amish insights
The Amish (/ˈɑːmɪʃ/; Pennsylvania Dutch: Amisch, German: Amische) are a group of traditionalist Christian church fellowships with Swiss Anabaptist origins. They are closely related to, but distinct from, Mennonite churches. The Amish are known for simple living, plain dress, and reluctance to adopt many conveniences of modern technology. The history of the Amish church began with aschism in Switzerland within a group of Swiss and Alsatian Anabaptists in 1693 led by Jakob Ammann. Those who followed Ammann became known as Amish.
In the early 18th century, many Amish and Mennonites immigrated to Pennsylvania for a variety of reasons. Today, the most traditional descendants of the Amish continue to speak Pennsylvania German, also known as “Pennsylvania Dutch”, although a dialect of Swiss German is used by Old Order Amish in the Adams County, Indiana area. As of 2000, over 165,000 Old Order Amish lived in the United States and about 1,500 lived in Canada. A 2008 study suggested their numbers had increased to 227,000, and in 2010 a study suggested their population had grown by 10 percent in the past two years to 249,000, with increasing movement to the West. Most of the Amish continue to have 6–7 children while benefiting from the major decrease in infant and maternal mortality in the 20th century. Between 1992 and 2013, the Amish population increased by 120%, while the US population increased by only 23%
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adding because of this.. shared by Michel (and also recent interview – Nikola & Kevin)
http://digg.com/2016/amish-medicine-mosaic
For Plain communities, autonomy in healthcare — and in life more broadly — is deeply tied to personal responsibility. This is perhaps best exemplified by their choice not to have insurance. Rather, when someone gets sick, the church collects alms to help the patient cover expenses. Marvin Wengerd estimates that, collectively, the 30,000 Amish in Holmes County spend $20–30 million a year on healthcare………..As a result, Plain communities are highly interested in health education and disease prevention.
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The aim is to improve the community’s health by providing a one-hour educational session, followed by a primary care clinic where people can receive tests including ear exams and blood pressure readings that might determine whether they need to visit a hospital. Following the talk, House and the medical student field questions. “………Among the final questions is, “Where is the line when you know you need to see a doctor?”
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Perhaps most surprising is that over a third of the clinic’s yearly $2.8 million operating budget comes from benefit auctions organised and supplied by Plain communities, where everything from quilts to wooden clocks to buggies complete with LED lights is sold.
The clinic itself is located in a field on a piece of land donated by an Amish farmer. The structure was built by Plain people in the traditional way: by hand, using hooks and pulleys. This pine and timber structure houses advanced genetics equipment. It’s a unique mix of old and new, low-tech and high-tech, Plain and non-Plain.
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With their big families, good genealogical records, and small founder populations, Plain communities are ideal subjects for identifying genetic variants for common diseases. Researchers at the clinic discover 10–15 new disease-causing variants each year, and they expect this rate to increase.
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Despite the clinic’s success, there hasn’t been the same degree of uptake of its methods in non-Plain healthcare. “It’s actually a hard sell to the medical–industrial complex in this country that we should be investing all our effort in preventive technology,” says the clinic’s medical director, Kevin Strauss. But he believes that the US healthcare system can’t afford not to put genomic medicine to work in a preventive, cost-effective way.
The clinic has estimated that its costs per outpatient are about a tenth of those for government-backed Medicare and Medicaid (which cover adults as well as children). This is achieved through an innovative medical model that prioritizes affordability, prevention and research designed to close the implementation gap — what clinic professionals describe as the gap between the “avalanche” of data acquired through projects like the Human Genome Project and the many patients who have yet to benefit from that data.
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no Plain community would expect a family whose child had cancer to face that burden alone.
Long before Obamacare, Plain communities achieved what the rest of America had not: universal healthcare coverage.
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Heidi Siwak (@HeidiSiwak) tweeted at 6:22 AM – 15 Oct 2016 :
Innovation models. Amish community leaving Ontario for Prince Edward Island. https://t.co/Cb55stZk7I #cdnpoli #ontsshg (http://twitter.com/HeidiSiwak/status/787267390413438976?s=17)
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fromy Johann Haris lost connections:
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an amish family isn’t like an english family, he explained. it’s not just your mom and dad and siblings. it’s a big interconnected tribe of about 150 people.. who live w/in walking or buggy distance of your home.. there’s no physical church.. you take turns gathering in diff people’s homes.. no permanent hierarchy.. people take turns serving as pastor.. allocated randomly..
amish ness
150 ness
when turn 16.. go and live in the ‘english’ world for a few years.. called going on rumspringa.. they don’t follow the strict amish rules fora n avg of two yrs.. (makes them curiously well quipped to comment on our culture) .. and then at the end of their youth spurt.. they have to make a choice.. if you stay in world.. you can come back and visit.. but you’ll never be an amish.. around 80% choose to join the church.. this experience of freedom is one fo the reasons amish are never regarded as a cult.. it is a genuine choice
well not totally.. would be if they could be amish again
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amish have consciously chosen to slow down.. and they don’t see that as a deprivation..
you lose something if you slow down.. but you gain more.. ‘that sense of the local next door neighbor community.. if we had cars.. we wouldn’t live right beside each other.. the neighbors wouldn’t come over for supper so often.. would fly places for business so gone more.. there’s a physical closeness and as a result of that a spiritual or mental closeness too..
if you can be everywhere – in vehicles, or online – you end up , he believes, beig nowhere.. the amish, by contrast, always have a ‘sense of being at home.’
so i asked.. you’re saying the amish community is almost like a support group for resisting the temptations of an individualist civilization?.. lauron: that’s one benefit , yes…
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a major scientific study carried out on amish mental health in the 70s found they have significantly lower levels of depression than other americans.. several smaller studies since have backed up this finding..
the amish had a profound sense of belonging and meaning.. but i could also see it would be absurd to see the way they lived as panacea.. jim and i spent an afternoon w an amish woman who begged the community to help her when her husband was violently abusing her and their sons.. the church elders told her it is the job of an amish woman to submit to her husband, no matter what.. she continued to be violently abused for years, before she finally left – scandalizing many in the community..
the group was united in ways that were inspiring – but it was also united by an often extreme and brutal theology.. women are subordinate; gay people are treated appallingly; the beating of children is seen as a good thing.. elkhart-lagrange reminded me of my father’s village back in the swiss mtns.. it had a profound sense of community and home; yet that home had often vicious house rules.. it’s a sign of how potent community and meaning are that when they were added to the scale they could even, for some people, seem to outweigh the real and terrible pain these problems cause..
is this i wondered.. an inevitable trade off?.. i don’t want to abandon the modern world and go back to a mythical past that was more connected in many ways but more brutal in many more.. i want to see if we can find synthesis in which we move closer to the togetherness of the amish w/o suffocating ourselves or turning to extreme ideas that are often abhorrent to me..
eagle and condor time.. we can do this.. now.. a nother way.. both a and a.. and.. we need and
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be you. 