The Human

Person in a
Society
 Objectives:
Before the end of this chapter, the students will learn to;

• Determine how individuals form societies and

how individuals are transformed by societies;
• Compare different forms of societies and
individualities (e.g., Agrarian, industrial and
virtual);
• Explain how human relations are transformed
by social systems; and,
• Evaluate the transformation of human
relationships by social systems and how
societies transform individual human beings.
 What is a Society?
A human society is a group of people who
share a common lifestyle and organization.
Human generally do not live alone, isolated
from each other. Instead, individuals tend to
live in communities with other people related
by ethnicity, nationality, religion, or some
other cultural element. It is his nature to form
a community until it becomes bigger and form
society.
 Different Forms of Societies
A. Hunting and Gathering
• Between 2.5 million years ago.
• Humans survived primarily by hunting wild
animals and gathering wild vegetation.
• Stone and wood were the predominant raw
materials for the making of the tools and
weapons.
• Although primitive in form, simple
technologies were found very helpful for their
survival.
• Travel was a customary activity during this era.
• They had no permanent place and personal
properties.
• They transferred from one forest to another in
search for food.
• Social interaction usually revolved around the
kinship roles.
• The division of labor was simple. It was based on
age and sex.
• The young and the old were expected to
contribute what they could, while healthy adults
secured most of their food.
• Women gathered fruits and vegetables, while men
did most of the hunting.
B. Horticultural, Fishing and Pastoral Societies
• History tells us that the horticultural society
developed a community that used simple hand tools
to raise crops.
• This gradual transition first appeared in the fertile
regions of Middle East and Southeast Asia.
• Through cultural diffusion, horticultural technology
spread as far as Western Europe and China about
6,000 years ago.
 Fishing societies were more advanced than the
previous societies .
• Fishermen had permanent houses.
• They had less inclination to travel compared to
hunters and gatherers.
 Herding societies domesticated
animals.
• Animal raising became a major
industry.
• People whose places were not fitted
to vegetation raised animals like
mountains, rocky plains.
 Herding and horticulture societies
discovered that food sources could
be produced and reproduced.
 Characteristics of Horticulture,
Fishing and Pastoral Societies
1. Producing more food allowed societies to expand.
2. Domestication of plants and animals enabled
societies to generate material surplus.
3. There were advances in housing technology and
home industries such as weaving, pottery and
leather craft.
4. Efficiency and effectiveness of tools and weapons
markedly improved.
5. The technological capacity to produce a surplus
food also resulted in pronounced and social
inequality. With more resources to fight for,
conflicts were prevalent, slavery became
widespread.
C. Agrarian Societies
• Agricultural societies marked a major
improvement in the lives of the
people.
• People learned to use plow drawn by
animals; development of metal tools;
use of the wheel; and improved
knowledge of irrigation and
fertilization.
• This era was regarded as the ‘dawn of
civilization.’
 Characteristics of Agrarian Society
1. Production of food using animal-drawn plow was far more
efficient than the hand tools used in the horticultural society.
2. Money emerged as a means of exchange replacing barter as a
system of trade.
3. Communication and transportation facilities were greatly
improved.
4. Trading grew up and sparked the growth of cities as economic
and political centers. As the cities became economically
advanced, social life gradually became more individualistic
and impersonal.
5. Dramatic growth of social inequality. In many cases, large
proportion of the populations were slaves or peasants who
labored for the elite ruling class.
6. The social power of the elite group greatly expanded for they
exercised absolute control over large empires.
D. Industrial Society
• Industrial societies used sophisticated machinery
powered by fuels to produce material goods.
• The muscles of humans and animals were no longer
the basis of production. Machineries were made of
steel.
• England became the first industrial nation with the
invention of the steam engine and other machinery in
1765. However, the United States surpassed the
invention made by England in 1870.
• By the beginning of the 20th century, automobiles
began to flourish, electricity became part of everyday
life.
• New forms of communication such as the telephone,
radio and television gradually created a modernized
world.
 Effects of Industrialization
1. Greater concentration of population
in the urban areas.
2. Improved standard of living of the
people due to inventions.
3. Occupational specialization became
more pronounced than ever.
4. Advanced health-related technology
increased the life expectancy of the
people leading to population growth.
 The advent of industrialization
marked the beginning of
modernization throughout the
world. The overall effect in the
society was the transformation of
it’s political, social and economic
character. Old institutions,
particularly education, expanded
dramatically, and new institutions
such as a science, medicine and
sport emerged.
E. Post Industrial Society

