The Plain People

Along with the modernization, people today are habituate to the present human civilization: we take the modern transport like cars, trains, trams, maglevs; we are dressed in shirts, jeans, other normal modern clothes; but the people from a particular community that we are going to focus on today prefer to maintain an extremely plain and traditional life style. The group is called the Amish.

The definition on "About.com" shows us: the Amish are a Protestant anti-modernist religious group founded in the 1690s by Jakob Ammann , a Swiss Mennonite leader. Today, Amish live in rural areas, refuse to use electricity and other modern things, and dress very plainly. As we can see in the video, they dress like the people from the Middle Ages and they take carriage as their main means of transport. And with regard to their beliefs, the Amish are very devout in their faith. They believe in the literal interpretation and application of Scripture as the Word of God. They take seriously the Biblical commands and insist on separating themselves from the things of the world. They believe worldliness can keep them from being close to God, and can introduce influences that could be destructive to their communities and to their way of life. But on the other hand, the leader favored stronger church discipline, including a more rigid application of shunning, the social exclusion of excommunicated members¹.

Actually, I find nothing that appear to me in the Amish culture. Firstly, they dress very plainly, that seems to be nice but it make everyone in the community lose their personality. The plain clothes make everyone look the same. Personally, I think it’s terrible because it’s just like the 1950s in China. Everyone was under the pressure of the government and hid themselves in the same clothes. Secondly, they don’t use electricity. That’s something really ridiculous. The electricity is one of the greatest discovering in the civilization of human being. Using electricity doesn’t mean that we are ruining the nature, we are just following the evolution of the technology, it’s overuse that should be criticized, so in my opinion, what the Amish people do is totally unnecessary. And by the way, it exists so many other ways to express their respect to god and their devotion. Thirdly, the social exclusion of excommunicated members really scares me. Amish children will have no chance to choose their life, they just follow all the rules to avoid being isolated. If I grew up in that condition, I could be really desperate.

Finally, let’s take a look at the attacks committed by an Amish splinter group. Sixteen members of this splinter group accused of terrorizing the Amish of eastern Ohio in bizarre beard-cutting attacks are scheduled to go on trial Monday in federal court in Cleveland². Why this horrible tragedy happened? To my point of view, I think it’s the pressure caused by the extreme severe rules. The Amish community is a long-term closed group, since the Amish people are too closed in the community and they have nowhere to go, even the tiny conflicts inside the group can cause terrible hatred. Althoug we call them “the plain people”, actually the situation inside this “plain” community is quite tense and the religious belief may not help.

Sources

1.      Article “History of the Amish”
 http://www.americanamishcompany.com/history/

2.      Article “Trial to Begin for 16 Members of Amish Group Charged in Beard-Cutting Attacks”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/us/trial-to-begin-for-16-members-of-amish-group.html?_r=0