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[bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

That was a very good explanation of the beliefs of the Amish, Susan.  The 
fact that you do say it would be hard for people to join as adults, rather 
then being fully acclimated since childhood makes me agree with bev, that it 
is biological to confront and battle , but that people, if trained properly 
can overcome that biological component, if they choose.........

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--- On Thu, 12/4/08, sjc <indexer AT fairpoint.net> wrote:

> From: sjc <indexer AT fairpoint.net>
> Subject: [Homestead] was It's almost over, now wending to Amish response to 
> aggression
> To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Thursday, December 4, 2008, 12:37 PM
> Bev said:
> > ....Part of what you, SJ, are saying illustrates my
> point, that those who
> > don't fight, die.  Like you say, whole cultures,
> whole groups of people
> > are gone............ In the right environment, a
> peaceful group
> > can survive for a time.... 
> Bev, I don't think any of us are trying to say humans
> don't war more 
> than is good for them, or that any given population is not
> capable of 
> warring.   The point I was trying to make is that since
> there have been, 
> and are, large groups of people who have existed for
> hundreds, and in 
> some cases, thousands of years, without warring, it seems
> to me that the 
> urge to war isn't actually inherent in the species,
> otherwise it 
> wouldn't be so 'easy' to overide.   That's
> certainly not to say that 
> some groups don't have such a propensity, but rather
> that I don't see 
> how it could be a species-wide trait, since so many have
> not exhibited it. 
> 
> To me it's sort like saying "canines are a
> ratcatching species."  Well, 
> most terriers and a lot of other canines will do themselves
> in to get a 
> rat, but I've seen plenty of canines shy away from or
> even  run from 
> one.  So while a terrier likely cannot ignore the rat and
> would happily 
> take a half day tearing the drywall off to get to one, a
> ShihTzh would 
> be likely to look, yawn and go back to sleep..
> > I think the Mennonites/Anabaptists/Amish are an
> > example of a peaceful group that is not wiped out
> because it exists
> > within an insulated environment in a country where
> they have
> > constitutional protection.  Inside of the USA might be
> the only place in
> > the world where such a group can survive.
> >   
> This is oft-stated as a "fact".  However, they do
> not see it so.  They 
> have moved away from aggressors so many times that they see
> themselves 
> as a people on the move.  In this country, beginning in the
> late 
> sixties, and accelerating through the seventiess and
> continuing now is a 
> large migration of Amish and conservative Mennonites to
> Central America, 
> particularly Belize, where they are currently courted by
> the government 
> (don't have to have photo ids, their farming methods
> are advanced, and 
> attainable, compared to local historical methods, they
> provide no drain 
> on the educational system, etc).  Here they have been
> badgered (over 
> schooling, social security, plenty) in many places until
> it's actually 
> embarrassing, at least to me, to think that my country
> behaves so.  They 
> are, from their point of view, being forced out.  There is
> a bizarre 
> case in Michigan right now where somebody actually got some
> kind of 
> 'permission' to bring a suit against somebody/some
> situation (runs in my 
> mind it's some GE corn fiasco), not something usually
> accommodated, in 
> fact it's normally forbidden, so there's another
> group that will 
> probably be on the move soon.  There are large migrations
> into Brazil, 
> the first of those having gone from Germany/WWII, but many
> have gone 
> from here in the past few years; Paraguay also has large
> new 
> populations, some from the Ukraine, where pressures are
> heating up 
> again, but more from here.  Maybe they and George W will
> end up 
> neighbors :-D .... The only real change I see this time is
> that they 
> seem to be changing from using the word Amish in their
> official names.  
> I recently asked a relative headed for Belize about this
> name business 
> and his statement was that if they use "Amish" in
> the name, they are 
> automatically perceived as rich (monetarily) and therefore
> felt like 
> they provided a more visible target for thieves,
> interestingly he said 
> "thieves, government or otherwise".   I would
> hazard a guess, albeit 
> only a guess, that it makes the counting a little more
> difficult, too, 
> as they often make themselves difficult to quantify: easier
> to stay 
> under the radar to be left alone.
> 
>  From our (world) point of view, all this moving looks like
> is that they 
> are going from the frying pan to the fire, but from their
> point of view, 
> it's the frying pan until it tips over, then a new
> frying pan......all 
> of this is to them simply the way it has been since the
> followers of 
> Zwingli were forced to meet in barns and caves in the
> 1500s:  the norm. 
> 
> And a large population survived at several places in the
> the former 
> USSR, even though it was thought at one time that they had
> all migrated 
> to the Canadian provinces.....the rest made it through the
> next 70 years 
> by going underground and sticking it out; the
> Mennonite-at-large group 
> has been astounded at how many are cropping up there, just
> now nervy 
> enough to come out of their remote areas....scary.  But
> survive they 
> did, even though they 'missed the boat',
> migration-wise.
> > Zapotec and Tahitians non-violent??? Didn't they
> practice human
> > sacrifice?  Dance with spears in martial arts like
> dances?  Was that
> > just the Maori, or am I confused?
> > I don't know who the Ladahki are, and I can't
> research it now, sorry.
> >   
> Many groups have violence in their makeup one way or
> another, but they 
> have not all been groups given to warring with another
> population.  To 
> me, violence in the individual or expressed in ritual ways
