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A brief account of the book's principal argument
The 5th Step - English Edition of Dag Andersen's Book
5th Step Contents Translated by Tonje Gotschalksen & Neil Howard
Since moving to Norway from his native Britain ten years ago, Neil Howard has been working as teacher of English and translator within both the public and private sectors. In the same period, Norwegian Tonje Gotschalksen has been pursuing her dual career as interpreter and writer-director. Drawing on their varied experiences, they work together as a team, most recently providing translations of both Jon Fosse and Henrik Ibsen to British theatres, as well as reports and articles for Norwegian and international businesses
 1. The landscape abround the corner
A brief account of the books principal argument
At some time, in a not all too distant future, life on Earth will be
very much better than it is today. Considerable trends, and the
underlying principal trend itself, point in this direction. The time
factor is what is most difficult to evaluate since it is both possible
to delay and speed up the process. Whichever, we face a long
transitional period which many will find difficult but which will be an
unbelievably rich time for those who take up the challenge.
The fact is that this transitional period has
already begun. We just do not see it because we have not yet caught
sight of the future. What lies ahead of us is so surprising that it is
difficult to catch sight of it represents a clear change of direction
in relation to the principal trend of the last few centuries.
Nevertheless, it is a natural continuation of the great
cultural-historical developmental direction, which in turn is a
continuation of the direction of evolution itself.
We stand before a new reality, not so much because
of the physical changes, although these too will be great; the most
fundamental changes we are faced with are of a non-physical nature.
They are at least equally real but, because over several hundred
years we have got used to believing that the physical dimension is the
only really real, we have difficulty in discovering the new reality
which is awaiting us.
So what about financial crises, overpopulation,
nuclear war, climatic change, terrorist wars and all the other things
we are scared of? Yes, it can go wrong, most things can, but if it does
not go wrong, what then? That is the question that this book is going
to try to answer. There are many possible answers the future exists
only as possibilities but the answer we seek here is the main
alternative that lies in the middle of our path.
As a matter of fact, the new is lying right in front
of us, but it is as if there is a mirror between us and the future.
When we look forward, we see only more of the present, only more of the
same. Or, to put it another way: the new is just around the corner, but
we cannot catch sight of it because we think the road goes straight on
and thus stare fixedly in that direction.
It has become quite scary to stare straight on in
this way because development gets faster every day and no-one,
political and business leaders included, is able to see more than just
a few years ahead. We are accelerating into the corner, and we can see
that if we drive straight on we will end in the ditch. But relax, let
us take a look around the corner and see what awaits us. It demands
that we stretch ourselves and are a bit flexible but, in return, the
landscape which opens up is lighter, warmer, more beautiful and larger
than the one we come from.
It is quite a tough history that we have behind us;
human history has quite clearly been no Sunday school. Many are
strongly marked by the past and have difficulty in putting it behind
them. But it is a relief to find that we, humanity, have, despite
everything, put the worst behind us. The corner we are about to enter
may well be rather sharp for many, and it is going to take a few
generations to come out of it perhaps 100-150 years for the leading
countries but then the new peaceful landscape will open up before us.
the crisis of modernity
The epoch we usually call the modern, which began with the Renaissance
500 years ago, is showing clear signs of being in its closing phase.
Some prefer to talk about this closing phase as the crisis of
modernity. The term does not say anything about what is characteristic
for the period, only that it represents something new, something
modern, hardly very apt when the epoch is several hundred years old and
suffering clear signs of aging. The epoch may more helpfully be called
materialism since what is characteristic about it is that both its
perception of reality and value system are materialistic.
The great project of materialism has been to
understand and master the physical. By means of a whole series of
scientific and industrial revolutions, the western world has had
enormous success with this project. We have achieved a material
standard of living and an economic growth as never before. The
individual, the great masses, have been liberated not only from hunger
and oppression but also from the slavery of scarcity, from having to
use ones whole life to secure ones daily bread. The rest of the world
is fighting to copy this modernization, some to counteract it, but for
the great majority in the western world the project has been carried
out with great success.
We that are so lucky to live in this rich part of
the world have now come to a point where more of the same seems to
create more problems than it solves. We have come up against the
planets ecological limitations and realize that continued economic
growth for all eternity is an impossibility. New technology can prolong
the process but that does not help those of us who already live in a
surplus society. For us, the problem is that we no longer have
long-term, meaningful goals. We already have what we need, within
reason, and, in the long term, will not be any happier with even larger
houses, more cars and more exclusive dinners. We carry on with the same
because we do not know what else to do. And for the time being, most
people are satisfied with just that, whether they now devote themselves
to enjoying the good life or are still hungry. Many are young and
unestablished. Some, for different reasons, are greedier than others.
