Anvils of Experience

So at the outset, how best to live and work together as groups became the prime question. In the world about us we saw personalities destroying whole peoples.

The struggle for wealth, power, and prestige was tearing humanity apart as never before. If strong people were stalemated in the search for peace and harmony, what was to become of our erratic band of alcoholics?
 

 As we had once struggled and prayed for individual recovery, just so earnestly did we commence to quest for the principles through which A.A. itself might survive. On anvils of experience, the structure of our Society was hammered out. 

1981 AAWS Inc.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pages 130-131