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Notes -
I think that’s a bit obtuse. While you can’t go join the Amish church, you can in fact quite easily band together with likeminded people and build a homestead in some rural area.
To me I think a lot of what’s missing is the community. Being poor in the modern world to me sucks a bit more because you’re an atomized individual with much less support in a world that rubs the lifestyle of your betters in your face through the media.
There are people who’ve joined the Amish, they tend to already be mennonites (and there are Mennonite groups that are easier to join / open to concerts), then they move to Amish country, slowly integrate themselves with the community, and are then part of it within a couple of generations.
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It’s not a choice people make from a position of detachment. People are habituated to their societies by adulthood, so that altering their lifestyles by jumping into a different sort of society would constitute a major cost. Everything they had lived for and adapted to up until that point of change would be gone. And it works both ways, the Amish would be apprehensive about forsaking their native societies as well. Crossing the threshold comes with a hefty toll, and so it doesn’t indicate ‘natural’ predilections.
I mean it’s not for everyone because it requires major lifestyle changes. But for the right set of individuals, major lifestyle changes are possible. People do it all the time. Immigrants leave their homes and businesses and families behind and move to places with alien cultures. People join the military which is a huge change from civilian life. Such major changes aren’t for everyone, but even modest changes can be accessible to most people. It’s harder than most people think, but it’s perfectly doable.
I mean that it's not indicative of whether people prefer modern life to Amish life, since the 'switch' doesn't happen without a significant cost. The fact that most people don't join Amish communes might simply signify peoples' preference for the familiar, or for environments they've already made significant investments in that they don't want to abandon.
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