Unified Theory of Social Systems: A Radical Christian Analysis

Abstract

For our purposes a Social System is defined as a human community whose members interact, depend on each other and are affected jointly by actions of or physical characteristics within the community. Decisions concerning actions or characteristics can be of any kind, on a broad scale ranging from absolute dictatorship to an open-ended state of most perfect democratic principles. It is precisely this notion of "perfection" that will concern us in this study; but hopefully in a more explicit, precise and less superficial and pride-loaded manner. Next, because we want to develop a unified theory of social systems, it is imperative to include all systems in all their dimensionality -- not only in the political sphere. The major spheres or dimensions, in addition to the political (from which we have started our analysis), are social, educational, economic, health-related, family-related, affective and spiritual -- and in fact any sphere involving a social system of more than one person where some or all of the members of the system function in the sense stated above. We want to refer to this as the ALL-INCLUSIVENESS of all SPHERES or DIMENSIONS of human society.