Technology vs Believes

Amish understanding of life comes from the New Testament, that´s what they stady at school, preach in church services or sing at home. They don't refuse technology as a whole, but only those developments that goes against their believes. Their possition towards technology, electricity or communication for instance, it is very different from ours, but if you take the time to investigate their reasons, it actually makes sense.

So we went to ask them why is there such a difference and here are some of the responses:

Us: Why is that you don't have electricity at home? How do you do without light?

Amish: We refuse to be connected to other houses permanently. To our believes, if we keep connected to those who sin, the sin would be share and you become a sinner too. However, we do have light at home, it might be not be the same, but we use battery lamps, propane engines for the washing machine or the fridge, or even disel engines to milk our cows, water our gardens, etc. 

Us: And what about the telephone? Are you allowed to use it? 

Amish: We use telephones to communicate between us, the only requirement is that the phone cannot be placed at home, for the same reason we don't have electricity. It's all about the wire world connection, so we normally place a phone box outside our hauses, which is still on our land, but not linked to the house. 

Us: And what about a mobile phone?

Amish: Well, there is a discussion going on within the community about the mobile allowance. It is trully wireless, however it also brings along all sort of connections. That's a tricky one, but Amish member do refuse to have it.

Us: Can Amish members drive a car?

Amish: Bapticed members cannot use other transports than feet traction. To us it is meaningful to always keep feets on the ground and if its not litelary ours, it has to be horse feet. We can only use other transports in case of vital need, as when we migrate from old Germany to USA.

Amish members normally move by buggy riding or what they call scooters, see iur experience with their transport for reference.

Those few questions made us open our eyes to the the Amish relation to tecnology, as we said before, they follow their believes, while try to make their life easy. Technology can be considered a tool as far as it doesn't generate a conflic with any religion aspect.

Arriving at Lancaster Caunty

Hi all,

I bet you wonder how did we make our way to the Amish country. Well, there are some interesting bits on our way to Lancaster Caunty.

The story starts with the 3 of us comming from different places, so we were supposed to meet up at JFK International Airport, NY, on July the 1st. Antonio arrived safely on June the 29th and planned a nice 2 days around the city in the meantime. Although Paloma and Estefania were flying from Miami International Airport to JFK on July the 1st. All of a sudden our plans were changed by a flight cancellation, it seems like it was a weather condition in NYC, so the air space was closed and no planes could make its way there.

After so many hours at MIA airport Paloma and Estefania managed to get a new flight arriving at JFK the day after by noon. Now, the 3 of us rent a car our Delorian, for the time travel project. We wanted to get a Hyundai or Kia but no options, so we end up getting a 4x4 Jeep instead, pretty american style.

For all this time we spent on our way, we pretty much run out of battery, so mobile GPS wasn't an option by the time we arrived in Lancaster, 7 pm with no directions rather than: " We are looking for the Amish, could you please help us find the way?" At this point we stoped by a gas station with a very nice and interesting employee. His speaking was hard to understand with an Indian accent, but he really made the effort to help us: "At the light turn left till you see Rutary, take Rutary west..." We could not understand what Rutary meant untill we saw the signal I am sharing with you.


Even so, we managed to hit 30 RD and down to the countryside. Our next stop was at a small village, almost everything closed and no lights. We came across this 2 Amish girls, so we decided to ask them for some help in finding a place to stay. It was very shoocking seeing them walk to their car, but ever more when they reply: "Do you have internet? You can Google it."

Yes, that was a bit confusing for us, but we didn't gave up, so we kept driving and we arrived at the Amishview Hotel with a vacancy signal on it, checked in, dropp our staff and went to find a place to have dinner somewhere around. Funny enough we found out people at this area normally have dinner from 3-6pm and not many places to choose from. We got lost a couple of times running around a beautiful landscape with no lights on it, so we decided to go bed and start on better shape in the morning.

At the end we made it safely, but lots of fun on the way as you can imagine!
Stay tunned for what is to come :)
Antonio, Paloma and Estef

Welcome to our Creative Adventure

For those who don't know us, we are a team of 3 brilliant digital minds who decided to travel back in time to discover the roots of communication.

We are Paloma, Antonio and Estefania, and we work for a corean Advertising agency back at home called Innocean. The 3 of us applied for a Creative Adventure pitch run by our company, for witch we presented The Amish project and we actually won it! The main idea was to go where people still live with low media impact, so we found the Amish community in Lancaster would be the right place to be. If you want to know more about the project proposal, we recommend you go back to 1st and 2nd post in this blog, where you can find our 2 rounds of presentations.

Now this is where all begins, with this blog, we aim to share with our readers as many aspects of their daily basis as possible. So if you wonder what a real Amish life is like, stay tunned for next post to come.

Hope to see you around and please do share with us any questions that might come to your mind and we will try to find the answer for you.

Best

Paloma, Antonio & Estef