 Post industrial is a society of

technically advanced nations
based on the production and
consumption of services and
information instead of goods.
 4 Primary Characteristics of a Post-
Industrial Society
1. The economy undergoes a transition from the
production of goods to the provision of services.
2. Knowledge becomes valued from of capital.
3. Producing ideas is the main way to grow the economy.
Through the processes of globalization and
automation, the value of the economy of blue-collar,
unionized work, including manual labor declines, and
that of professional workers (e.g. Scientists, IT
Professionals, Computer Engineers, and Creative
Industry Professionals) grows in importance.
4. Behavioral and information sciences and technologies
are developed and implemented (e.g. cybernetics,
information architecture, behavioral economics, game
theory and information theory).
 What is Socialization?
 Socialization is a process. And in this
process, there are two things occur.
• First, the process of learning the accepted
beliefs, roles, norms, behaviors of the group
or society.
• Second, the process of developing himself as
an individual.
 During socialization, the individual is
capable of developing himself as he/she
engages in interactions with the other beings
like him.
 The Social Systems
1. The Family
• An individual must belong to what he can call his
own family.
• Family circle provides support to the individual in
order to survive.
• The family is a socially sanctioned, relatively
permanent grouping of people united by blood,
marriage or adoption, who generally live together
and cooperate economically.
• Within the family, the young individual learns the
socially approved means of satisfying their needs
and begin to develop an understanding of the may
basic roles of society.
 2. Peer Group
• A Peer Group is a group of people of
approximately the same age, status, and
interests.
• Usually this group is made up of children or
early adolescent in which an individual
participates in a process of give and take about
anything that will develop close relationships.
• Peer group membership places the child in a
social context when membership is non-
deliberate and non-authoritative.
• Everyone has experienced being a member of
any peer group.
 3. The School
• This is the 3rd social system.
• The school plays a very important role in the person’s life.
• In school, they will learn the basic skills and technical
knowledge, values of different sort like national, family,
personal, cultural, social and even spiritual values in
order to become good citizens and become effective
members of the society.
• The set of values learned at home are enhanced and
strengthened in school.
• The school is the second family where teachers are
considered the second parents.
• As a family, the school provides a learning pleasant
environment for the students and educators, so that they
can perform their tasks well and common goal will be
achieved.
 4. Religion
The belief in a God or in a group of Gods.
An organized system of beliefs, ceremonies,
and rules used to worship God or a group of
Gods.
The Philippines is the 4th largest Christian
country on Earth, with about 90% of the
population being adherents.
It is also one of the two predominantly Roman
Catholic nations in Asia (the other being East
Timor), and is the 3rd largest Catholic country
in the world.
Top 10 Organized Religions in the
World
Rank Religion Members Percentage
1 Christianity 2.1 billion 33.0
2 Islam 1.3 billion 20.1
3 Hinduism 851 billion 13.3
4 Buddhism 375 billion 5.9
5 Sikhism 25 million 0.4
6 Judaism 15 million 0.2
7 Baha’ism 7.5 million 0.1
8 Confucianism 6.4 million 0.1
9 Jainism 4.5 million 0.1
10 Shintoism 2.8 million 0.0
 The Role of Religion
 Religion plays a very important role into one’s life, mores,
in every society.
 (A) For a person, religion serves as personal strength, the
giver of spiritual food.
 (B) For the society, it is conscience.
A. Man is not only composed of a material body wherein he
has to feed his material body by eating food that he cooks,
cleanse his body by taking a bath, rest his body by
sleeping. The food that we eat lasts. It will not give us
complete satisfaction. But man also has the spiritual part
that he has to look into. This kind of food is a
nourishment as well. It maintains him to become
stronger in every life’s struggle. It is also serves him as
the light during his dark moments and most often times,
gives answers to his inquisitive mind, questions about the
deepest concern of man – the meaning of life.
 What is Religion?
• Religion is man’s response to God’s appeal.
When man responds to God’s appeal, he
recognizes His Infinity and Divinity and
accepts his finity and nothingness. For
according to him, with him life has hope,
future and full of happiness.
• Faith is what brings him to this kind of
response until he confesses “…my Lord and
my God.”
• What is faith? Where can we find it?
 Two Kinds of Faith
1. A Reasoned Faith - This is a kind of faith
wherein after you analyze something and
come to believe that something will occur
as a logical necessity.
2. A Divine Faith – Faith is a gift from God. In
other words, “… if you ask for it, it will be
given unto you”. To describe a divine faith,
it is believing without proving what you
believe in. Plain human reason has no place
on it. In my personal understanding, it is a
reasoned-emotion inspired by God.
 5. Mass Media
• This is the fifth social system.
• Mass media means technology that is intended to
reach a mass audience.
• It is the primary means of communication used to
reach the vast majority of the general public.
• The most common platforms for mass media are
newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the
Internet.
• Mass media has a significant role in the modern
society.
• It can be used as a means for news and information;
mass media can also used whenever there is a
discussion of opinions; and popularly for
entertainment purposes.
• Media: Latin: “Tagapamagitan = it is a
technology used by the sender to deliver
his message to his target receiver. And
this mass media is a very powerful device.
It can facilitate to send the messages to
the people live or virtual; it can be used to
bring the message to the ends of the earth
in an instant; and many other uses
beyond our imagination.
• The world has gone very fast in terms of
development and we owe that to
technology.
 But do you know how technology started?
• It started through our imagination.
• Our imagination is a powerful faculty given by God to
us.
• By imagination, we can create another world different
from your present world.
• A particular invention is a product of his own
imagination. It started with a need.
• Man, in his survival position, finds life full of
necessities.
• From that need, man learns to imagine the beauty of
life with something like this or like that.
• From that he starts to imagine what is that missing
thing that he must work out with.
• His objective is to come up with an invention
that will make his life easier and more
comfortable. There will be hundreds or
thousands of TAE during the process until
final output will take place.
• In other words, man becomes a co-creator of
God.
• Man’s power to (co-) create is not actually
similar to God’s divine power.
• When God creates, he produces something out
of nothing while man produces something out
of something.
• When man produces something, he is not
actually creating but, making.
 The Product of Technology
• Each product is an output with purpose. It is
made according to the reason why it is
conceptualized. But if the product is used not in
accordance to it’s objective why it is made, then
comes the abuse of technology. The outcome
becomes evil.
• Let us use an example; a computer was invented
for good reason. If it is used for pornographic
viewing (not the original objective), comes the
bad use of technology. It is not the technology
that is good or bad, rather, it is the intention of
the user who use the technology.
The Philosophical POV of Socialization

