Because if we don’t we’re all heading for a chain crash pile up. Personal morality is not only an emotional or cognitive ethical construction but is truly embodied in each of us in a three swoosh loop.

First on the scene is the amygdala, well-hidden deep within the brain and privileged when it comes to input processing. It doesn’t require processing power from the rest of our brain to make decisions and receives information faster than the cortex, although sacrificing some accuracy for this, but the speed of the instant fear response capacity to remove you from something dangerous and save your life is more valuable to the brain than the error margin. The amygdala is your fear center and the headquarters of aggression associated with the fear response. If you took out someone’s amygdala there would be no concept of fear and the person would most likely die from making a very bad decision that got them killed. If you stimulate it you can provoke instant fear and aggression.

Than we have the insular cortex which is made to detect disgusting stimuli, originally designed in all animals to keep us from eating rotten, harmful or poisonous things, but in humans it reacts with disgust, cringing, and feelings of nausea and visceral disgust to moral stances as well. What we’re disgusted by is what is very different from what we’re used to seeing or, in higher realm, translates to that which constitutes a crime against humanity and the functioning of the insular cortex is intertwined with a deep never-ending chat with the amygdala. If something is different enough it causes fear and vice versa and we should therefore be triggered to be aggressive and eliminate the stimuli causing the disgust.

If we left those two in charge we’d be out of control, emotionally incontinent savages with no hope of ever being civilized or coexisting with anything or anyone different, acting on your lowest aggressive impulses without flinching and creating our own justice as we see fit. By these two rulers cooperation and advancement on the scale humanity has seen wouldn’t have been possible. That’s why you need out most recent newcomer to the brain – the frontal cortex.

The frontal cortex is the civilized regulatory part of the brain which tells you not to get out of the car and beat the living daylights out of the person driving slowly in front of you, that’s the part that says not to say that horrible thing because it may hurt someone or to explain what you meant rather than punch out all who don’t agree or understand. Its job is to make you do the hard things you don’t want to do but are the right thing to do. It allows you to delay instant gratification and have the ability to plan long-term goals and keep the discipline even when you don’t feel like it, it allows for impulse control and emotional regulation. It’s a muffler stopping you rom doing stupid destructive or auto destructive things all the time. But as it muffles, so it can be muffled and then you have a disaster. Nature has made it her business and agenda to give you the capacity for rationality and common sense. The frontal cortex is it. Without it you’re a beast among beasts with no self-control, even worst still because a beast with wild imagination such as our own is capable of much more horrid than just blunt direct aggression as the history of the species has shown.

Control yourself first.