To be is to act …

… How Ludwig Wittgenstein helped me get over my teenage angst | Giles Fraser | Comment is free | The Guardian.

As a 19-year-old, this argument had effects far beyond its original intention. All that angsty existentialist bollocks about our inner lives, so appealing to teenagers, was rapidly replaced by a priority of the social, the communitarian and the political. We comes before I. It is philosophically prior. This was the end of my pimple-popping fascination with the uniqueness of any sort of inner life. The most important thing is what you do not who you are "inside". It's a big part of the reason why I prefer the unfashionable idea of religion, with all its practises and public liturgies, to that nebulous language of spirituality that prioritises the inner life and the idea of feeling. Meaning is use. "In the beginning is the deed," as Goethe put it.