• Let us understand why man tends to become

sociable. Is it by instinct or by chance that he acts
that way without reason at all? The answer is no. it is
not by instinct nor by chance, definitely. He does it
with reason. And he is aware that he is actually
socializing. And he does socializing because it is his
nature to act that way.
• What is the philosophical point of view behind
socializing? The answer is, his search for the
meaning of his life.
• Why is that so? Does it mean that the answer for the
meaning of life is found in the person of other
beings? The answer is no.
• The meaning of life is not and cannot be found in the
person of another being because other beings are also
searches like him.
• How can another being become a source of others’
meaning when he is also search of his own meaning?
Therefore, the meaning of life is found in you, in me, in
us (sa sarili mo) through them. The accomplishment of
your own journey lies on your hands. When you
laboriously exert effort to search for the meaning of life,
you will find it. Everything depends on you.
• But we said, man is socializing because that is the only
way he can find the meaning of his life? Indeed, the
proposition is correct. But the presence of another being
during the act of socializing contributes to the objective
of searching. In short, other people serves only as a
contributory factor to make the searching complete.
• What kind of contribution the other beings can
make in order to substantiate the act of searching?
• First, his mere presence, as a human being like
you, is already an act of response. An appeal
demands for a response. Sometimes you make an
appeal that demand for his response. This appeal-
response exchange substantiates the act of
searching.
• Second, searching is an intellectual activity. When
a person is in search of something, his mind is
preoccupied with anything that is essential to his
existence.
• Third. The mind never stops. Searching continues
as long he exists…
 Thank You for
Listening!!! 