Different Forms of Societies and Individualities (Agrarian, Industrial, and Virtual)

An agrarian society is a society that depends on agriculture as its primary means for
support and sustenance. Wealth comes from the land. This type of society acknowledges
other means of livelihood and work habits, but stresses the importance of agriculture and
farming. Agrarian values see rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer
as superior to the paid worker, and see farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social
values.

The Agrarian model was the most common form of socio-economic organization for
most of recorded human history. For Agrarian societies the primary means of subsistence is the
cultivation of crops, including corn, wheat, and rice but this time using a mixture of human
and non- human means specifically by using animals and the plow to cultivate fields. The use
of the plow and the irrigation system increases the food supply, and people no longer need
to move.

The Catholic Church was the most important colonial institution to survive the Wars of
Independence. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the church was the
principal symbol of tradition and stability in the midst of political and social change. It touched
the lives of everyone, but its influence was felt most deeply among the lower classes and the
rural peasantry.

Religion not only offered consolation, but Sunday morning Mass or the patron saint's
feast day were natural occasions to socialize or sell wares in the village plaza. But this most
traditional of all institutions, after undergoing a series of prolonged crises in the post-
Independence period, experienced a profound transformation in the 1960s. Since that time
the church has emerged as an advocate of human rights, democracy, and social change.

Then came the Industrial Revolution. Industrial society refers to a society driven by the
use of technology to enable mass production, supporting a large population with a high
capacity for division of labor. Industrial society is characterized by the use of external energy
sources, such as fossil fuels, to increase the rate and scale of production. The production of
food is shifted to large commercial farms where the products of industry, such as combine
harvesters and fossil fuel- based fertilizers, are used to decrease required human labor while
increasing production.
 No longer needed for the production of food, excess labor is moved into factories where
mechanization is utilized to further increase efficiency. As populations grow, and
mechanization is further refined, often to the level of automation, many workers shift to
expanding service industries. Value shifts from land to the ability to purchase goods. Industrial
society gives rise to consumerism where specialization and urbanization are seen as desirable,
in part so that workers are closer to centers of production. Industrial society provides labor to
those that benefit financially from it.

The ability to purchase goods defines one’s worth in Industrial society. Industrialism
prescribes an economy not connected to land, and economy that is placeless and
displacing. Meaning it does not distinguish one place from another. It applies its methods and
technologies indiscriminately all over the globe. It thus continues the economy of colonialism.

The shift of colonial power from European monarchy to global corporation is perhaps
the dominant theme of modern history. All along, it has been the same story of the gathering
of an exploitative economic power into the hands of a few people who are alien to the places
and the people they exploit. Such an economy is bound to destroy locally adapted agrarian
economies everywhere it goes.

In contrast, everything that happens on an agrarian farm is determined or conditioned

by the understanding that there is only so much land, so much water in the cistern, so much
hay in the barn, so much firewood in the shed, so much food in the cellar or freezer, so much
strength in the back and arms—and no more.

This is the understanding that induces thrift, family coherence, neighborliness, and local
economies. Within accepted limits, these become necessities. The agrarian sense of
abundance comes from the experienced possibility of frugality and renewal within limits.

This is exactly the opposite of the industrial idea that abundance comes from the
violation of limits: by personal mobility, extractive machinery, long-distance transport, and
scientific or technological breakthroughs.

If we use up the good possibilities in this place, we will import goods from some other
place, or we will go to some other place. If nature releases her wealth too slowly, we will take
it by force. In the industrial society, if we make the world too toxic for honeybees, some
specialized corporation will invent tiny robots that will fly about pollinating flowers and making
honey. It conceives of farming and forestry as forms of mining; it cannot use the land without
abusing it.

Industrial mindset also has contempt for anything small, rural, or natural and that translates into
contempt for centralized economic systems, any sort of local self- sufficiency in food or other
necessities. The industrial “solution” for such systems is to increase the scale of work and trade.
It brings Big Ideas, Big Money, and Big Technology into small rural communities, economies,
and ecosystems—the brought in industry and the experts being invariably alien to and
contemptuous of the places to which they are brought in.

The result is that problems correctable on a small scale are replaced by large-scale
problems for which there are no large-scale corrections. Meanwhile, the large-scale enterprise
has reduced or destroyed the possibility of small-scale corrections.

Globalization means the speedup of movements and exchanges (of human beings,
goods, and services, capital, technologies or cultural practices) all over the planet. One of the
effects of globalization is that it promotes and increases interactions between different regions
and populations around the globe.

Globalization is not a one-way process but compromises the multilateral interactions

among global systems, local practices, transnational trends, and personal lifestyles. At various
instances this interlocking of the global, the local and the personal can be smooth or rough
for communities and individuals who respond favorably or adversely to it. Also, globalization
makes local knowledge no longer purely local. The process of globalization however, had
already begun, long before the twenty-first century.

Globalization, in the sense of adoption and acceptance of some standards in the

various aspects of life, had its embryonic beginning in the west in the 15th century as an
accompaniment to the new ideas of the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment.

The introduction of new inventions in science eventually led to the industrial revolution
in the 18th century. Industrial revolution is a movement in which machines change people’s
way of life as well as their methods of manufacture. Industry, before this period was a name
for particular human attributes: skill, assiduity, perseverance, and diligence. Industrial
revolution came gradually in a short span time.
 This relatively sudden change in humanity’s way of life deserves to be called a
revolution. The industrial revolution grew more powerful each year due to the new inventions
and manufacturing processes that added to the efficiency of the machines. In part, this is the
acknowledgement of a series of methods of production. It is also, however an
acknowledgment of the effect of these changes on society as a whole which is similarly
transformed (Germain, 2000). According to Germain 2000 there are significant changes
brought about Industrial Revolution first, the invention of machines in lieu of doing the work of
hand tools, second the use of steam, and other kinds of power vis-à-vis the muscles of human
beings and of animals and lastly the embracing of factory system.

As technology advanced, more and more automatic machines were invented to

handle the jobs with little supervision by human beings. The abstract thought of
mathematician, coupled with the development of ingenious electronic technology, created
not only a new industry, but also a catalyst to help quicken the tempo and reshape the
structure of industrial society.