But not so very few have discovered the need for a new, long-term goal.
Scarcity of material goods combined with
technological development and political liberation gave life purpose
and meaning. We had something to fight for and a goal to work towards;
both society as a whole and each individual was to get up and go
forward. That it was meaningful was self-evident. But now this has been
achieved to a reasonable extent, the growing abundance of material
benefits and leisure time do not give life purpose and meaning in the
same way. They can contribute to the moment, but even if we increase
the doses of pleasure and excitement, we do not attain the same
energy-giving, indisputable meaningful direction in our lives.
In Western European countries, we can see this
perhaps most clearly in politics. The political ideologies are dead
because their long-term goals have been reached; the ideologies from
the 19th century have played out their role. Governments and
parliaments all have economic growth as their primary objective it is
repeated like a mantra, a materialistic invocation but it no longer
results in long-sightedness and visionary leadership. Growth has
fetched up in a group with stock-market prices and opinion polls,
short-term indicators of professional management. We have acquired a
sort of instant politics in which politicians take up positions on
whatever questions are raised in the media in the hope of gaining the
greatest possible attention. And the media themselves function as
market-driven amplifiers of contemporary trends.
Pictorial art is another field in which it is easy to see the crisis of
modernity. It has become form without content; it no longer has a
program, no message, no unveiling to raise peoples consciousness. The
major trend in established pictorial art is form, into which we
ourselves can read in the contents we desire. There is surely no less
talent than before, but the art reflects a cultural epochs last phase
without our having seen the next. We are whirring around in the goal
area but do not know where the next stage goes, what the next goal to
give us direction is.
the project of materialism
Modernitys/materialisms project was to understand and master physical
material and to liberate the individual. In order to achieve this, it
was necessary to break with the medieval idea that everything was
governed by the hand of God, that every leaf that fell to Earth, every
illness that affected people was an expression of his will. One had to
learn to see physical items as objects in themselves, governed by the
laws of nature. A stone was a stone, neither more nor less, and it was
at all times under the influence of the same force of gravity. Humans
could liberate themselves from the whims of Nature by discovering the
laws of nature and by learning to make use of them for their own
purposes. The physical world was objectivized, being turned into
comprehensible and predictable objects.
The liberation of the individual was both a goal and a means in this
process. The authoritarian society of the Middle Ages was not suitable
for promoting an objective approach, where physical evidence through
practical experiment stood as the ultimate criterion for truth. After a
while, a societal system forced itself forward in which what one did
was of decisive importance, rather than which family one was born into.
The engineer, the explorer, the inventor, the pioneer, the reformer
these were the heroes of the new age.
On the deepest level, the materialistic epoch which is now nearing its
close has been a great project of liberation. It has been a liberation
from the traditional societys physical toil and from authoritarian,
hierarchical power structures. The result is a situation in which we in
the rich, democratic part of the world, to a greater extent than any
before us, are free to do what we want. Freedom, however, does not mean
the freedom to break laws, neither the laws of society nor the laws of
nature, but it means that we understand how these laws function and can
arrange matters so that they serve our interests. Humans learned to fly
by employing the laws of nature, not by breaking them.
confusion in the goal area
But this process of liberation has then come to a halt in the rich part
of the world. We understand, in the main, how the physical material
world functions and, by and large, have what we need of material goods.
If we wish to work hard to acquire more things and higher positions, we
are at liberty to do so; if we prioritize more leisure time, that is
absolutely possible. But what many people are in the process of
discovering is that development no longer has the character of being a
project of liberation.
We are at liberty to do what we want, but every day it becomes more
apparent that we are not at liberty to will what we want. We go round
with a whole mass of opinions; we like or do not like, we believe or do
not believe. But where did we get all this from? Where do these
opinions come from? What use is it that we can do what we desire when
we cannot ourselves choose our desires? What sort of freedom is it to
be able to give ones opinion if our attitudes are an unconscious
product of inheritance and environment?
