Vanity and Deception
Vanity intertwined with the human ability to deceive both oneself and others in pursuit of greed creates a terrifying mix. It certainly appears vain to venture into unknown territories lacking a proper understanding of potential pitfalls while dismissing expert advice by reducing them to mere "hired hands." Yet, this is precisely what John Hammond, a wealthy eccentric, and his venture capitalist partners, who have funded Jurassic Park, do. They have been convinced by Hammond, a sort of menacing P.T. Barnum, to make this project a reality without fully considering the responsibilities that might come with success.
Is InGen, under pressure to meet their deadline, allowing enough time for thorough research on security? Especially since the DNA sequence gaps have been filled with genes from modern species by the lead scientist, Dr. Henry Wu. As a molecular geneticist, Wu cannot predict the behavior of his creations until they mature. What new capabilities might these hybrids possess that the original dinosaurs did not?
Security and Control
Hammond's team has implemented physical and biological safeguards to prevent the park's inhabitants from escaping, including massive electric fences and built-in metabolic weaknesses. However, the team of external experts soon identifies security flaws that the InGen team, being too immersed in the project, failed to notice. Although Hammond's intention in inviting these experts was simply to gain their approval, rather than address the park's actual issues, it is these specialists—paleontologist Alan Grant, paleobotanist Ellie Sattler, and mathematician Ian Malcolm—who ultimately rescue Hammond's grandchildren. Unfortunately, they are unable to save the park or Hammond himself in the end. Vanity and greed are the main driving forces, with Hammond's greed focused more on gaining unearned admiration than on accumulating wealth. He seeks recognition as a visionary leader who spearheaded a groundbreaking achievement in science and industry. Although he has a keen understanding of human nature, which has helped him manipulate people in the past, this skill proves insufficient for a pioneering scientific venture like Jurassic Park, which aims to resurrect an entire era of the past. His team—comprising engineers, geneticists, animal handlers, and public relations professionals—seems unable to step back and evaluate the project objectively. The author suggests that had they done so, they would have realized it was not the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity they believed it to be. Instead, Hammond sold them an illusion—the illusion of controlling Nature, which becomes less credible the more one understands the subject. Crichton portrays them as outdated linear thinkers, destined to become as obsolete as the dinosaurs by Ian Malcolm's theory of the nonlinear nature of reality. The working conditions, such as having an elderly miser teetering on senility as the chief executive, should have warned them that the project was in serious trouble, the kind of trouble that could be literally fatal for those closest to it.
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