INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSPHY OF THE HUMAN PERSON

ACTIVITY SHEET NO. 7

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HUMAN PERSON AND THE SOCIETY

Lesson 7

OBJECTIVES:
After going through this module, you are expected to:
1. Identify the different types of society;
2. Differentiate their qualities;
3. Explain digital society and digital citizenship; and
4. Identify the effects of being a member of digital society.

Learning Task 1: Read the following situations below and answer the questions thereafter. In
answering the questions try to appreciate the situations using the social norms you remember.

Situation Number 1: A Very good friend of yours visits you and your family in your house. Your
mother who was delighted by her presence cooks her best dish for your friend. Your friend
loved the whole lunch that she kept complementing your mother for being such a good cook. At
the end of her visit, she expresses her gratitude to the whole family. Before she leaves, she
approaches your mother and asks, “how much do I pay you for the lunch you cooked for me?
(Ariely, 2010)

Situation Number 2: You are going through a very rough time. You feel so down that you need
someone to talk to, you send a text message to your friend asking her if she could come over to
make you feel better. Your friend gives you a call then tells you she will be there in 20 minutes.
You are so happy to see her; you gave her a big hug and then pour your heart out. After crying
to her for 30 minutes, she gives comforting piece of advice. You finally say that you feel so
much better. Your friend then says, “That’s good to know, now that we’re done, could we settle
my expenses for this – 20 pesos for the phone call, 35 pesos for the tricycle ride going here, 20
pesos for the tissue paper your drew from my pocket and 500 pesos for the time I lost to
working productivity because I had to come here. Thanks!”

Answer the following in a separate paper (3 points each)

1. Is there something wrong with the friend’s response to your mother’s hospitality?

2. Is there something problematic about your friend asking for payment for her loving
presence?
3. What makes these two reactions awkward for you?

4. By making a reference to the society where you belong, what is your initial response
upon reading the situations?
 Human society continuously develop as humans develops themselves.

What I Have Learned

Learning Task 2: After reading the concept of digital society and digital
citizenship, learners must answer the following questions below: Write
your answer in a separate
Paper. (3 points each)

1. What are the distinct features of digital society which make it significantly different from the
previous societies?

2.In your own understanding, how does digital society form?

3.Do you think, what are the things digital society can offer compared to the previous
type of society?

4.How post-industrial society and digital society connected to each other?

5.What are the possible positive and negative effects of being citizen of digital society?

Assessment
True or False. Write the word True if the statement is correct and write the word
False if the statement conveys otherwise. Write your answer on a separate sheet of
paper.
(2 points each)

______1. Human societies remain the same.

______2. Tribal societies have an established property right.
______3. Post-industrial societies focus on development of mass production.
______4. Virtual society relatively provides a new world for us.
______5. The virtual society and the technological devices today are starting to reshape the
human person and human interactions and relationships.
______6. Virtual worlds and disembodied relations promote commitment.
______7. One of the features of industrial society is that it emphasizes on the importance of
universities and polytechnic institutes which produce graduates who innovate and lead
the new technologies contributing to a postindustrial society.
______8. Feudal society has its historical roots from Asia Minor.
______9. The language systems of tribes are well-written which provides a vast extent of
communication.
_____10. It’s not a drill, I will give you three points for finishing it all.

“WE MAKE A LIVING BY WHAT WE GET, BUT WE MAKE A LIFE BY WHAT WE GIVE.”
 KINDLY READ…

A. Pre-Industrial Societies
a. Tribal Society - the term “tribe” denotes a group of peoples living in a primitive
setting under a leader or chief. The term ‘tribal society’ associates it to other
meaning such as “primitive society” or “preliterate society.” The word ‘tribe’ has
become an important technical term which pertains to a political unit in a certain
territory. The term’s use is rooted from Latin which is associated to the political
divisions or orders of the Roman empire. Tribal societies are small in scale;
bound to their spatial and temporal range of relations in terms of society, law,
and politics; and possess a moral code, cult, and wide range of belief system.
The language systems of tribes are unwritten which provides a narrow extent of
communication. At the same time, tribal societies show a self-sustaining
structure which is absent in the modern society. This is achieved by the close
connections that exist between tribal organizations, and by the focusing of a
leader or person to multiple roles. Unity and coherence exist in tribal values that
are closely related to social groups and are provided with an intensity
characteristic of all “closed” systems of thought.