The most obvious, almost too obvious, example of how society functions
in this late materialistic phase is advertising, the whole apparatus of
marketing. This stands in a class of its own as world historys
greatest apparatus for propaganda. A large percentage of what we pay
for goods in shops goes straight into the advertising which is to get
us to buy them. It gives us freedom at the retail level to choose
between dozens of different shampoos, or to decide which of the years
fashions we want to purchase, but, seen from a distance, the whole
thing appears as a society on autopilot. The markets swing back and
forth, taking the consumers dangling with them.
More and more is becoming market driven, an extremely effective method
of promoting economic growth and rapid change the market has its very
strong sides but the market means that the big decisions emerge as a
sum of all the small. There is no longer anyone steering towards
long-term, ideological goals. Its all going faster than ever, but we
are driving on autopilot and do not know where we are going.
Nevertheless, there are signs that the transition to the next cultural
epoch is under development; we just have not managed to catch sight of
it yet.
materialism overstepping itself
The process has been hastened in that computers have forced forward a
clear divide between hardware and software. We have got used to
hardware being something which physically exists and software being a
non-physical phenomenon. Software can be sent over the Internet, we can
import it onto a hard disk or transport it on a diskette, but in itself
it is not physical; it is the program that decides how the physical is
to behave. The terminology has begun to seep into dog-training, where
one talks about how the dog has been programmed, and into normal speech
when we see people behaving strangely. We have begun to objectivize
that which, when it appears in humans, is called consciousness.
Self-development has long been a rapidly growing field; one can find
all sorts of courses, seminars and books which are to teach us how we
can program, and not least reprogram, ourselves. This has been taken to
the furthest extent at the very forefront of competitive society, in
business leadership training, in elite sports and in creative
professions such as advertising. Where the needs of adaptation and
innovation are greatest, where extreme performances are demanded, the
objectivization of the mental is proceeding at full pace.
The cultural epoch to follow the materialistic will hardly come in the
form of a counter movement, a rebellion from outside. Late materialism
does not carry the stamp of stagnation but quite the contrary, a
tremendous dynamism and ability to adapt; indeed, there is something
feverish and hyperactive about it. As a matter of fact, late
materialism is in the process of outstepping itself, of accelerating
out of its own shell.
So far, self-development and reprogramming are being used to produce
winners in materialisms competitive society. Nevertheless, the most
important long-term effect is that it increases awareness of the
non-physical, of how we function on the non-physical level. In
business, brain capital has become more important than physical
capital. Emotional capital is a term not yet taken into use, but it
would be an extremely appropriate collective term for phenomena such as
brand name and image, as well as customers and employees enthusiasm
and loyalty. It demands systematic work over a long period of time to
build up a fund of emotional capital.
Even if many researchers still have problems in relating to the
non-physical, the stock markets have long since exploded the
materialistic perception of reality by making software companies
financial winners. It is not only that the products, strictly speaking,
are non-physical but that the producers of the non-physical are priced
according to their emotional and intellectual capital, according to the
markets expectations (feelings) of innovations (thoughts) they are to
make in the future.
Materialisms perception of reality is in the process of cracking. Of
necessity, it must begin there: first the perception of reality, then
the value system. For how can one value something, the existence of
which one has difficulty in comprehending? The first step is that we
begin to objectivize the mental, just as in the last round we began by
objectivizing the physical.
the next great project
It is this that appears to be the natural and most likely next step in
our development. The last step was to teach us how to look objectively
at the physical and, upon this basis, to develop the necessary
technical foundation for mastering it. The next step, upon which we
have just about begun, is to objectivize that which is not physical. At
first glance, it is difficult to see what an enormous leap we are in
the process of taking. Individually, the first signs are not very
dramatic but, put them together and sketch out a picture of how things
could be in the future, such as this book attempts to do, and a clear
pattern emerges.
The difficulty is that each cultural epoch, each cultural developmental
step, has its paradigm, its way of perceiving reality. The vast
majority of us who live in todays western society experience both the
world and ourselves in a quite different fashion from those who lived
in the Middle Ages. They were programmed in a different way, they
thought and felt in a different way. Thoughts which were crystal-clear
truths for them, to us are mere superstition. Conditions which would
make us angry made them happy. Put into the same situation, the
medieval person and the modern person would experience two different
realities. Even if the sensory impressions are the same, the
interpretation/understanding of them is different.
