GEN636 (Continued from [[DEUT468]] Deuteronomy 10:19 stranger SACKS 13-14) Second, God Himself recognizes that we are not naturally good. After the Flood, He says: [This verse]. The antidote to the yetzer, the inclination to evil, is covenant. We now know the neuroscience behind this. We have a prefrontal cortex that evolved to allow humans to think and act reflexively, considering the consequences of their deeds. But this is slower and weaker than the amygdala [what the Jewish mystics called the nefesh habehemit, the animal soul), which produces, even before we have had time to think, the fight-or-flight reactions without which humans before civilization would simply not have survived. The problem is that these reactions can be deeply destructive. Often they lead to violence-not only the violence between species (predator and prey) that is part of the order of nature, but also to the more gratuitous violence that is a feature of the life of most social animals, not just humans. It is not that we only do evil. Empathy and compassion are as natural to us as are fear and aggression. The problem is that fear lies just beneath the surface of human interaction, and it threatens all else. Daniel Goldman calls this an amygdala hijack. “Emotions make us pay attention right now -- this is urgent -- without having to think twice.  The emotional component evolved very early: do I eat it, or does it eat me?” Daniel Goldman, Emotional Intelligence (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), 13ff. Impulsive action is often destructive because it is undertaken without thought of the consequences. That is why Rambam [i.e., Maimonides – AJL] argued that many of the laws of the Torah constitute a training in virtue by making us think before we act. Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Temura 4:13. So the Torah tells us that naturally we are neither good nor bad but have the capacity for both. We have a natural inclination to empathy and sympathy, but we have an even stronger instinct for fear that leads to violence. That is why, in the move from Adam to Noah, the Torah shifts from nature to covenant, from tov to brit, from power to the moral limits of power. Genes are not enough. We also need the moral law.   SACKS 13-14