It creates all the necessary conditions. Society as an integral self-developing system. Main types of social activities

Main areas of social life

material sphere. Its originality lies in the fact that it is designed to create certain things necessary to meet the material needs of people. The main figure is the manual worker. The labor of workers extracts raw materials, creates machines and mechanisms, everything necessary to meet production needs. It creates what people need in everyday life.

Spiritual realm. Here not things are produced, but ideas, images, scientific and artistic values. However, they also materialize in one way or another in physical things (books, paintings, etc.), although the main thing is the spiritual content.

Regulatory or managerial activity. This is the activity of politicians, managers. The specific task of the sphere is to maintain ties between people, regulate their activities and social relations. Ensuring coherence The highest form of managerial activity is political activity. the fate of millions of people is decided here.

The social sphere or the activity of serving people. This is the activity of a doctor, teacher, artist. The service sector is the most dynamic in modern society.

All types of activity identified in the course of the analysis, social. Groups and institutions, their relationships in reality exist together. Interconnected.

Society as a self-sufficient system

Society as an integral organism is characterized by the following properties:

• 1) amateur performance;
• 2) self-organization;
• 3) self-development;
• 4) self-sufficiency.

The first three properties are inherent not only to society as a whole, but also to its constituent areas, while the property of self-sufficiency is characteristic only of society as a whole.

Self-sufficiency is the ability of a system by its own activity to create and recreate all the necessary conditions for its own existence, to produce everything necessary for collective life. Self-sufficiency is the main difference between society and its constituent parts. Only the totality of all types of activity, all interconnected groups and their institutions create society as a whole as a self-sufficient social system - a product of the joint activity of people who are able to create everything necessary for their existence by their own efforts.

Topic number 9. Society as an integral self-developing system.

1. Basic concepts of society as a system

System- an ordered set of interconnected and interacting elements (for example, the solar system, the state, the company, but not the items in the bag)

Structure- a relatively stable set of links between the elements of the system.

Society is a special complexly organized system, which has a much more complex structure and organization than the rest of nature.

At the same time, individual parts create society as a single system with special properties that its individual parts do not have.

Society as system (whole organism) characterized by the following properties:

Self-organization - the ability to self-organize

Self-development - the ability to self-development

Self-sufficiency - autonomy of existence and development.

self-sufficiency - the ability of the system by its own activity to create and recreate all the necessary conditions for its own existence, to produce everything necessary for collective life.

At the same time, self-sufficiency is characteristic only for societies in general, while self-organization and self-development can also be present in individual parts of society!

In addition, the parts of the social system are not only interconnected, but also mutually penetrate into each other (for example, economics and politics).

2. Social (public) activity and its structure.

Elements, types (kinds).

All the infinite variety of phenomena of public (social) life is essentially only one or anothertype of joint activity (O.Kont).

Thus, human activity is basis of all social(of all processes in society).

Social (public) activities- is a specifically human form of people's active attitude to the world around, its content is the purposeful development and transformation of this world.

The simplest manifestation of activity is social action(influence of the subject in relation to the object).

The activity includes 4 elements.

Mainelements social activities:

1. person (people);

2. physical things;

3. symbols;

4. connections between them.

1. Human(s). They are subject of activity(i.e., the active side), which is directed to certain objects.

2 things, acting as activity objects by means of which man alters the environment in order to adapt it to his various needs.

Things are divided into two groups:

Tools and means material production (mechanisms, machines);

guns spiritual production (pencil, pen, typewriter and especially a computer(!).

Besides,object activities (except things) can bethe people themselves if the action of a person as a subject is directed at them.

3. Symbols: sign language, sound and written speech, information (on paper and electronic media, books, magnetic tapes, floppy disks, disks, graphics, pictures, banknotes, etc.).

They provide purposefulness and consistency of human activity.

If physical things directly serve a person to adapt him to the surrounding reality, then symbols greatly facilitate this process of adaptation for a person.

4. M multiple and sustainable connections and relationships between the above factors of social activity. They form real social activity. outside these links of activity itself cannot exist.

Maintypes (kinds ) social activities

So there are 4element human activity: people, things, symbols, connections between them. The implementation of any type of joint activity of people without them is impossible.

Allocate4 main type (kind) of social activity:

The main types of social activities:

material production;

Spiritual activity (production)

Regulatory activities

Social activity (in the narrow sense of the word)

1. Material production- creates practical means of activity that are used in all its types. Lets people physically transform natural and social reality. Here everything is created for everyday people's lives (housing, food, clothing, etc.).