If we are now to try to imagine development on the next cultural step,
after materialism, we must first try to imagine the perception of
reality of those who will live on that cultural step. The exercise is
difficult, but not impossible. We have climbed a number of cultural
steps already and we can see a pattern of which it is possible to
imagine a natural continuation. In the light of this possible
continuation, a number of developmental characteristics in todays
society stand out as clear pointers towards the new the very early
beginnings of what we shall call the transformation, the transitional
phase to the 5th cultural step. Programming and self-development,
capability of change, mental training, emotional intelligence and all
the other fashionable words are no longer simply to do with clever
courses and smart machines, they are portents of a new age.
Cultural history, fundamentally speaking, deals with the development of
human consciousness. On the materialistic step, we made the giant leap
of becoming conscious as to how the physical functions and, upon that
basis, created the possibility of solving our material needs. On the
next step, according to the picture of the future sketched out in this
book, we will become conscious as to how the non-physical functions.
three worlds in one
In the sketch of the new paradigm here presented, it is fundamental
that we do not face one physical and one non-physical world such as
Descartes, among others, maintained, but one physical and (at least)
two non-physical worlds. This is the first major clarification when we
really get down to the business of exploring and developing technically
in the non-physical field. The two non-physical worlds, here called the
emotional and the rational, are each likely to be just as extensive as
the physical and as different from one another as they are in relation
to physical reality.
Exploration and technical development, in the emotional world in
particular, is the task of the 5th step in this scenario. The scenario
is to describe a possible task, not carry it out. Its ambition is to
show that there are great unsolved tasks to tackle and that even quite
elementary advances will bring great benefits. This is a field where
gunpowder has not yet been invented, where research and technical
development are at the early kitchen work-top level and where there
is far indeed to the 5th steps answer to Newton. It may not be so very
far off in terms of time, however, for development is accelerating and,
when we get under way with the transformation, this acceleration will
increase.
In addition to the three worlds, the step 5 scenario has a further
fundamental tripartite division called the three aspects: the material
aspect, the energy aspect and the control or consciousness aspect. In
the physical world, we first learned to master the material aspect with
tools of stone, bronze and, later, iron. Thereafter we learned to
master the energy/movement aspect by making machines: the steam engine,
the petrol engine, the electric motor and so on. Now we have also begun
to master the control aspect, that which is called consciousness in
humans. Machines are receiving artificial brains and software so that
they can begin to think and control themselves.
We have discovered, moreover, that all three aspects, matter, energy
and control, are integrated in every individual living cell. Cells, in
reality, are advanced small robots, and there are masses of them in
every single green leaf on the planet.
The scenario for the step 5 perception of reality suggests that these
three aspects which are integrated in the physical world are also to be
found in the non-physical. (Three worlds, all with three aspects, needs
a thorough explanation. The authors advice is to go through this
lightly to begin with, read the book and come back and look at the
summary again to finish up. Figure 9.4 on page 225 can be of help.)
In the emotional world, the material aspect, that is to say the
emotional material, consists of dreams, fantasies and other images
which we create and maintain both individually and collectively. This
is the stuff that art, religion and myths are made of. Emotional
energy, the aspect of movement in the emotional, is feelings and moods.
It is this which is the driving force of history, the driving force
behind markets, careers and crimes. The emotional too is controlled by
software, software which functions completely differently from that
which controls the rational.
Rational material is data, facts. It is not something we can touch or
feel as we can with physical material, nor something we can shape or
reshape at will as we can with emotional material. Thus the rational
software, the consciousness aspect, is also of particular character: it
is logical, linear and rational in a characteristic way.
The three worlds function as a unit, but they function in completely
different ways, and the interaction between them also has patterns
which we must understand if, for example, we are to be able to use the
rational to motivate the emotional so that it can put physical action
into motion. No special insight into this is needed to be able to
wander down to the shop and buy a packet of cigarettes, but as soon as
we consider stopping smoking, demands are often made of techniques
which have so far been little developed. And, as a matter of fact,
teaching robots to go down to the shop has long been impossible because
the type of software and computers needed to learn to understand such
everyday situations have been lacking.
the driving force of history
The driving force of history, both that of society and that of the
individual, is emotional energy. It is the driving force which builds
empires and fortunes, and it is the one that splits them up. Emotional
energy is what brings about war and peace, friendship and enmity.
Emotional energy gets us to build families, split them and gather them.
