Amish in The Year 2525

In the year 2525,

If man is still alive,

If women can survive, 

They may find....

(Zager & Evans 1969)

The song is a very popular late‑1960s vision of the far future, projecting humanity’s fate through technology, medicine, and automation—exactly the kind of “future as seen from the past” that defines the term retrofuturism.

This painting explores what an Amish community and culture might look like in the future using two different but connected vantage points. These points are harmonious because both are about how people in the past imagined the future—one through music, the other through retro-futuristic visual and narrative art.

For this painting, I used the past vantage point of 1925 (the retro part of retrofuturism) and a future destination of April 2525 as referenced in the Zager and Evans song. The black Amish buggy is a hybrid of a 1925 Model T and a black buggy, imagined as powered by futuristic anti-gravity technologies. 

My mind went into overdrive when imagining not only what the future might hold for humanity, where technology has increasingly taken over human life, relationships, and the environment. I further imagined that the Amish core values ensure future human survival. The Amish way of life centers on a small set of closely connected core values: faith, family, community, humility, and simplicity.  

Amish life is grounded in Christian faith and daily discipleship, not just Sunday worship. The Amish place the welfare of the community above individual preference or independence. Mutual aid—like barn raisings, financial help in crises, and everyday cooperation—is a moral expectation, not an optional kindness. 

Simplicity in clothing, homes, work, and technology is understood as an expression of humility and trust in God. They deliberately limit modern conveniences (cars, grid electricity, personal technology) to reduce worldliness and distraction from faith, family, and community. This “separation from the world” is less about nostalgia and more about guarding hearts and relationships away from influences they see as corrosive.

The painting features seemingly endless vertical hydroponic farming and remains a part of Amish agriculture.