b. Feudal Society - Feudalism refers to the economic, political, and social system
that prevailed in Europe from about the ninth to the fifteenth century. Due to the
lack of effective centralized government during this period, kings and lords
granted land and provided protection to lesser nobles known as vassals. In
return, these vassals swore oaths of loyalty and military service to their lords.
Peasants known as serfs were bound to the land and were subject to the will of
their lords. One social class system or economic form was not realized for
Europe over the whole Middle Ages. A new economy after medieval period
known as capitalism is still in progress. Medieval world is known for its
traditional land economy and military service, and an urban society. These led to
a feudal-based social-class system and trade & commerce based on money or
capital. For the urban or town environment, merchants, artisans, and customers
formed the core of the society. They saw manufacture as the most important
business to produce goods for sale and buy in the local market economy. Local
products were to have an impact in other areas, such as regional fairs, port
cities, and far trade destinations.

B. Industrial society is the one which uses advance technology to drive a massive production
industry that will support a large population. For example, the United States is an industrial
society because a huge portion of its economy is tied to jobs that involve machine work, like
factory farming or auto-assembly plants, that has a combination of machine and human
employees to produce goods. The objective of an industrial economy is the fast and efficient
manufacturing of standardized products. The same goes if one avails a car, there is a chance
that the car was mass produced because it operates similarly to other models, and its parts can
be replaced with other parts because they are identical.
C. Post Industrial Society - is marked by a progress from a manufacturing-based to a service-
based economy. Post industrialization is most evident in countries and regions that were among
the first to experience the Industrial Revolution, such as the United States, western Europe, and
Japan. Daniel Bell, an American sociologist, first coined the term ‘post-industrial’ in 1973 in his
book “The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting,” which describes
several features of this kind of society. Post-industrial societies are characterized by:

a. a shift from the production of goods to the production of services;

b. the replacement of manual laborers with technical and professional workers
(computer engineers, doctors, and bankers) as the direct production of goods is
moved elsewhere;
c. the replacement of practical knowledge with theoretical knowledge;
d. focusing to the theoretical and ethical implications of new technologies, which
helps society avoid some of the negative features of introducing new
technologies, concerning environment and energy;
e. the development of recent scientific disciplines—that involve new forms of
information technology, cybernetics, or artificial intelligence—to evaluate the
theoretical and ethical implications of new technologies;
f. an emphasis on the university and polytechnic institutes which produce
graduates who innovate and lead the new technologies contributing to a
postindustrial society; and
g. the changing values and norms which reflects the influences on the society. In
an instance, outsourcing of manufactured goods changes how members of a
society see and treat foreigners and immigrants. Also, those individuals
previously occupied in the manufacturing sector find themselves with no clearly
defined social role.

DIGITAL SOCIETY AND THE INFORMATION AGE

Digital technologies have wildly affected our interactions and activity in the 21st century.
They have significantly changed our way of learning, working and socializing. In this modern
world we rely with the use of modern technology which has led to considering the possible
outcome for the society, concerning how we would take part in interaction, and how we can use
these digital tools and communication channels.

Having our heads of digital society in our minds, we first have to think of the information
society; which are correlated with the progress and development of digital information and
communication technologies to the internet at least. Information society plays a vital role with
regards to the circulation and control of made-up ideas which affects political, economic, social
and cultural aspects. So, what does this mean for the everyday citizen?

These informative societies have paved many opportunities reaching bigger audiences like
never before. With a wider scale of the world’s demography, primarily Westerners, have access
to sources and technologies which enables them to connect with enough activities whether
economic, social, political, or educational. We can manipulate the phasing of learning (e.g. free
sources) or businesses (e.g. online selling) without a large sum of money used as a capital and
we can share our ideas and perspectives to the international audiences as we connect beyond.
What do we mean by digital citizenship?

Now, one of the main terms in the modern world is the ‘digital citizen’. What does this
mean? A digital citizen is a person who is knowledgeable and responsible enough to effectively
use different social platforms in the internet. They often engage in useful topics and issues that
will help build a better society, politics and government. If we will dig deeper, digital citizenship
might look simply. We might think that it is just about using the internet safely. However, we also
need to consider and understand that this citizenship can get complicated, especially if we are
going to criticize and show interest in sensitive topics as we start to become a digital citizen,
using digital media to actively participate in society and politics.