It is the energy which gets us to make a career, to compete, to fight
for ones own and others rights and it is the lack of this energy
which gets us to give up. It makes no odds if we have the physical
energy if we are lacking the emotional. The word emotion comes from the
verb movere, to move. Behind the physical action lies an emotional
movement, an emotional energy which gets us to activate and maintain
the physical. It is this that we are in the process of discovering and
learning to master. It will involve a dramatic improvement in human
life and society, a process of liberation at least as dramatic as the
one we started in the Renaissance.
A society with greater freedom and
greater warmth. The foundation for this is that human consciousness is
expanded. People on step 5 will be at least as different from those of
today as we are from those of the Middle Ages. What are truths today,
about egoism as the driving force of mankind, for example, are no
longer true on step 5 because we have acquired a conscious relation to
the emotional.
It is not to do with people becoming nicer or more moralistic, the
change is not normative. It is to do with discovering that the laws of
emotionality function quite differently from the laws for the physical.
What the laws of emotionality and physics do have in common, however,
is that they are laws of nature; they are something one discovers,
not something one adopts. They are not something you can be for or
against, they are something you understand or do not understand. It is
to do with developing new understanding and new skills; it is to do
with being more able, not nicer. The effect will, however, according to
the picture of the future the scenario sketched out in this book be
happier people. For, on step 5, feelings are not something one has,
they are something one does.
one of the great misunderstandings
Already, now at the very early beginning of the transformation, it is
possible to reveal one of historys greatest misunderstandings. At
first we thought that the physical functioned in the same way as the
emotional. People thought that what they liked, the rain and the rain
god would probably also like, so they made offerings of food or even
more precious things in order to get rain. Then we discovered that the
physical functioned in accordance with its own laws and we learned to
live with them in a relatively intelligent way. But when we had
understood the physical, we drew the wrong conclusion. We behaved, and
still do, as if the emotional followed the laws of physics. Now it
appears that the laws of emotionality to a certain extent function
quite to the contrary to those of physics.
From physical reality we know that when we have ten apples and give
five away, then we have five left. This is a property of physical
matter and it is uncommonly obvious and indisputable. In addition, as
small children we learn from experience that we are dependent on our
parents, not just physically, but also emotionally. Children who do not
receive the love and other positive emotional energies from their
surroundings will be seriously damaged. These two experiences, both
with exceptional pedagogical force, have led us to believe that, for
independent adult individuals too, emotional energy is a limited
resource that we are dependent on exchanging with our surroundings.
That is why, in modern times, we have organized society as a series of
mutual give-and-take relationships.
The market and democracy are typical examples of such mutual control
functions that are balanced by everyone having to give something and
everyone having to get something. What we rather disparagingly call the
competitive society and the ego society is a system in which the
individuals mutually control one another in more or less balanced
give-and-take relationships. In the future, this may come to be
organized in a quite different and more positive way because we make
the discovery that emotional energy is not in short supply. The laws of
emotionality on this point are quite the opposite to those of physics.
Here, to begin with, it must simply be left as an assertion, but it is
an assertion that all those who are willing to learn the necessary
skills can test out in practice.
In what we shall later call the 1st law of emotionality, it says: the
more emotional energy you give away, the more you get. Notice though,
it is not something you get back from those you give to; it comes, in
that case, in addition. You get it immediately; it is a kind of
through-flow from an inexhaustible source. If the stream out increases,
so does the stream in. It is a through-flow, and what you send out is
identical with what you get in. If you send out positive energy,
positive energy flows through you. If you hate, you are filled with
hatred. If you love, you are filled with love.
Until now, we have seen this as a moral question, something normative.
Now we are in the process of discovering that it is an objective
relation. The moral message becomes unnecessary because we discover
that it builds upon a law of nature.
Thereby we have discovered the foundation for a new and better way of
living, and a better way of organizing society. We can move from
give-and-take relations to give-give relations. This will bring about a
society which is very much richer and safer than todays competitive
society.
To many, no doubt, this sounds like a naive utopian idea, something it
indeed would have been had it been based, like traditional utopian
ideas, on people improving themselves normatively, on everyone becoming
nicer. But, on the contrary, this scenario builds upon the condition of
our discovering a regulating law on a level with the law of gravity. It
is far from certain that step 5, if it comes, will be as sketched out
in this scenario, but the uncertainty is connected with a discovery, to
something which is subjective today becoming objective.
Note, however, the laws of emotionality, when they are revealed,
concern the emotional and only that. Where the physical world is
concerned, the laws of physics remain valid. If you have ten apples and
give five away, you still have five left on step 5 too. Changes on the
physical level will occur indirectly as a result of motives being
changed.
