Contemporary man feels sure of himself, feels well-off and clear-headed, when he is himself essentially and fundamentally not present in the autonomous world of a domain of culture and its immanent law of creation. But he feels unsure of himself, feels destitute and deficient in understanding, where he has to do with himself, where he is the centre from which answerable acts or deed issue, in actual and once-occurent life. That is, we act confidently only when we do so not as ourselves, but as those possessed by the immanent necessity of the meaning of some domain or culture.

--M.M. BAKHTIN, 'Toward a Philosophy of the Act'