If we look a little closer at the field of ‘citizenship studies’ this will lead us to a better
understanding of what digital society really means. A citizen is defined as an individual character
who is viewed as a member of a society while citizenship considers an individual’s behavior in
terms of rights, obligations and functions of said citizen. Being a citizen of a state requires tons of
obligations and duties such as work, taxation and obedience of laws. On the other hand, citizens
also have their rights, it includes civil rights such as freedom of speech and expression, to stand
for what we believe in, and rights to a private life; political rights, or the right to vote and social
rights to health care and welfare. In this course we will tackle these rights as we look at real
definition of what it means to be a citizen in the modern society and how legislation and the
government shape our ability to be democratic citizens who can stand for the truth.

What does this all mean then in the digital age?

We have said that being a digital citizen requires active participation online, not just
access and use. In their book “Being Digital Citizens” (2015) Isin and Ruppert suggest that if we
constitute ourselves as digital citizens, we have become subjects of power in cyberspace. We are
enacting ourselves on the internet, considering and understanding the opportunities presented by
this medium, such as anonymity, communication, and influence. In short, we can use digital
technologies to engage and participate on many levels in society and political life.

The virtual society and the technological devices today are starting to reshape the human
person and human interactions and relationships. More and more interactions are done in the
virtual world than in the actual world. People are more thrilled to see their virtual selves than their
actual selves. They are more themselves online than offline. And this leads one to ask, “Who am
I?” in a more complex manner. People seem to start manipulating personalities as they exhibit
different behaviors in different worlds. People fall in love in virtual worlds. Someone breaks up
with a partner through a text message. Human relations seem to start losing an important
element in living – commitment. Virtual worlds and disembodied relations lack commitment. We
can always step back and retreat in a virtual world. We can always create a new self when our
avatars die or when it has become undesirable. We can always ignore message. Virtual realities
remove risks; and because we do not want to risk, we patronize the virtual world. Commitment is
hard. To commit is to risk. In the virtual world, one’s anonymity lessens, if not completely
removes risks. When we are confronted with real social problems like war and famine,
discrimination harassment and corruption; we let the world know that we condemn these evils
and express participation in the abolition of these problems. How? By a futile click to like. People
in the modern technological society ultimately make no real commitments
THE DISEMBODIED SUBJECT

The dissatisfaction and frustration of the human person with bodily limitations drive the
person to prefer a disembodied human relation. At the outset, it must be clarified that the term
disembodied subject does not mean that in the technological society, human persons are no
longer living with their bodies. However, in a manner of speaking, people are slowly putting aside
their bodies in relating with others because the technological society offers an alternative which
apparently resolves human of an embodied subject. Face to-face interaction is too stressful and
difficult while virtual interactions are relatively easier. Consequently, we find many cases where
people prefer communicating using virtual world, even if the person involved is someone seen on
a regular basis. Moreover, the disembodied interaction among people is aggravated by modern
technological devices. The different gadgets that are produced today support disembodied
human relations. The scene which the technological society creates is very familiar to us: we see
a family, or friends, gathered around a table or in a room, but with very minimal actual embodied
human interaction.
Everyone is glued to their devices – cellphones, tablets, laptops, or any device and they
are all probably interacting with their virtual societies. One is busy with other things other than the
persons within the room or in the closest proximity. The kind of human interaction, which was still
present just two decades ago, is obviously altered now. And however, much we try and remind
ourselves to refrain from being alone with our devices while being with others, we always fall
back into interacting with our gadgets. We prefer to interact with our phones with the unfinished
game that we are playing, with the new music and movies we downloaded, or with our friends
who are probably in the situation – with other people as well, but alone with their devices too.
Interacting with actual embodied subjects, face-to-face, is becoming more and more difficult
today. It is indeed more difficult to relate to other embodied subjects than to relate with things.
The practice of selfie is another move towards disembodied human relations. People used
to approach other people to take their photos. But the regained popularity of selfie gave people
the idea that they do not need the other to take photos. And the invention of the monopod
aggravates the condition. The monopod allows us to take group selfies without missing a
member of our group. It has solidified the person to take our photos. Maybe we will just disturb
the person by asking him to take our photo. But maybe we are more afraid of being rejected than
by the idea of bothering the other.

“SOCIETY IS UNITY IN DIVERSITY.”

-George Herbert Mead