On step 5, as sketched out in this scenario, the physical production
systems are aimed at being stable. Growth is replaced by stable
circulation. Life is comfortable, the surroundings are safe, the
population stable. This is exciting stuff for us and discussed in Part
IV, but it is not here that the focus lies for the people on step 5;
the physical is no goal in itself, just an appropriate means. Both the
planets ecological limitations and the long-term technological
development characteristics clearly point in the direction of the
material foundation of the future being organized in a stable and
comfortable way without our descendents giving much time or attention
to it. To sort out the material foundation is materialisms great
project. Robot technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology and other
things which are on the way will be able to complete this development
work.
The new goals and challenges are connected with the further development
of consciousness, exploring and learning to make use of the emotional
and the rational. But there is no reason to believe that the challenges
in this case will be lesser, that life will become more boring. On the
contrary, it is then it begins in earnest, it is then that development
really shoots ahead.
conscious evolution
From the outset, evolution, the development of life on Earth, has been
to do with the development of consciousness. By means of biological
evolution, the biological foundation was developed first, arriving at
Humankind and its unique brain. Gradually, the emotional foundation was
developed in a simple form in the higher animals, and further developed
in humans. Lastly, the rational foundation was developed in the human
brain and, through cultural development, in our software. Cultural
development took over where the biological part of evolution stopped.
As early as the 19th century, researchers pointed out that the human
fetus, prior to birth, repeats the evolutionary stages and that, at an
early stage, we develop the apparatus for gills and so on (see fig.
2.3, page 62). Brain researchers have shown that we do not have one
brain, but a number outside of one another. The innermost, and most
primitive, corresponds to that of reptiles (lizards and the like), the
next we have in common with mammals, and the last, the outermost, is
the only one we have wholly to ourselves. It is the large neocortex
which makes us different from animals.
If we then chart the steps in cultural development from when we began
to cultivate the soil to the present day and correspondingly chart a
humans psychological development from birth to adulthood, the steps in
development run strikingly parallel. As individuals, you and I, roughly
speaking, repeat the whole of evolution, the biological stages before
birth and the cultural stages through childhood. We reach, if we
succeed, as far as the society about us has come. Therefore a new 5th
step does not solely mean a new cultural step; it means that the
individual develops a new step beyond that which we call adult today.
No relationship is more intimate than the relationship between the
individual and society. Not only is the individual completely enveloped
by society, it is also the case that the whole is found in the part,
the whole cultural history, of which we are a part, lives in us. Not
just the present but also the past lives in us. Somewhere far inside
us, the caveman still lives. Fortunately, he does not appear on a daily
basis but, in extreme situations, probably most of us are capable of
bringing out the caveman in us and swinging a club against those who
threaten our flock. This concerns both men and women, and anyone who
has ever wholly brought out the wild animal in them will know how
frightening it is not least for ourselves afterwards when it is
hidden away again under thick layers of culture and education.
Not
before now, in the last couple of hundred years, have we begun to
understand what we are really doing, that we are all integrated parts
of a huge evolutionary project. This recognition is what forms the
basis for our new goals and our new vision in the scenario which
follows. It is evolutionism which takes over from materialism. For this
is what it is about, directly, in everyday life and for each and every
one of us we are evolutionary creatures. Humans have always been
evolutionary creatures; what is new is that on the next cultural step,
the 5th, we are consciously evolutionary creatures. The purpose and
meaning of life, both at the societal level and for each one of us, is
evolution itself, the development of consciousness.
In this work, some will have the talent for going on ahead and
exploring the unknown they will be pioneers of the 5th and later
steps. It could be as researchers, developers of new techniques and so
on. Others will have the talent for helping the young to live through
the early steps in an harmonic way. Some will work with maintaining the
material foundation, others the emotional.
With an evolutionary perception of, and attitude towards, life, it will
be self-evident that everyone is on the way from the same starting
point towards the same goals. There are many different ways to go;
finding the one most suitable for each individual is what it is about.
All of us are under way. In a society based on give-give relations, it
is part of the fundamental paradigm that we serve evolution and
ourselves by helping others forward. Whether we go ahead and clear the
way or follow behind and help late-comers, we are doing evolutionary
work. It is neither the individual nor the collective that is centrally
placed on step 5; it is the process, evolution itself.
Dag Andersen: The 5th Step
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