> does not 
> equate a war.  A war, to me, indicates an entire group
> intent on 
> deliberate, destructive violence.  Many of the things I
> think of as 
> violent have long history (I think of infanticide first),
> but not 
> necessarily as a way to war:  much infanticide has been
> targeted at 
> survival (too many mouths), or power (producing girls in
> some societies 
> was 'bad' and lowered status), or as I mentioned
> the other day, even a 
> way to deprive a population of warriors to prevent ongoing
> or future 
> wars.  So violence per se does not maybe equate to war,
> albeit they at 
> times are equals.
> >   
> >> Many of the old matriarchial societies practiced
> peaceful existence 
> >> and searched for peaceful solutions.
> >>     
> >
> > Like I said in my original post, no one wants war or
> conflict.  
> To me this doesn't 'gel' with the statement
> 'we are a warring species' 
> if we are a warring species, we'd have no choice; it
> would be innately 
> 'us'. 
> > Sane
> > people will always look for peaceful solutions, but in
> the end, to put
> > down the evilbadguy, they will fight or they will die.
>  I don't think
> > there is a culture/human group on Earth that would not
> fight to survive.
> > If tomorrow some group or the other started in the
> East and started the
> > equivalent of a Viking raid on Amish farms, killing,
> raping, burning,
> > pillaging, many Amish would die..I don't know how
> far West the raid
> > would go, but I think by the time the vikings raiders
> reached Ohio that
> > the Amish would be fighting back. They would group
> together and fight
> > back.  That's what I think.
> >   
> And of course you are welcome to think that.  I will offer
> what I've 
> seen in my day, only:  people sitting in an unheated prison
> room with 
> nothing but a hospital gown, no pants, (no clue what that
> was about but 
> I remember that even when a group of us was there, there
> was much 
> taunting by guards; I was simply told "It's part
> of their punishment for 
> not going to war".) in Terre Haute IN (many, many
> miles from where they 
> lived, no one could drive there in a buggy), arrested
> during WWII for 
> not going to war (arrested before the IW classification but
> held for 
> unknown reasons until 1951), no complaints, only a request
> for Bibles, 
> which were withheld for 19 months, and then they were
> allowed English 
> bibles only, although none read English at the time and
> permission to 
> pray.  When we were in our teens, we often encountered
> neighborhood 
> miscreants as we went to get corn ground or on other
> errands.  More than 
> once (many times, actually) I've seen people assaulted
> and do nothing.  
> Just about the only thing they do is to gather a crowd of
> onlookers, on 
> the theory that beating up a deliberately defenseless
> person will be 
> even harder in front of a crowd of viewers (so they
> obviously have no 
> problem with attempting to use shame as a controlling
> mechanism). 
> 
> Think of the Nickel Mines incident, which, while it still
> gives them 
> great grief, they dismissed with public forgiveness,
> acceptance of the 
> wife and children of the perpetrator and aid to them
> ("They had just had 
> a such a terrible shock, and lost their husband and
> father.", I was 
> told), and activity around aiding the assaulted, which of
> course 
> continues today.  I have to this day not heard that
> incident mentioned 
> (by Amish friends/relatives) with anything but sadness and
> concern.  A 
> friend of mine here in Maine was fascinated by that
> incident and said to 
> me "Some day I'm going to go and see that
> schoolhouse."  She thought I 
> was wacky when I said you'd better go soon, because
> I'm sure they'll 
> tear it down pretty quick.  Little did I know but it had
> already been 
> flattened and the ground plowed when I said that.  They
> take their hits 
> in the name of God and it's done, no memorials, get on
> with life.  That 
> pretty much follows along with what has happened to them
> over time; the 
> accounts coming now out of Georgia are pretty much echoes
> of the Nickel 
> Mines disaster.  There people were herded into barns, the
> barn door 
> closed, and the building set on fire, so the method varied,
> but the 
> response was the same.
> 
> The thing of it is with them is that it is part and parcel
> of them.  The 
> very first thing that got Zwingli stirred up back in Zurich
> was having 
> to deal with mercenaries.  The idea of nonresistance, not
> just 
> non-violence, was the thing that led him to look more
> closely at the New 
> Testament and was the first of the tenets for pulling away
> from the 
> Catholic Church.  It has continued to be a major point down
> through the 
> years, and I don't know a sincere Amish person who
> wouldn't stand in the 
> face of violence and do anything but call on the Lord for
> mercy.  This 
> very point is one of the reasons they don't reallymuch
> encourage the 
> scads of people who come along and announce they want to be
> Amish; 
> there's strong feeling that if you don't grow up
> with it that it would 
> be very difficult to acquire.  Somewhere I read, probably
> in the 
> Martyr's Mirror (giant book full of small-print
> accounts/letters of the 
> forced marches, tortures, etc, of the martyrs.), that
> Zwingli's last 
> words (he was stabbed with a spear) were "Not to fear
> is the armor."
> 
> It may be foolish (the usual view, in my experience), it
> may be plain 
> stupid, it may be inspired....I've not an opinion on
> that, but whatever, 
> that's the way it's always been for them and is
> still today, to my 
> knowledge.  So my guess is, yes, they'd just be home
> milking cows, 
> peeling potatoes, and playing Carom, and someone would take
> them out, if 
> it came to that.  The goal is to get to Heaven and you
> can't do that by 
> hurting people.......
> 
> Avoidance when possible, otherwise nonresistance....The
> first signs are 
> there in the high emigration numbers......it may be that
> all we'll see 
> for ourselves.   God forbid.
> 
> SJ
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