The Amish "System" as a Model

When I was in high school my friends and I would sometimes laugh at the inconsistencies on display in the nearby Amish community, like the Amish businesses had phones but the phone was outside the premises. Or the Amish can ride in a car but can't drive it, etc... I still think a lot of those "rules" are nonsensical, but now see that the inconsistency is a byproduct of how their "system" works. Their leadership apparently looks at things on a case by case basis, so it's all a hodgepodge. They aren't striving for thematical consistency, but are trying to protect their way of life.

Some local Amish families use battery powered scooters, for example, but they don't ride e-bikes or bicycles in general. (There are communities of Amish that do.) I do a bike ride that follows a road that passes through miles of Amish farmhouses (and some non-Amish live there too). If I'm just riding an easy tempo though there, sometimes Amish kids will pass me on the scooters going maybe 15-20 mph.

Why is the scooter allowed and not a bicycle? I have no idea what the reasoning is, but there's at least some attempt to consciously pick and choose which technology and activity will maintain an overall way of life.

I'm not a fan of the rule-based, and hierarchical culture that implements those choices, but still it's good that an effort is made. The larger western society has a predatory system where access to any contrary wisdom or feedback is inhibited and children are trained to be a cog in the machine in the school system--or they're trained to be a predator.

It's actually pretty gross and weird. For example, girls are propagandized by the wedding industry and the diamond industry via popular culture, but there's no critique of the associated financial choices in the mainstream. There's young people who go into debt $30k for a wedding, which is nuts seemingly from "free choice", but it's really just a byproduct of grooming and propaganda.

It'd be good to just provide an active critique to so much of that poison to kids, but lots of parents and the school systems would be terrified to even think about such a thing. I guess there is some form of critique of societal insanity and the predatory behavior of corporations and the financial system, but it'd be rare for a young person to stumble into that sphere of info, I think.