L e v e l - 7 Action

Action Guide

Achieving Level 7 objectives (or any other flavor of significant transformation) will require several independent efforts, all occurring at once and likely for a sustained period of time - probably several years. I do not believe they will require central coordination, but the intensity and persistence of engagement likely needs to maintain a similar amplitude across the spectrum of efforts. As an important prerequisite in the modern age, a realistic transformation will require many of the existing and hard-won civic foundations to remain intact; chaotic or purely destructive revolution is not likely to bear the fruit it intends. There are plentiful reasons for this, many of which are discussed in the Revolutionary Integrity section.

With these things in mind, multi-pronged change mechanisms for each objective might include the following components. The encouragement in this L7 Action page is to find one or more arenas that appeals to you — to your talents, abilities, interests, social and physical communities, etc. — and then commit to positive change through personal action and relationship. But the key concept reflected here is that for effective and enduring transformation to occur, we must effect change both within the established institutions that perpetuate status quo hierarchies, and independently and directly on various change agents outside of those institutions and their influence, thereby creating new power structures.

Top-Down Systemic Change

Revisions to processes and institutions at all levels of government — including national and international — that support Level 7 proposals.

Examples

• Reconstitute some version of a statutory Fairness Doctrine across all media, including Web and social media, so that crackpot conspiracy theories and deliberately falsified information do not have the same technological footing — or the same perceived credibility — as truthful news reporting and “honest, equitable and balanced” analysis of critical issues.
• State and federal constitutional amendments to repeal corporate personhood, institute direct democracy in parallel with representative democracy, initiate banking and monetary reform (also in parallel with current systems), establish equality of feminine power, restore journalistic integrity in the Fourth Estate, etc.
• State and local initiatives that create nested citizens councils with oversight of government and enterprise, institute algorithmic redistricting, begin establishing a Universal Social Backbone, etc.
• Legislate incentives for transitioning enterprises from shareholder ownership to worker ownership
• Legislation that embodies other Level 7 principles and proposals (practicing the precautionary principle, distributed green energy production, public priorities database, sustainable design, etc.)
• Legislation to reform the IMF and World Bank

Constructive Grass-Roots Populism

• Create independent Open Source, crowd-populated “Public Information Clearinghouse” as proposed
• Promote activism, education and Level 7 ideas via social media — especially to counter AI bot campaigns, troll farms and fake news that engineer targeted manipulations of public opinion
• Organize for popular support of top-down constitutional amendments and initiatives
• Create or participate in commons-based alternative economies
• Create multimedia representations of Level 7 proposals for mass distribution
• Organize protests and other nonviolent group action to promote Level 7 transformations
• Develop K-12 multimedia outreach to educate about Level 7 and personal integral practice

Disrupting the Status Quo

• Hacktivism of most nefarious actors (i.e. those who promote a neoliberal, pro-corporate, deceptive, destructive or self-serving commercialist agenda)
• Work with unions and workers to migrate businesses toward worker-ownership
• Disrupt pro-capitalist misinformation and PR campaigns
• Disrupt commerce (retail boycotts, production and distribution interruptions, etc.) involving products or services with “perverse utility” or antagonistic holistic value
• Other nonviolent acts (198 Methods of Nonviolent Action)
• Introduce major system-wide disruptions like David Holmgren’s “Crash On Demand.”

Exposing Misinformation & Pro-Corporatocracy PR Campaigns

• Flag fake news memes on social media
• Provide community with correct facts
• Answer questions and concerns of folks who have been misinformed

Recruiting Elite Change Agents

• Find members of the wealthy elite who are willing to endorse Level 7 proposals and can help actualize solutions
• Promote narratives that frame worker ownership, direct democratization of institutions and enterprises, and diffusion of wealth and political power as the extraordinary philanthropic aims that they are
• Persuade existing power brokers to relinquish counterproductive agendas and influence

Community-Centric Pilot Projects

• Develop NGOs that promote and actualize Level 7 proposals at the community level
• Establish Community Land Trusts with common property shares
• Develop community green energy production and distribution facilities
• Initiate and maintain sustainable design projects individually and communally
• Advocate credit union banking - especially those institutions that identify as smaller community banks
• Create citizens councils that actively advise existing institutions (until initiatives can formally authorize their roles and responsibilities)
• Advocate Level 7 guiding design principles in existing community institutions
• Establish new goods and services enterprises that emulate the Level 7 enterprise schema

Larger-Scale Translocal and Municipal Alternatives

• Initiating and networking peer-to-peer virtual communities that embody commons-centric valuation and generative production
• Engage in cosmo-local initiatives that transition municipalities to an urban commons models
• Initiating, participating in, and coordinating municipalist experiments
• Participate in alternative exchange mechanisms that provide seed-forms of positive change (mutual credit, bartering, alternative currencies, etc.)

