We learn in Genesis 6:08, immediately before Noah, that God worried creating humanity and the world was a mistake. In 6:11 we learn "the earth had become corrupt before God." What makes a person the most righteous of a corrupt generation?
Rashi says Noah was righteous compared to his contemporaries, but not compared to Abraham. R' Lakish says Noah reacted to the immorality of his time, but had he lived in Abraham's time, would not have been inspired to do more than his everyday tasks (Sanhedrin 108A). If Noah managed to be righteous despite living in a corrupt period, how much greater would he have been in a moral age?
In A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud, Rabbi Arthur Segal writes:
"In Midrash Devarim there is a story of a conversation between Moses and Noah in Heaven. Noah boasts to Moses that he is greater than Moses because he was saved from the generation of the Flood, to which Moses replies: 'No, you saved yourself, but were not able to save your generation. When did I save my generation? When God said, 'Desist from me and I will destroy them.' (Deut.9:14). I pleaded with God and was successful in saving both my generation and myself. Therefore I am greater than you.'"
After the Flood receded, Noah planted a vineyard and got drunk. In R' Segal's opinion, if Noah had been a model citizen, he would have taught his sons better values, and a subsequent generation would not have built the tower of Babel.
Is it true that Noah would have been a better person if he had lived in a more moral time? Do we judge people based on absolute criteria, or in context to their circumstances?
In The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will, philosopher Heidi Ravven writes, "Social and situational forces rather than free will decision making and stable personal character largely determine what people do, what actions people take, whether they harm or help."
She cites the work of research psychologists Philip Zimbardo and Stanley Milgram. The Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Zimbardo, was meant to "test the relative power of situational forces versus personality (moral character traits and free will) as causes of moral or immoral behavior." The experiment replicated a prison environment. Those accepted into the study were divided into two groups: guards and prisoners. "Guards" became abusive almost immediately, humiliating and tormenting the prisoners to such an extent that the planned two week experiment was terminated in six days. Four "prisoner" students suffered emotional breakdowns. Milgram devised a controversial experiment in which test subjects were told they were participating in a study of learning and memory, and were asked to give electric shocks to test collaborators (posing as volunteers) for wrong answers. The subjects were willing, at the urging of those who conducted the tests, to inflict the highest degree of pain allowed by the test (fake, but they didn't know that.)
Nazi doctors caused harm with no greater qualms than we would expect to feel while consuming a bowl of cornflakes. Ravven, who lost family to the Shoah, asks what made Nazis sympathizers different from those who risked their lives to save others. Those who were willing to take such risks were outsiders - on the periphery of German culture, or perhaps from a neighboring country where they were exposed to different points of view which prevented them from drinking the genocidal Kool-Aid. Groupthink is the enemy of morality, which is why we need diversity of thought, culture, and opinion.
Getting back to Noah for a moment, had he lived in a less corrupt time, it seems to me that he might have been capable of saving more people (although he wouldn't have needed to.) Noah was embedded in his society, in contrast to Moses, an outsider who gained perspective in Midian before he returned to Egypt to lead the Exodus.
Neuroscience, genetic factors, biology - none of which are freely willed, and from which we can't extract ourselves - produce our thinking. "Neural networks change through experience, not through will." The prevailing cultural assumptions about free will, Ravven says, originate with Augustine. His influence is so deeply entrenched in the broader culture that we take for granted it accurately describes how humanity works. In addition, it is difficult for psychologists to be objective about what is innate vs. what is learned, or even to interpret their experiments without coloring the results with their own expectations. While looking for evidence that morality is hard-wired, researchers must confront the limitations and implications of how they frame their questions. How does a human being study humanity with objectivity? And yet it seems this is what we need to learn to do if we want to solve the problems we face as a species.
There is no fixed area dedicated to morality in the brain. Ravven cites numerous studies that show decisions of all kinds (not just those involving moral choice) are made the same way - under social influence - unconsciously, and with a rationale supplied after the behavior, not before. The facts of a situation are judged based on how the situation is framed, rather than by what actually occurred. We judge behavior based on how we feel about the person doing it or on a group consensus about who is allowed to do what. We prefer to blame a victim than acknowledge our own vulnerability to being harmed (we're good, so it can't happen to us; they must have deserved it). It is not that we do nice things for people we like, but that we end up liking the people we do nice things for. Human beings cannot judge our own motives. We don't know what we think or feel, or why we behave as we do. We just make stuff up. We are prone to hypocrisy, rationalization, and revisionism. But it's built in. We are not what we think we are. A sense of personal responsibility appears to anchor an otherwise inchoate mass of perceptions, thoughts, and internal processes; it provides continuity of experience, and contributes to survival.
Some studies of animal behavior show that rats and monkeys are capable of empathy for one another, raising questions about the human presumption that we are unique in this regard. We may actually have more problems with empathy than other species because we form interpretations of the actions of other people. As they say, "never assume."
Regarding neuroplasticity:
“'Thinking, learning, and acting actually change both the brain’s physical structure (anatomy) and functional organization (physiology)...'. We train ourselves in bad habits through repetition and intensity of focus, and the environment can lock us into patterns of behavior and meaning. Now we can better understand groupthink and the tyranny and danger of habitual interpretations of the world. This is why free will is so deceptive and otherworldly an ideal. It’s not possible for creatures like us. We can’t stand above our brains and rewire them by hand or by will. We don’t choose our beliefs and actions; instead, we are those actions and beliefs because they are written into our brains. We have written them into our brains, not by will but by experience....the neural maps are also one of the sources of the self and also of a feeling of self."
The influence of community and habit are powerful. We cannot escape our vulnerability to these tendencies. Hopefully making the process conscious allows us to gain some measure of control, to the extent it is possible to choose our environment.
Our rabbis understood that who we're with, what we do, and where we are shapes who we are. That Noah was the most righteous of a corrupt generation seems nothing short of a miracle, because we are continuously formed and organically altered in relation to others.