- character, function, unmotivated action -

characters are part of every storytelling, whether it is fiction, documentary, news, reality show or theory. When characters stop looking like living men as one meet in the reality of life and history, their function takes over which creates manipulation on ideological level. 

Nevertheless, 

"The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." (paraphrase of Mark Twain)

In economic theory, the entrepreneurs, capitalists, landowners, workers, and consumers are not living men as one meets them in the reality of life and history. They are the embodiment of distinct functions in the market operations. Economics, in speaking of entrepreneurs, has in view not men, but a definite function. This function is not the particular feature of a special group or class of men; it is inherent in every action and burdens every actor. (Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics)

Erich Fromm makes a distinction between individual character, which describes the richness of the character structure of an individual, and the social character which describes the emotional attitudes common to people in a social class or society. In order that a society functions adequately, their members must acquire a character structure which enables them to do what they need to do in order to prosper. It is for example expected in an authoritarian society that people are motivated to subordinate themselves to a hierarchy and fulfill selflessly the instructions brought to them. However, in the permissive consumer culture people are socialized to consume gladly and extensively. Thus the character structure in every society is formed in such a way that people can fulfill expectations quasi voluntarily.

Action is always political, as Hannah Arendt says. Louis Althusser points out that ideology always manifests itself through actions, which are "inserted into practices" (Lenin), for example, rituals, conventional behavior, and so on. Indeed, Althusser, Marxist philosopher, goes so far as to adopt Pascal's formula for belief: "Pascal says more or less: 'Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe'". 

Action = the causation of change by the exertion of power or a natural process (dictionary definition)

- east -

Wu-wei is the principle of unmotivated action in which nonintervention in the natural course of things is to be encouraged. Action may be taken when it is spontaneous, devoid of premeditation and is appropriate to the situation. The concept of wu wei is often described as performing a selfless act but this merely exposes the background of the writer. 

The Sage is occupied with the unspoken

and acts without effort.

Teaching without verbosity,

producing without possessing,

creating without regard to result,

claiming nothing,

the Sage has nothing to lose.

- west -

"This is the mark of the act: a basic rupture in the weave of reality that opens up new possibilities and creates the space for a reconfiguration of reality itself. Like the miracle, the act is ultimately unsustainable - it cannot be reduced to, or incorporated directly within, the symbolic order. Yet it is through the act that we touch (and are touched by) the Real in such a way that the bonds of our symbolic universe are broken and that an alternative construction is enabled; reality is transformed in a Real sense. (Slavoj Zizek)

different types of action