Individual Development & Supportive Networking

• Establish Community Coregroups around the country to mutually educate and participate in Level 7
• Create action lists of personal choices that energize Level 7 transitions to share with others
• Contribute to the Public Information Clearinghouse database
• Advocate Level 7 guiding principles in local community, in the workplace, etc.

Socially Engaged Art, & Visionary Art That Inspires Transformation

• Community sing-along concerts that protest inequality, owner-shareholder exploitation, destruction of the environment, etc. and express demand for greater democracy throughout all private and public institutions
• Public interactive art installations that educate about direct democracy, worker-ownership, the precautionary principle, etc
• Plays — preformed in openly accessible community spaces, and with audience participation — that model new forms of civic engagement (citizens councils, daily direct democracy, recall elections, the social credits system, etc.)
• Novels, music, stories, poetry and cinema that demonstrates how some or all aspects of a realized Level 7 political economy would benefit human thriving.

Incremental Habits — Small Changes That Lead To Big Impacts

• Take a walk in your neighborhood, meet your neighbors, and get to know them — without any agenda in mind. Just begin to build relationships within your local community, one neighbor at a time. Practice listening without judgement or reaction, and really trying to understand other people's perspectives. Engage with empathy and kindness.
• In the same way, engage with local businesses with less of a “transactional” attitude, and more of a “relational” attitude; get to know them, and let them get to know you.
• Invite people you get to know this way into your home for a meal, or to hang out in the back yard or on your porch for a chat, or to join you for a relaxing stroll through the neighborhood.
• Structure some routine space and time into your life to be quiet and alone in Nature — for peaceful appreciation of the natural world.
• Spend more unstructured and relaxing time with friends and family.
• Begin a daily, five- or ten-minute routine of trying out different forms of meditation (see resource below for some ideas).

Consulting — And Promoting — Ethical And Truthful Media

• Mediabiasfactcheck.com (Rates media outlets on Left/Right bias and reliability of fact-based reporting)
• Sciencenews.org (Science News)

• Worldpress.org (World Press Review — includes different perspectives from all around the globe)
• News.Gallup.com (Gallup News; see also Gallup Reports)
• Reuters.com (Reuters)
• ICIJ.org (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists)
• Opensecrets.org (Open Secrets)
• Hoax-Slayer.com (Hoax Slayer)
• Politifact.com (Politifact)
• Snopes.com (Snopes)
• Factcheck.org
• PewResearch.org (Pew Research)

• Guardian.com (The Guardian)
• Politico.com (Politico)
• NPR.org (National Public Radio) and PBS.org (Public Broadcasting Service)
• Propublica.org (ProPublica)
• NYTimes.com (New York Times)
• TheAtlantic.com (The Atlantic)
• WashingtonPost.com (Washington Post)
• Economist.com (The Economist)
• Democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)

Although there are other examples of action items peppered throughout this website, individual and collective action is probably the most critical opportunity for participatory mechanisms. At some point, the web should be used to consolidate input and planning; for example, creating a portal to searchable databases for all ongoing Level 7 action efforts and avenues of involvement.

Philosophy of Countermeasures

• Educating people about economics, technology, the functions of government, and what is actually healthy and helpful for individual and collective well-being and happiness, all-the-while exposing the deceptions and misinformation that are mercilessly disseminated in service of profit.
  
• Encouraging moral maturity, compassion and empathy through revised interpersonal standards, better awareness of multidimensional nourishment (see Integral Lifework Overview), and inspirational modeling.
  
• Holding accountable those government officials, businesspeople, and average citizens who have cultivated attitudes of indifference and callousness, and exercising this accountability through moral education, social expectations and the rule of law - while also eliminating the cultural and economic incentives for this behavior.
  
• Promoting holistic approaches to well-being that undermine the addictions and self-destructive habits created by commercialism.
  
• Creating new civic institutions and the “seed forms” of alternative arrangements that embody these more evolved, sophisticated and morally responsible values, and offering safe places to reinforce and propagate evidence-based, constructive ideals.

A Transitional Vision for Level 7