Be Biased Towards Action

Biblical Theology Meets Self-Help

It's easier to change one’s behavior than one's mind or one’s heart.

That’s what the ancient religious notion of obligation solves for. Agency or autonomy can’t jump-start the self when the engine is sputtering. Obligation can.

Should you wait to be perfect and then do the action? Obviously, you should not or you will do nothing. This is the premise of “Move fast and break things.” It’s also the premise of the Biblical phrase: "Naaseh v'nishma" (“we will do and only later understand”). I write three essays a week. Each one, including this one, deserves months of thought, elucidation, and editing.

The Jewish people are called "stiff-necked." Yet God does not destroy them despite wanting to. Why? Why does God deal harshly with Pharaoh by giving him a hard heart? Why is a stiff neck better than a hard heart?

Because a stiff neck can be constrained or trained by physical therapy. A stiff neck means a neck that goes where it wants to without considering reason. Like an animal that follows the whiff of possible prey (h/t Rabbi Daniel Nevins for this lead).

But the thing is, mitzvah, or commandment trains the neck. Maybe at first, we want what we want. Eventually, our desire changes. But even if it doesn’t: Obligation offers a constraint on will. There are worse conditions than a stiff neck.

A hardened heart, meanwhile, is benumbed. End of story. You can work with a person who has misdirected desire. Much harder to work with someone who has no desire. Stiff necked means stubborn, but alive. Egoistic, but vital.

On a certain read of the Torah, it's all or nothing. You either do all the commandments or you go to zero. But on the stiff necked model, every action counts for something, softens the neck just a little. It's all about getting in just one more rep.

God destroys the whole world during time of Noah because God sees human nature is evil. But God preserves Israelites because although the stiff neck feature is bad, it's not indelible.

Many lessons from this. Don't try to change the minds of people who are fixed in worldview; don't try to change the emotions of people who feel what they feel. But slight adjustments in action or experience can make worlds of difference in outlook and emotion.

Getting started is the hardest thing.

That's why we need to do things because we feel obligated. Modern hustle culture knows this and so tries to sub in peer pressure for the role once played by God. Ditto social media apps that track and post how many miles you ran today.

The most diligent people do things rain or shine, whether happy or sad. The true life hack is not waiting for the perfect conditions to do the thing.

If you know you are stiff necked you need to use it to your advantage. Become stiff necked about praying 3 times a day or once a day instead of stick necked about doom scrolling.

Become stiff necked about reading and writing every day instead of stiff necked about watching Netflix.

Become stiff necked about exercise instead of stiff necked about buying another pair of shoes you don't need.

The Torah portion this week says the Israelites aren't being rewarded because they are great but rather because they aren't as terrible as other nations. How is that inspiring?? I'll tell you:

The worst kind of being terrible is not having the ability to change. The best kind of being terrible is the ability to error correct. The point of covenant isn't that God chooses a great and deserving people, but that God chooses a people with potential for error correction.

Error correction doesn't always come from insight or epiphany, which feel awesome in the moment but vanish with the day. Often it comes from incremental behavioral tweaks.

Compounded over centuries! Take one example: Idolatry. This used to be a big deal in the Torah. Now how many people genuinely worship idols in the literal sense? How about human sacrifice?

I don't know if the arc of history bends towards justice, but a stiff neck can break towards virtue.

Behaviorally, we are more malleable and more capable than we think. Yes, emotion matters. Yes, thought matters. But the modern bias towards action against contemplation is inscribed in the Torah.

Athens wants to give us perfect ideas, perfect arguments, perfect principles. Jerusalem gives us a messed up band of ex slaves and says, “What if they just do some seemingly strange things every day for thousands of years because their God told them to"?”

Not coincidentally, it's a common story that many people with difficult lives find liberation in the experience of joining an army. Not because they like the war or battle, but the training turns them into people with a sense of obligation, a sense of "come rain or shine"

What if the solution to a lot of problems won't be found in thought or feeling, but in making one's bed? It's a radical idea. A threatening idea to those of us who spend our lives and livelihoods invested in intellectualism.

But the reason people read Jordan Peterson or whatever self help is basically because they want the Biblical idea of obligation, but can't grok the metaphysics of the God of Exodus.

And that's fine-ish. I think obligation without a divine source is a bit risky. But the headline is: people in liberal society like law and statute and discipline more than they let on.

The same things that make it awesome to shake a lulav or keep Sabbath lead many to swear by eating mushroom powder every morning.

Ultimately, obligation only works with two things: a sense of transcendence and a sense of the longevity of time. Time will tell if modern self help can produce either one or two without the help of religion or tradition.

Anyways, theological antisemites said Jews were "Carnal" but as Daniel Boyarin shows the diss is to our benefit. Jews know that you can serve with your body even where your heart isn't in it and that fake it til you make it isn't hypocrisy but stoic heroism.

In a world where campus activist culture elevates having the right opinions and saying the right things to the highest status and in a world in which therapeutic culture elevates talking about and understanding feeling to highest status...Biblical tradition would like a word.

That word is well captured in Pirkei Avot: Do things for the ulterior reason and eventually come to do it for the right reason (mitoch she lo lishma ba lishma).

Think all the wrong things. Feel all the bad feelings. But get up and try to make yourself better than yesterday.