The only exposure I have with how Amish work is from Newport's Digital Mininalism book, and it sounded pretty reasonable. (Don't know how correct it is, though)

The way he put it, they don't outright ban and refuse all technology. Every time a new tech comes out, they have a few people give it a try and then decide as a community if/how to best use it without sacrificing their core values.

For example - a telephone? We don't want that, because then it would break the sense of community if you could just call anyone, without having to call on them/meet then for dinner, etc. But, we'll have one phone in a village in casr we need to call for outside help in an emergency.

Assuming that's true, I would suspect that especially in regards to medicine, they would be pretty open. But yeah, I guess it absolutely depends on the community, and how cultish/reasonable are the people making these calls.

I sold electrical equipment to some Amish once, which felt real weird.

So is an AC unit.

They also treat their animals like absolute shit, like they should be taken away bad.

I'm glad you brought up the rape! I'm talking dolphin-levels of rape! And if you talk to the cops about it, you're out of the community!

It kinda depends on the individual communities. My dad's side of the family is from nw ohio where there are quite a few Amish communities. Where each community seems to function almost like little independent nations with their own rules, cultures, and hierarchical structures.

The small community that is closest to my family's farm is really nice. Our family has a long history with them often trading skills, resources, and labour. Whenever they need someone to operate a piece of modern equipment or to provide modern tools to a job site they would call my family. We would call them whenever we needed extra hands to build a new barn, or to re shingle a roof.

In my experience the larger and more strict the community was the more fucked up they were. The community next to us wasn't very strict, lots of loop holes to make life easier. Most of them banned anything modern in the household, but would have a barn with electricity for refrigerators and other modern amenities.

The real strict communities were always filled with miserable people, it always felt kinda what I imagine visiting a 19th century cult would be like. The elders run everything with an iron fist, and children and women were basically treated worse than working animals. Forced to work at weird little businesses to sell furniture, blankets, and baked goods to tourist.

Lots of drug use, which is a-okay by the Lord!

But, the prospect of having to forego virtually all modern technology or become exiled from the only family and community you’ve ever known is crazy.

Sounds like being forced to use meta products to keep in touch with family who don't want to learn how to use anything else.

Yeah, there are communes you can join. Even in America

Have you seen the state of the country lately?

That's what Amish do...

I don’t think they’re a hate group other than typical cult behavior where others are labeled a danger to the group, serious problems are hidden from outside view, and people can be prevented from leaving and psychologically conditioned to not leave. They sort of hate all outsiders equally.

...it was a joke bro 🫤