This is not for historians to fact check or to reexamine through a historical lens. This is simply about what is happening right now, in this moment, around the globe, in just a small number of movements. It is a partial response to the question: Is another world really possible?
How do you argue with a network? The movements organized within them do not proceed by oppositions. One of the basic characteristics of the network is that no two nodes face each other in contradiction: rather, they are always triangulated by a third, and then a fourth, and then by an indefinite number of others in the web. The movements displace contradictions and operate instead in a kind of alchemy, or sea-change. The flow of the movements transform traditional fixed positions; networks impose their force through a kind of irresistible undertow.
An Open Letter to 3.5% of You
If you are reading this, or in the case of the author here, writing this, we are all inclusively participating 100% in society. We have a lot in common, you and I, and yet we are all as unique as we are individual. Research of hundreds of resistance movements shows that no resistance movement in the last 100 years has failed when 3.5 percent of the population participates.
Your family, your team, your company, your community, and your government can all see change in environment or social outcome with just 3.5% of the collective working in the same direction. A network of individuals in the millions could change our 7-billion-person world overnight. It is as simple as us finding ways to beat π (pi), getting past the elusive tipping point that only requires a lens of clarity to expose and create lasting change. To simplify things, take a look at how this effect works in less than three minutes
Guaranteed Income For All
If you’re familiar with Dr. Martin Luther King’s ideas, he was all about guaranteed income for all. It’s what got him killed, and it’s as unpopular an idea today as it was in his time – especially among some very greedy investors, executives, elected and appointed officials, and many of their constituents. So many jobs exist, or could exist, but the budgets for them remain hidden oversees in tax havens, and at home in the form of tax cuts.
“What if you could receive a guaranteed basic yearly income with no strings attached? For instance, it wouldn’t matter how much money you made now, or in the future. There would be nobody asking about your job status or how many kids you have. The check would arrive in the mailbox, no matter what.”
Sounds like a far-fetched idea, right? Wrong. Cultural theorist Lynn Parramore gives insight into different movements that are all working towards this goal: guaranteed income for all. More than 235,000 independent workers are now united in one of the fastest growing independent worker unions in the world, the Freelancers Union.
And there are thousands more worker unions in the Americas, Europe, Asia and worldwide, uniting people together through the work that they do. These people have chosen to guarantee their income by taking control of it and uniting in solidarity, which creates social and economic harmony while enabling people to maintain empathy with one another. The occupation of our future means the occupation of our work.
The fact is, there is a quiet revolution already happening as self-employed workers and small businesses in America are now the fastest growing job sector, adding numbers (not losing them) while corporations shed jobs left and right.
All across the country, people are banding together in town halls, reforming or creating new unions, collectively working together to provide their communities and families what is needed to survive and grow in our changing world. Now, more people need to stand up, be counted, and help create 200,000+ jobs per month through self employment, small business, cooperatives, unions, entrepreneurship, education, volunteerism, or other creative ways. If you’re looking for a few online ideas to jumpstart your job search, consider the following: #occupyjobs, @occupyjobs, @Occupy__A__Job, #waveofaction, #focalshift, #ErasePoverty, @focal_shift, #Solidarity, #MLK, @FreelancersU
Creativity as an Occupation
The brilliance behind #Occupy is that Occupation is at the core of society’s most basic, archaic, sophisticated and social structures. Do you not go off and perform work, or have you worked, or can you work? Can you have an occupation? It’s essential to a large majority of people, no matter how big or small today’s villages and cities are, to engage in the activity of work. And work is at the very core of human creative activity.
There are an infinite amount of job types, jobs and ways for someone to choose how to spend their life’s time working. Work is and has always been – barring slavery – a personal choice, and today is in an unprecedented time in history to help society solve the challenge of inequality due to lack of jobs or consistent income.
For starters, collective desire for a long-term, healthy economy demands a focus on innovation: allowing people to generate income from their own ideas. The creative class is awake and vibrant right now, from artists to musicians to inventors to marketers to engineers to entrepreneurs to writers and others your imagination can barely imagine.
The collective energy that the world’s creativity is producing manifests every day in an assortment of ways: co-working, mass meditations, occupations, global springs, revolutions, education reforms, concerts, dance-ins, meaningful actions, political takeovers, paintings, writings, speeches, classes, memes, softwares, robots, sustainable research teams, impact investments, non-profit projects, whistle-blowing, scientific inventions, you name it. The world’s ideas are flowing, constantly being vetted, and some grow with rapid adoption while others are transformed or snuffed out.
Nothing Has Changed As Everything Is Changing
For creators of all kinds, there are newly available tools and age-old principles to work with that can manifest one’s personal vision of meaningful work. Be encouraged to take risk, to follow your passions. The crowd is all of us, your neighbors and friends and family members: it’s everyone who needs to relate with someone else. So crowdfund your ideas, crowdsource your resources, collaborate with people who are drawn to you, and vise versa. Ignore the naysayers, ask for help and take risks that open your life to the wonder of freedom.
Being informed is one of the best ways to prepare for the future or make sound decisions. If you are waiting for the cliff notes or Change Your Life for Dummies book, you’re better off learning by just doing. To fast track and get a project launched, go to focal-shift.org, waveofaction.org or commons.occupy.com, or join or start a project or group already underway.
This is the first in a series of action-orientated pieces designed to help you, the 100%, the 99%, the 3.5%, to organize, find resources and take action in living the most conscious life possible. Stay tuned. Stay focused.