L7 Education

Tools For A New Political Economy

Article V


Regarding the Toxic Dangers of Ignorance, Moral Immaturity and Misinformation in a Functional Democracy, and the Need to Create Countervailing Informational and Educational Institutions



Problems To Solve

Distraction and misinformation of the oppressed non-ruling classes (worker-consumers) by the ruling owner-shareholder class — with bread and circuses, propaganda and truth-discrediting tactics, which continuously rejuvenate themselves in new and spectacular forms:
  • Artificially generated populist narratives that equate “freedom” to the enlargement of corporate control and dependency, attenuation of public civic institutions, and voting against one’s own expressed values and interests (see neoliberal agenda); then associating nationalism, religious correctness and conservatism with blind ideological conformance to these narratives
  • Vilifying intellectualism, liberal arts disciplines, publicly funded scientific research, higher education and the public education system, so that these institutions can be dismantled or privatized, and the electorate can thereby be made increasingly ignorant and gullible
  • Perpetual creation or amplification of scapegoats in mass media to redirect public discontent away from corporatocracy — big government, terrorists, illegal immigrants, gay marriage, abortion, Muslims, etc.
  • Grooming champions of these disruptive narratives, ideologies and approaches to be elected or appointed to public office, succeed in corporate America, or gain prominence or celebrity status in mass media
  • Allowing information sources and media essential to a functional democracy to be coopted, corrupted and distorted by nefarious actors (troll farms, foreign governments, propaganda, fake news, etc.)
  • An endless diet of multimedia entertainment, advertising, celebrity creation and yellow journalism as part of an ongoing spectacle to anesthetize the masses
  • Corporate capture of mass media to “control the message” via news outlets and talk shows
  • Educational environments that inspire conformance, regurgitation and black-and-white reasoning, rather than curiosity, critical thought, and appreciation of nuance and complexity
  • Selective sorting, presentation, promotion and exclusion of Internet-based information via for-profit search engines that commoditize users and prioritize consumerism over knowledge and truth
  • Influential emergence of news as ideological propaganda after revocation of FCC Fairness Doctrine in 1987

Design Principles Applied to Create More Distributed & Diffused Wealth & Power

  1. Community Coregroups that encourage civic engagement, collective egalitarianism, multidimensional nourishment and moral maturity
  2. K-12 multidimensional self-care training (Integral Lifework or other) that likewise encourages civic engagement, collective egalitarianism and moral maturity
  3. Curricula that return to liberal arts and fine arts emphasis in balance with STEM disciplines, and inspire a critical thinking, curiosity and evidence-based mindset without excluding creative, intuitive and spiritual input streams
  4. Creation of a Public Information Clearinghouse (PIC) with multidimensional analysis of all raw data, information sources, and settled knowledge (this would ultimately replace Google or other commercially-driven search engines)
  5. Establishing the Fourth Estate as a formal watchdog branch of government via Constitutional Amendment, with a mandate to uphold standards akin to the Fairness Doctrine; populated with independently elected journalistic technocrats who cannot hold other public office, and whose terms substantially overlap other elected offices; influenced by daily direct democracy, citizens councils and citizens assemblies — just as the other branches of government would be

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