Consequently, man at this level attempts to construct an orderly, predictable, and stable world, in which safety will be assured. Since this Level of Existence perceives a world of unpredictability and chaos, the individual attempts to achieve safety and security through a constrictive ethical system based upon the suppression and repression of his inner life and a rigid ordering of the outer world. Maintaining an unquestioned acceptance of his position in life, this individual develops rules for proper behavior, based upon a dogmatic prescription of right and wrong, absolutistic in character and attributed to Divine power.

Movement into the Fourth Level may occur when, after safety and security is achieved, energy is freed which floods the organism with a feeling of a person power. The individual dominated by Fourth Level behavior sees force and power rather than danger within and without. Developing a power ethic as the basis of his values, the Fourth Level individual comes to perceive action, competition, and power as basic ingredients of life.

Although the Fourth Level man has lost the behavioral rigidity of the Third Level, he nevertheless retains the dogmatic component derived from his percept of self as all powerful. Graves maintains that, for this individual, power to change rests in the superior talents of those few who are able to use force to attain desired ends.

Successful behavior and management of others by Fourth Level individual leads to the emergence of the belonging, or Fifth Level of Existence, Graves states. Having perceived that power alone does not please man, the Fourth Level of Existence becomes aware of a desire to belong and be accepted by others, rather than hated or opposed.

Fifth Level behavior, then, brings into existence the sociocratic value system, in which emphasis is placed upon “getting along,” accepting the authority of the group or the majority, and seeking status from others. This “other directed” individual believes he will find salvation in belonging and in participating with others in what they want him to do. While Fifth Level man has given up his dogmatism, he nevertheless rigidifies in a world of 

sociocentric thinking. 

Eventually, however, as interpersonal relationships become safe and secure, Fifth Level man comes to perceive that he has played his individuality for the chance of social acceptance. Feeling an expansive sense of freedom, he emerges into the Sixth Level or First Being Level, becomes unconcerned with social disapproval or the fears of the lower levels. As he begins to perceive the world as it really is, this level individual refuses adherence to legal or moral authority, and rejects the ideas that there is a single or “proper” way to behave.

Outwardly egocentric and indulgent, this individual goes “over the dam,” so to speak, in his drive toward self-esteem and experience of freedom. Correspondingly, this individual follows a consistent set of personal ethics, while rejecting the value systems by which others may live and scorning the irrational he perceives in the established order or custom.

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