A Paper presented at the National Seminar on „Sustaining Values‟ at Ruia College, Mumbai Inculcating Moral Values in an Age of Instant Gratification Sujit R. Chandak Asst. Professor, English M.D.Shah Mahila College, Malad (west), Mumbai-64 Human mind is hardwired in such a fashion that it selects immediate pleasure over something in the future. This was an evolutionary advantage; if one valued the immediate one was able to survive. Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, in his psychoanalytic theory of personality, names this as the „Id‟. This aspect of the perso nality is original and is present from birth leading to the development of other aspects. It is driven by the „pleasure principle‟, and strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs. The id is very important in early life, because it ensures that an infant's needs are met. However, social life will not be possible if life operates only in the way of the Id. The ego, which develops from Id, ensures that the demands of the Id can be expressed in an acceptable way in the real world. The ego works on the basis of the „reality principle‟ assessing the costs and benefits of an action before deciding to act or abandon the urge. The superego is the last part of the personality to develop and it brings in the ideas of morality, ideals and the sense of right and wrong. The superego work to civilize human behaviour. It suppresses all unacceptable urges of the id and drives the individual towards moral and idealistic standards. It should, however, be noted that personality is a combination of these three, and also that the first response always is that of immediate gratification. It is the ability to delay the immediate pleasure and wait for a bigger reward which has made many of the great human achievements possible; delayed gratification not just unlocks a bigger reward in future but also makes human values possible, as without this (if everyone was to seek instant gratification) we are no better than the beast. In modern time this has been proven in the field of human psychology through the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment [1972 (original), 1990 (follow-up)]. The original experiment conducted on the preschool kids established that delaying gratification was related with age; the follow up after 18 years proved that those kids who had successfully delayed gratification tended to do better in academics, social and many other parameters. The human civilizations across the world knew