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Notes -
I’m not necessarily suggesting the Amish are perfect. I’m suggesting that we’ve kinda thrown out the baby with the bath water when we went full bore on the car and convenience society. And when we decided to destroy the myths of America and at least nominal Christianity as the default belief system. When tradition and community are uprooted in favor of door-dashing, you lose the personal connection to other people around you. When your neighbor fixes your car you end up bonding over it. You know him better, and it can lead to connections that don’t happen in transactional relationships. When you attend the local church with all of your neighbors and friends, you form connections and bonds and the kids play together and so on. When everyone around you believes in the same sort of things and wants to preserve the community, then you have more trust, especially if everyone knows each other and has a relationship that’s more than passing in the streets in individual cars on the way from one building to another. Walk down the streets of your own neighborhood, odds are that you couldn’t give the names of more than 10 people in your own neighborhood, and it’s highly likely that outside of that neighborhood, you see them often.
I think the social contract is exactly the problem. It’s the reason that high trust is actually possible, because people believe in that contract, try to live up to it, and know each other well enough to broadly enforce it. That’s how most high trust societies work. Asia, in general has Confucius and the ideals of social contract and familial relationships and reciprocal relationships as the core of their beliefs. Read the stuff. Confucius was all about the social contract, how you should relate to other people, how you obey your elders and serve your various roles in society. I’m convinced that while most other systems weren’t that explicit, they all had those kinds of ideas — you are not merely some atomized individual seeking autonomy and the best life and hedonistic pleasures. You are part of a community greater than yourself and have some duties to people and the broader institutions around you.
As I said above I don’t think any of this is down to technology. Asia has a lot of this and has more high tech than we do. Orthodox Jews form these kinds of high trust enclaves in New York City. It’s simply making the decision to follow traditional practices and to build community with people around you and sharing things and skills with those around you. To some extent, I think it might be helpful to get out of the mass and social media spheres or at least limit the kinds of media and social media you allow into a community like that. It’s not Amish, just being intentional about what is and isn’t allowed to be seen in your own home.
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