A good recent book is The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. They describe a number of early societies that were organized without hierarchies, and argue that hierarchy is not necessary for organized societies today.
For the future, I want to help bring about system level change in addition to the things I can do in my personal life. There is too much power concentrated in the hands of too few people. I would like to run software on my smartphone to help build an open source and decentralized global platform for digital democracy.
The front of my house faces southwest. On a sunny afternoon, when it is freezing outside, my house is well enough insulated that the sunlight entering through my front windows and storm door can raise the temperature inside by several degrees Fahrenheit. By closing the prime front door, and covering my windows with insulated plugs, it takes several hours to lose those degrees of heat.
What would we call a system of government in which citizens vote for principles and policies instead of people and political parties? I would like to run software on my smartphone to help build an open source and decentralized global platform on which such a government could be constituted. Some of my favorite principles are in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Earth Charter