"Recently I drove through Amish country in the Midwest and saw the Amish farms — immediately distinguished by the fact that no electric power or telephone poles lead to the house — and encountered the little black horse-drawn buggies that are their only means of transportation. No motor, tractor, electric light bulb, pump, or telephone is ever used by an Amish family. This is a strict observation of an inner fact, but played out on an outer level. If people would observe their mechanical tendencies (trickery) on an inner level as carefully as the Amish observe their simple way of life outwardly, much suffering in the feeling world would be avoided. I was pleased at the sight of the Amish ways, but my intuition was that they are no less subject to inner trickery than we are. It would be a small price to pay for relief of our modern feeling woundedness if one had only to take down the power poles and adopt a little black buggy for transportation; but I think that has little to do with the issue. That would be attacking a virulent problem outwardly when it is inner in nature. A right solution on the wrong level is totally ineffective.
"In Muslim countries, the old part of their cities is called the medina, or holy place. In this section of the city no car, motor, or engine-driven machinery is allowed, as it would disturb the spirituality of the center of the city. When I stood in the center of the medina of Fez in Morocco I watched with great care to see if there was tranquility on the faces of the people who lived there. Predictably, I saw that they had tried to make an outer solution to an inner problem and there lives were no more peaceful than in the modern cities. Like the Amish, they had addressed an inner problem in an outer way. It is our task to search out the mechanization of life in its inner dimensions, which is where the damage is done."