The act of doing something good was the cultural Archimedean point from which Norwegians tried to move the Earth in a new, and, to them, more environmentally sound direction. This cultural point has taken the form of a self-confident, do-gooding gaze towards the rest of the world. This reflects the official foreign policy of establishing “Norway as a humanitarian super power” and “as a peace nation” in the world.

In 1971 Norwegian ecophilosophers Sigmund Kvaløy, Arne Næss, and Nils Faarlund traveled to the periphery, to the faraway mountains of Nepal. It was a transformative experience for them. In the lives of the Sherpa, they saw an alternative environmentally friendly way of living. Upon their return to Norway they wrote about Sherpa life as an Oriental harmony juxtaposed with the harsh Occidental values of their own Western culture. This demarcation between Oriental ecological wisdom and the Occidental stupidity of the West eventually came to frame the deep-ecological debate at home and abroad. Sherpa life was to be a model for all Norwegians, and Sherpa-informed Norwegians were to be a subsequent model for the world.

The Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss lived and worked at his mountaintop cabin Tvergastein, which was located as far as possible from the social realm, yet close enough to suggest various ways of improving both the household of nature and society. Being situated above everybody else environmentally, socially, and intellectually resulted in a bipolar ecophilosophy in which the good environmental life on the mountaintop and Tvergastein were juxtaposed with the evils down in the valley and urban life in general. This contrast would evolve in Næss and his friends’ thinking into a more general contrast between the clean and environmental healthy Norway and a contaminated and unhealthy globe in need of Norwegian environmental wisdom. The high mountains represented what was clean while the city was dirty and polluted, both literally and morally. Tvergastein served Næss and his ecophilosophy compatriots as a material representation and manifestation of a rich life with simple means. First among these friends was Peter Wessel Zapffe, along with Sigmund Kvaløy and Nils Faarlund. They came to mobilize for the Mardøla demonstration (1970), a defining event for environmentalism in Norway, in which taking a stand on hydropower developments would distinguish friends from foes.