Quote Originally Posted by spokewench View Post
I'm not really sure that the Amish use horses for transportation to keep their community people isolated.
No, not isolated. To keep them from becoming alienated. Like the chapter in Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, remember? Which talked about using horses for farmwork, not transport, but same thing: if you plow faster than horses can walk, you can't see what's going on in the soil. If you do business or have regular social interactions farther away than a horse can travel round trip in a day, you're having effects in a community that might not redound to yourself.

And maybe it's the horse-and-buggy Mennonites who make it so explicit that that's the reason for their form of transport, more than the Old Order Amish, who forego much more technology; but I think it's both.