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Originally Posted by host
I selected the Amish, and described them as <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpost.php?p=1828055&postcount=159">"liv[ing] such a quaint and anachronistic lifestyle"</a> because I think that this is what is most interesting about them, to many outsiders. I attempted to make the point that it may not be possible for roachboy "to get folk from the right to explain why they hold certain views, how these views fit with others, and how they fit with data about the world." The similarity with the Amish is that when conclusions are influenced by "belief" and "a kind of religious committment", with "family values" and the dictates of elders, roachboy might as well be the anthropologist trying to find out how the Amish accomodate the use of some technology that seems similar to technology that they prohibit the use of.
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Um, hate to pick nits here, but the Amish are very well aware of what goes on in the outside world. They have a "rite of passage", for lack of a better term, in which the young people are sent out into the world and are basically cut loose to do whatever they want. After a certain amount of time, they get to choose if they want to live in the Amish tradition or if they want to stay in the modern world. They are not naive about what goes on and what the options are, they just choose to live how they want to live. As for their use of technology, for example cellphones, they may use them because they are necessary professionally, but they leave them outside of the house because they don't want to corrupt what they hold dear. (I've used Amish builders/contractors before.) They reject the technology because they feel it basically enslaves them. Having spent X number of years carrying around my cellphone, when I'm accessable pretty much 24/7 to the people who may need to contact me in an employment-related emergency, they may have a point.