Life without the Internet? This small community rejects mobile phones, electricity and television

The Amish are a religious and Protestant group that inhabits certain areas of the United States and Canada, and it is well known that the most strict do not use electricity or cars because they farm with hand tools and travel on horseback.

These communities are associated with a simple lifestyle, reject technology out of respect for tradition and are really slow to adopt new things - considering that in contemporary society, our default is to say 'yes' to new things, and in Old Order Amish societies, the default is 'no'-.

We could say that living without electricity wipes out most of modern society because no electricity means no internet, no TV, and no phones, which makes Amish life in stark contrast to our complex technological lives.

'Rude to use phone'

As we mentioned at the beginning, the Amish reject almost all technology because they only use it when it is necessary, in addition, Wired affirms that it is "rude" to use a mobile phone.

On the other hand, Kevin Kelly pointed out in an article that the objective of the Amish is not to remain in the 17th century by not incorporating technological advances on a day-to-day basis, because they want to strengthen and preserve the traditions of the community.

And so, in case you didn't know, during the first third of the 20th century, many Amish communities rejected electricity, telephones and radio for exactly the same thing: to make the tradition of the members separate from the rest of the societies.

Why is that they reject technology?

Youssef Khaoulani Menjour (technical support at Microserver Group) points out that "the Amish do not reject technology or the modern world itself, they only reject 'mundane technologies' that do not serve to do productive work for the community."

Aversion aside, these people use "electricity and even temporarily install modern machinery for vital needs." In addition, they use dairies with refrigerators, farms with computer-controlled technology, and electrical appliances with compressed air to replace batteries.

On the other hand, those objects that became obsolete were credit cards and mobile phones. The first product mentioned, despite the fact that it was used a lot, ended up being rejected when they saw that it generated problems with expenses and indebtedness.

Meanwhile, communities used to have community phones in isolated booths to make calls, but if we delve into today's cell phones, these devices are a case apart because they do not respect tradition - for this reason they are not introduced into Amish society.