However, one cannot speak ofabsolutization the role of material production in social activity. The role is constantly growinginformation resources. INpost-industrial society is growing rapidlythe role of culture and science, transition from the production of goods to the service sector. Therefore, the role of material production will gradually decline.

2. Spiritual production (activity)- produces not things, but ideas, images, values ​​(pictures, books, etc.).

In the process of spiritual activity, a person learns the world around him, its diversity and essence, develops a system of value ideas, determining the meaning (value) of certain phenomena.

"Mumu", L. Tolstoy "Vanya and plums", sausage in the toilet.

Its role is constantly growing.

3. Regulatory activities- the activities of administrators, managers, politicians.

It is aimed at ensuring the consistency and orderliness of various spheres of public life.

4. Social activities(in the narrow sense of the word) - activities for the direct service of people. This is the activity of a doctor, teacher, artist, service workers, recreation, tourism.

Creates conditions for preserving the activity and life of people.

These four basic types of activity exist in any society and form basis spheres of public life.

In the second part of the definition of the concept of "society", given in § 1, the idea of ​​the relationship of people and the interaction of various spheres of social life is emphasized. In philosophical literature, society is defined as a "dynamic system". The concept of "system" may seem complicated, but it makes sense to understand it, since there are many objects in the world that are covered by this concept. Systems are our Universe, and the culture of an individual people, and the activity of man himself. The word "system" of Greek origin, means "a whole made up of parts", "a set". Thus, each system includes interacting parts: subsystems and elements. Connections and relations between parts of the system are of primary importance. Dynamic systems allow various changes, development, the emergence of new and the withering away of old parts and the connections between them.

Features of the social system

What are the characteristic features of society as a system? How does this system differ from natural systems? A number of such differences have been identified in the social sciences.

First, society as a system is complex, since it includes many levels, subsystems, and elements. So, we can talk about human society on a global scale, about a society within one country, about various social groups in which each person is included (nation, class, family, etc.).

The macrostructure of society as a system consists of four subsystems, which are the main spheres of human activity - material and production, social, political, spiritual. Each of these spheres known to you has its own complex structure and is itself a complex system. Thus, the political sphere acts as a system that includes a large number of components - the state, parties, etc. But the state, for example, is also a system with many components.

Thus, any of the existing spheres of society, being a subsystem in relation to society, at the same time itself acts as a rather complex system. Therefore, we can speak of a hierarchy of systems consisting of a number of different levels.

In other words, society is a complex system of systems, a kind of supersystem.

Secondly, characteristic feature of society as a system is the presence in its composition of elements of different quality, both material (various technical devices, institutions, etc.) and ideal (values, ideas, traditions, etc.). For example, the economic sphere includes enterprises, vehicles, raw materials, industrial goods, and at the same time economic knowledge, rules, values, patterns of economic behavior, and much more.

Thirdly, basic element of society as a system is a person who has the ability to set goals and choose the means of carrying out their activities. This makes social systems more changeable and mobile than natural ones.

Public life is constant change. The pace and extent of these changes may vary; there are periods in the history of mankind when the established order of life did not change in its foundations for centuries, but over time the pace of change began to increase.

From the course of history, you know that certain qualitative changes took place in societies that existed in different eras, while the natural systems of those periods did not undergo significant changes. This fact indicates that society is a dynamic system that has a property that is expressed in science by the concepts of “change”, “development”, “progress”, “regression”, “evolution”, “revolution”, etc.

Consequently, human is a universal element of all social systems, since it is necessarily included in each of them.

Like any system, society is an ordered integrity. This means that the components of the system are not in disorder, but, on the contrary, occupy a certain position within the system and are connected in a certain way with other components. Therefore, the system has integrative quality, which is inherent in it as a whole. None of the components of the system, considered separately, has this quality. It, this quality, is the result of the integration and interconnection of all components of the system. Just as individual human organs (heart, stomach, liver, etc.) do not have the properties of a person, so the economy, the health care system, the state and other elements of society do not have the qualities that are inherent in society as a whole. And only thanks to the diverse connections that exist between the components of the social system, it turns into a single whole, that is, into society (just as thanks to the interaction of various human organs there is a single human body).

The connections between subsystems and elements of society can be illustrated by various examples. The study of the distant past of mankind allowed scientists to conclude that the moral relations of people in primitive conditions were built on collectivist principles, that is, in modern terms, priority was always given to the team, and not to the individual. It is also known that the moral norms that existed among many tribes in those archaic times allowed the killing of weak members of the clan - sick children, the elderly - and even cannibalism. Have the real material conditions of their existence influenced these ideas and views of people about the limits of the morally permissible? The answer is clear: no doubt they did. The need to jointly obtain material wealth, the doom to an early death of a person who has broken away from the family, and laid the foundations of collectivist morality. Guided by the same methods of struggle for existence and survival, people did not consider it immoral to get rid of those who could become a burden for the team.

