Now or Later

"Consider the cost of a mitzvah relative to its rewards and the rewards of a transgression relative to its cost."
-- Rabbi Yehuda Ha-nasi

Rabbi Yehudah Ha-nasi was one of the most colorful and significant contributors to the Talmud. He redacted the Mishna in approximately the second century CE, and, as editor, he often added his own conclusions or legal positions to the debates of his day. Here, we find him offering broader wisdoms about life.

At first glance, his statement above from Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 2:1 seems confusing. We rarely put a price on good deeds nor would we want to think about the cost of being good. The moment we put a price tag on intangible acts, we reduce them and minimize their significance.

And yet, we are reminded that our actions should perhaps undergo, in mercantile terms, a cost-benefit analysis. It would look something like this. When you are about to do a mitzvah - a commanded act - think about how difficult it is now and the sacrifices it involves relative to the benefit that it will bestow to others and ourselves later. Included in that list of others is the way that our acts create and cement a relationship with God.

The opposite is also worth careful consideration. We may commit moral errors or besmirch our integrity because it feels good now, but it will feel awful later. In thinking about the cost/benefit analysis, we lose.

In the May issue of The Atlantic, Virginia Postrel wrote a wonderful article called "The Gift-Card Economy." She begins with the question of what a mother would like more on Mothers' Day: a gift-card that expires in a month or one that expires in a year? The real answer to that question is that the mother would love a homemade card and a big kiss, but if we are going down the gift-card road, then the researched answer is not what we would expect. Just as we put off doing tasks that we don't like, we also procrastinate with enjoyable experiences. A gift-card with an approaching deadline forces people to do what they want to do but won't normally take the time to do.

Postrel connects this behavior to what are called "precommitment strategies". We create ways to shape our future actions because we know that there are multiple selves fighting for dominance within us. There is the self that wants to get up early and get work done and the self that just wants to stay in bed. One self is the night-before-self and the other is the morning-after-self. There is the self who wants nothing more than a gallon of ice-cream and the self that wants desperately to lose weight. A precommitment strategy is a way "to force our future selves to do the right thing [so] we look for ways to commit to that behavior in advance." We throw out all he candy in our kitchen because we have an inkling of a thought that if we don't, we'll have an all-out binge some time soon. We set our alarm clocks at particular times to encourage us to behave in the way that we imagine we would want to act in advance of the actual moment when our inclination to hit the snooze button is at an all-time high.

Two behavioral economists working on this kind of thinking concluded that "when people think about the future, they're very focused on the gain and positive outcomes. The benefits are really appealing when they're far off in the future, and people just don't see the costs at all. Whereas if it's tomorrow, the benefits are similar but the costs are huge and in their face."

Returning to Pirkei Avot, we affirm what this fascinating research is surfacing. When we think about the cost now and the benefit later, we so often think that mitzvoth seem onerous and transgressions are deeply pleasurable. In other words, we think about the cost for good acts and the rewards for bad acts. But the Mishna asks us to reverse the terms. Think of future rewards for the good that we do and the current cost of our mistakes and moral compromises. And if we do the math correctly, a better person may emerge.

The comments to this entry are closed.

Erica Brown

Posts By Category

Posts By Date

Now or Later