It is not enough for people to come together in dialogue in order to gain knowledge of their social reality.  They must act together upon their environment in order critically to reflect upon their reality and so transform it through further action and critical reflection.

According to Paulo Freire, an epoch “is characterized by a complex of ideas, concepts, hopes, doubts, values and challenges in dialectical interaction with their opposites striving towards their fulfilment”.  The concrete representation of these constitute the themes of the epoch.  For example, we may say that in our society some of these themes would include the power of bureaucratic control or the social exclusion of the elderly and disabled.  In social analysis these themes may be discovered in a concrete representation in which the opposite theme is also revealed (i.e., each theme interacts with its opposite).

Paulo Freire says that “those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly.  This conversion is so radical as not to allow for ambivalent behaviour…  Conversion to the people requires a profound rebirth.  Those who undergo it must take on a new form of existence; they can no longer remain as they were.”