Another example may be the relationship between legal norms and socio-economic relations. Let's turn to known historical facts. The code of laws of the Old Russian state - Russian Pravda provides for various punishments for murder. At the same time, the measure of punishment was determined primarily by the place of a person in the system of hierarchical relations, his belonging to one or another social stratum or group. So, the fine for killing a tiun (steward) was huge: it was 80 hryvnias and equaled the cost of 80 oxen or 400 rams. The life of a smerd or a serf was estimated at 5 hryvnias, i.e. 16 times cheaper.

Integral, i.e., general, inherent in the whole system, qualities of any system are not a simple sum of the qualities of its components, but represent new quality, which arose as a result of the relationship, the interaction of its components. In its most general form, this is the quality of society as a social system - ability to create all the necessary conditions for its existence, to produce everything necessary for the collective life of people. In philosophy self-sufficiency regarded as main difference society from its constituent parts. Just as human organs cannot exist outside of an integral organism, so none of the subsystems of society can exist outside the whole - society as a system.

Another feature of society as a system is that this system is one of the self-governing. The administrative function is performed by the political subsystem, which gives consistency to all components that form social integrity.

Any system, whether technical (a unit with an automatic control system), or biological (animal), or social (society), is in a certain environment with which it interacts. The environment of the social system any country is both nature and the world community. Changes in the state of the natural environment, events in the world community, in the international arena are a kind of signals to which society must respond. Usually it seeks to either adapt to changes in the environment, or to adapt the environment to its needs. In other words, the system responds to signals in one way or another. In doing so, she implements her main functions: adaptation; goal achievement, i.e., the ability to maintain its integrity, ensuring the implementation of its tasks, influencing the natural and social environment; sample maintenance- the ability to maintain its internal structure; integration- the ability to integrate, that is, to include new parts, new social formations (phenomena, processes, etc.) into a single whole.

Section 1, chapter 1. Society. Topic 2. // Society as a complex dynamic system. Option 1.

Choice questions

1. The main subsystems of society include:

1) the state; 2) religion; 3) economics; 4) the class of entrepreneurs.

2. A social institution is:

3. The main political institution is

1) the institution of a multi-party system; 3) the institute of presidential plenipotentiaries

2) the institution of the judiciary; 4) the institution of the state.

4. Are the following judgments about society as a system correct?

A. Society as a system is characterized by self-sufficiency

B. Society as a system is characterized by self-governance

1) only A is true; 3) both judgments are true;

2) only B is true; 4) both judgments are wrong.

Short answer questions.

Section 1, chapter 1. Society. Topic 2. // Society as a complex dynamic system. Option 2.

Choice questions

1. The features of society as a system do not include:

1) the presence of many levels, subsystems, elements. 3) alternative development;

2) completeness, linearity of development; 4) the presence of elements of different quality.

2. Social institution is:

1) the totality of all types of transformative activity, as well as its result, including the transformation of the person himself;

2) a historically established, stable form of organizing the joint activities of people who perform certain functions in society, the main of which is the satisfaction of social needs;

3) the way a person relates to the outside world, which consists in transforming and subordinating it to the goals of a person;

4) relatively stable ties between social groups, peoples, states and other associations of people that arise in different spheres of human activity.

3. In the political life of our country, the institution of parliamentarism arose. What function of society as a system does this example illustrate?

1) integration; 2) adaptation; 3) goal achievement; 4) maintaining the sample.

4. Are the following judgments about the relationship between the spheres of public life correct?

A. The correlation of spheres of public life is characterized by their independence from each other.

B. The relationship between the spheres of public life is characterized by their complex interrelations and mutual influence.

1) only A is true; 3) both judgments are true;

2) only B is true; 4) both judgments are wrong.

5. Are the following judgments about social institutions correct?

A. Social institutions make connections between people random and chaotic.

B. Social institutions bring together large masses of people to meet a particular need.

1) only A is true; 3) both judgments are true;

2) only B is true; 4) both judgments are wrong.

6. In the country of K., the political system of society hinders the development of the economy. This example illustrates:

1) cyclicality as the basis for the existence of society;

2) the complex structure of the main spheres of society;

3) constant change in social life;

4) correlation of spheres of public life.

Short answer questions.

Write down the word missing in the fragment of the table.

Establish a correspondence between social institutions and their types:

Find the key institutions in terms of the organization of society in the list below:

power, 2) forensic examination; 3) property; 4) plant; 5) twinning; 6) family.

