“Knowledge in this sense is more than what is usually described as skill, and the division of knowledge of which we here speak more than is meant by the division of labor. To put it shortly, ‘skill’ refers only to the knowledge of which a person makes use in his trade, while the further knowledge about which we must know something in order to be able to say anything about the processes in society is the knowledge of alternative possibilities of action of which he makes no direct use. It may be added that knowledge, in the sense in which the term is here used, is identical with foresight only in the sense in which all knowledge is capacity to predict” (Hayek 1988-2022, vol. 15, p. 73).

However, the set of possible activities is not determined only by knowledge. Personality is not reduced to cognitive functions or technologies. The principle of least action is not about minimizing technology, but about minimizing effort in general. The least technological action can result in social and psychological losses and costs that more than outweigh any saving in material effort—this applies, for example, to morality, reputation and criminal law (cf. Polanyi 2001, p. 49). Many actions are not based on knowledge, but on unfounded and false ideas, on creative impulses, prejudices and affects. “Our moral/aesthetic frameworks are complicated constructions that combine broad cultural inheritances with dense mixtures of abstract reasoning and the immediacies of concrete experience” (Frisina 2002, p. 14). Moral/aesthetic frameworks influence consciousness and personality no less than cognitive ones.

The activities of an individual form an active power within him, namely his personality and identity. If personality sets individuals apart, then identity embeds them in a society by specifying how they should behave depending on their position within the social context (cf. Akerlof and Cranton 2010, p. 10). George Akerlof and Rachel Cranton identify three parts of identity: 1) social categories, 2) norms and ideals, 3) gains and losses (identity utility). People choose their identity in both the long and short term; this choice is not necessarily conscious. Social categories are social roles and groups with which individuals identify; norms and ideals define right and wrong; gains and losses are the ability to conform to norms and ideals (a particular social role/position) and the resulting benefits or harms to the individual (Akerlof and Cranton 2011, pp. 17-9).

However, when economists try to extend the theory of utility to a real person and his active power, the limitations of neoclassical theory become clear. Akerlof and Cranton themselves show that identity cannot be reduced to “gains and losses in utility.” In his life, a person is driven not only by the needs of existence, ordered by utilitarian preferences. A person is also driven by norms and ideals, by needs for communication and self-expression. Utility, norms and ideals are not ordered among themselves—they often conflict. The principle of least action implies that, along with the requirements of utility, a person also takes into account the norms of justice and the ideals of freedom. Freedom is the ability of a person to choose between activities. The meaning of life consists of those meanings that a person has chosen for himself from culture-society. In his activity, a person is guided not by the function of utility, but by the function of meaning, in which utility is only one of the arguments. Besides, unlike neoclassical “utility,” which has no historical dimension, meaning evolves. Neoclassical utility can be “maximized” here and now, and increasing meaning may require a process of personal and socio-cultural evolution.

Simple examples of a person’s actions against his own benefit are actions committed for religious or ethical reasons. When a person enters the realm of the possible thanks to counterfacts, the formation of personality leads him to the edge of his everyday life and to the premonition of death. The fear of death itself is the result of the evolution of meanings: “Knowledge of death, of the inconceivable possibility that the experiences of life will end, is a datum that only symbolic representation can impart” (Deacon 1997, p. 436). At the edge of his personal existence, man comes to the supernatural and to religion. Religion is one of the most motivating domains of meaning in the history of culture.

Morality is another domain of meaning that we have inherited from traditional society. It is the result of consistent learning over many generations and is therefore a practice that lies between instinct and reason. It is closely linked to immediate emotional, affective reactions:

“Once we view morals not as innate instincts but as learnt traditions, their relation to what we ordinarily call feelings, emotions or sentiments raises various interesting questions. For instance, although learnt, morals do not necessarily always operate as explicit rules, but may manifest themselves, as do true instincts, as vague disinclinations to, or distastes for, certain kinds of action. Often they tell us how to choose among, or to avoid, inborn instinctual drives” (Hayek 1988-2022, vol. 1, p. 13).

Darwin’s theory of the evolutionary origin of emotions led Herbert Spencer and some of his followers to conclude that people would become less emotional in the future—it is the so-called “rudimentary” theory of emotions. James Scott notes that as domestication progressed in both humans and animals, their limbic systems, responsible for producing hormones and responding to threats and other stimuli, shrank and they became less emotional. The creation of the domus as a cultural niche meant that cultural selection factors—the ability to get along with one’s neighbors in the house—began to play a larger role compared to factors of the natural environment (Scott 2017, pp. 81-6). Although we can probably speak of the evolution of emotions, emotions were and remain the oldest and most fundamental element of thinking.

Tradition itself is not only the result of learning and cultural selection, but also of choice based on both emotion and reason. In the course of its evolution, tradition gradually but surely crossed the line between mere reactive behavior and meaningful action. It has changed from an animal to a human tradition and has become an accumulation of religious and moral practices, a value-rational action “determined by a conscious belief in the value for its own sake of some ethical, aesthetic, religious, or other form of behavior, independently of its prospects of success” (Weber 1978, pp. 24-5).