A social science route map, regularly redrawn
by Michael G. Heller
Published in Social Science Files, July 14, 2025
An Interesting Story by James Tissot, 1872 France
In my history of society there are digressions, circuits and side trips. Only afterwards may it become clear why a detour was useful and integral. So, it is wise to regularly revise and re-reveal the ‘big picture’ as viewed from up on deck or in the rigging. The revised plan below reflects my recent declassification of empire-as-society. I am still not fully confident about the reclassification of Types Six and Seven. History will tell.
Heller’s secular map for exploring society
Type 1 (T1)
Individualistic. Person over person. The elder’s influence is checked, channeled, and challenged by female relatives and younger men who are physically strong, cognitively more advanced, or endowed with psychological charisma. Every leading individual is in possession of a personal quality that gives them influence. Biological meritocracy.
Type 2 (T2)
Communalistic. Group over person. All adults participate in decision making assemblies. There are constraints on the emergence of formal individual leadership. Capable individuals must seek-and-lose influence relative to the group because every final decision results from a public show of hands. Functionally limited meritocracy.
Type 3 (T3)
Coordinated. Persons over group. Designated coordinators compete and compromise with others of similar ‘representational’ status. Leaderships may become hereditary or individually ranked by achievement with titles. Rule enforcement and group activities are coordinated by an assembly with restricted participation. Leading individuals in the group evaluate the coordinators before they consent to being influenced by them.
Type 4 (T4)
Administered. Centre over society. Agricultural revolution and centralised governing. Compulsory organisation apparatus. Competition for influence is within and between organisations. Communalistic agricultural estates evolve into territorial kingdoms. New societies of specialised organisations with transformative techniques, numeracy, writing, laws, and rulership hierarchies. Self-selected and appointed individuals who make decisions on behalf of others require ‘legitimacy’ in order to ensure compliance.
Type 5 (T5)
Participatory. Group over society. System over hierarchy. Small city societies. Administration combined with communalistic or coordinative participative decision making. Citizens hold representational rights to shape and approve decisions. Non-participative decision making processes exist alongside, ensuring that differences of personal privilege and authority can be sustained informally. Leaders represent and marshal groups that exercise formal influence through threats of non-compliance and retribution if the decisions of central organisations fail to satisfy the group interests.
Type 6 (T6)
Stratified. Ranks over centres. Organic propagation of personal ranking inhibits state formation. New ideas for impersonal secular state formation emerge from a three-way conflict between monopolistic corporate-bureaucratic religious rulership, systems of extra-territorial governance, and dynamically fragmented monarchies or lordships. Internal and external differentiations and interactions of ranked authorities shape the polities. Semi-autonomous mini-centres generate layers of multi-directional multi-functional influence. A perpetual decentring and fragmentation of decision making.
Type 7 (T7)
Elitist. State over society. Elite differentiation. Facade democracies, one-party states, statism. The state is unitary and personalistic. Unrepresentative elites compete for state-derived powers and privileges. In underdeveloped states power is ceded to elites. Private power produces a vacuum of public power. The constitutionalism of society is perpetually paralysed. The state remains unitary and its influence remains unchecked.
Type 8 (T8)
Functionalist. System over system. Differentiation of functional executive, legislative, and judicial powers within modern states creates unique system societies with system states regulated by impersonal codes. Climactic ‘end of history’. Governance functions are separated out. A representative and capitalist state is born. The centre separates internally into ‘equal’ interactive multilayered specialised organisations with genuine representation. General agreement is formally structured and broadly representative.
Type 9 (T9) (Currently Under Construction)
Society has nine lives, and always lands on its feet. The transition to Type 9 has only just begun. It should combine administered machine (AI) intelligence with free human enterprise on the base of Type 8 impersonal procedures and separations of power.
View and plan of Toledo by El Greco, c.1610 Spain