Section 1, chapter 1. Society. Topic 2. // Society as a complex dynamic system

Option 1.

Choice questions

Short answer questions.

1. self-sufficiency

Option 2.

Choice questions

Short answer questions.

1. self-sufficiency

We continue to acquaint you with coaching tools that you can use on your own to put things in order in your head, structure thoughts, increase awareness, make decisions, increase motivation and, as a result, for a more effective and exciting movement towards your goals.

Very often, the reason for failure in achieving goals is not a lack of motivation, not a poorly thought out plan, and not even procrastination, most often it is a banal miscalculation in resources. One of the most important resources is our knowledge, abilities and skills.

Interesting: the skills necessary to achieve the goal do not have to be developed perfectly. Mihaly Csiksendmihaly, who first described the state of flow, which is characterized by complete immersion in the process of performing a certain task, compiled a list of conditions under which such a state can occur. One of the conditions is the complexity of the task being performed. That is, the skills must be developed enough to keep the task both challenging and manageable. Since if the skills are not developed enough, it will be too difficult to complete the task, which will quickly lose interest and motivation. If the skills are too well developed, the task will be too easy and quickly cease to be fun to work on. Therefore, when setting a goal, it is important not only to assess the existing ones and understand how to develop the necessary skills, but also to take into account the correspondence between the desired goal and the degree of development of the required skill.

Today I will tell you about a coaching tool, after working through which you will find answers to the questions: “What knowledge and skills is important for me to develop in order to achieve my goal?” and “How can I do this?”

Surely, many of you have heard about the Balance Wheel. I propose to consider an alternative use of this tool. So, meet (drumroll), Skill Wheel!

Skill Wheel is a generic name. In fact, it can include any skills, knowledge and abilities. These are the resources that will always be with you, no matter where you are and with whom.

Algorithm for working with the skill wheel

The algorithm for working with the skill wheel is the same as with the balance wheel.

1. Determine what knowledge, skills and abilities you need to achieve your goal. No more than 8 is desirable. The smaller, the better for focusing.

Recommendation: Answer the question: "Who am I when I achieve this goal?" For example, your goal is to start earning remotely. And the answer to the question "Who am I when I achieve this goal?" maybe Freelancer. So, for your list, you choose the qualities, skills, knowledge that are important for a successful freelancer. Or “I want to take my business to the next level.” Who am I? Entrepreneur. And look for what characterizes a successful entrepreneur. Or "I want a relief press." Who am I? Attractive guy with embossed abs. Now think about someone who can be called an “Attractive guy with a relief press” 🙂 What qualities, skills, abilities helped him achieve this goal?

2. Answer the question: “How should each of the skills ideally (applicable to your goal) manifest itself?”

3. Write down separately all the criteria for the ideal manifestation of a skill.

4. Draw a wheel, dividing it into sectors corresponding to the number of skills you have chosen. The pattern will look like a spoked wheel. Each spoke is a skill.

5. Divide each needle into 10 parts so that each part corresponds to 1 point. We count points from the center, starting from 1.

6. Rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how well each skill is currently displayed. That is, what score can you assign to a skill now if 10 points is the ideal manifestation of the skill (according to your description).

7. Dot the score you assigned to the skill on each spoke and connect the dots. So you can comprehensively assess the existing picture according to your skills today.

Action plan

Now let's move on to compiling a list of actions.

8. Select the skill you want to start with.

9. Think about how your skill will change if the degree of its manifestation grows by only 1 point? What will be new in you? And what can be done to develop a skill by just 1 point? Write down the actions you choose.

10. Now think about how your skill will change if the degree of its manifestation increases by another 1 point? What will be new in you? And what can be done to develop the skill so that its manifestation increases by one more point? Write down these steps too.

11. Continue to move up 1 point and fix the selected actions until you reach 10 points.

Note: it is believed that such a step-by-step scoring method of movement better structures thoughts in the field of action. But if it's more convenient for you to immediately make a list of actions, this is your choice. The proposed algorithm can and should be customized, only then it will be as useful as possible.

The skill wheel can be used for almost any goal or sub-goal, as long as they are as specific as possible.

An example of a wonderful study of this exercise was shown by a participant in the WinWin program Mira Charlie. Her goal is to get a job in the human resources department of a large company. One of the most important steps is the interview. In order to prepare as effectively as possible for passing this stage, Mira created the wheel of an ideal interview, prescribing in it everything that, in her opinion, a successful candidate needs.

I really hope that this tool will be useful to you when analyzing resources and planning development actions.

Other ways to use the wheel of balance, as well as various useful coaching models and techniques, can be not only studied, but also practiced in the role of both a coach and a client by enrolling in the course "Basics of Coaching"