. This because I know every club has its hierarchy and that behind the façade it’s probably just another power game.

As an aside, I prefer the teachings of Buddha who taught that freedom from the natural vices of mankind start from within and must be free from human hierarchies.

There is the beginnings of another Amish style group amongst us. Not religious as such, these people are starting to shun the internet as well as some social-good aspects of modern technology such as childhood vaccination.

Starting with their kids they are on a mission to partially remove themselves and their families from the digital and technology era.

The ‘why’ is interesting. Their motivation is almost anti-Amish; they fear that the commoditization of knowledge by the internet will reduce and ultimately remove their ‘individuality’.

In essence, they have seen the Matrix and are horrified with the prospect of losing their free-wheeling real-world consumerism ways and means. And yet, ironically, they will also be the first people crying out for government action to remove some perceived risk to their lives.

‘Community’ to these people simply means living in an affinity group that supports their views without overly impinging on their rights to consume.

Characteristics of these people include;

a focus on wealth generation,
high levels of expenditure and debt,
high expectations of their children,
they see education solely as a means to enter into a lucrative career,
they live in ‘white bread’ communities,
they live in the future and not so much in the now,
they do not overly apply the disciplines of rational thinking,
they worship fame,
they are scared of and will ‘shun’ (in the aggressive Amish sense) contrarians and individualists,
they like travelling overseas for holidays so they can boast about it later,
they want the government to fix all their problems,
they feel that their parents were too controlling of them when they were children,
and they also feel that their parents didn’t focus enough on their children’s emotional and economic welfare,
they make their own children their vocal cause in life,
they want to ‘protect’ their children by making sure they have a ‘childhood’,
they espouse environmentalist causes despite being amongst the greatest consumers on the planet,
they usually have only a passing relationship with organised religions,
they quietly dislike the ‘mongrel’ buried within working class values,
they differentiate themselves from bogans through the adoption of middle class value of ‘nice’ personal interactions,
however they feel the right to censure others with different views,
and they fear most the impact of the internet even while they feel its gravity pull of convenience.

There’s enough of these people to make it a movement. It needs a name and I have decided to call it the Anti-Matrix movement.