Oryx And Crake Analysis

Power has the tendency to cause humanity to become addicted to it. When under its influence, it can cause a person to lose sight of the consequences of their actions, and even lose their ability to feel empathy. This is the case in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, Crakes character loses his touch with humanity when he creates his elite race. He is blinded by what he believes is the greater good and it is thus that causes the downfall of the entire human race.
No one starts off corrupted by power, it is often incremental (Power Corrupts). A person works their hardest because they validate their actions as being for greater good. They have reasoning behind their work, a purpose. As the individual gets increasingly more successful they start to take shortcuts, take more benefits for themselves with little disregard for rules or otherwise. Because after all in the end they believe what they're doing is for the best; so what does it matter how they get there?
The frontal lobe of our brain is responsible for our feeling of empathy. Empathy being the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. When a person gets brain trauma in their frontal lobe they can often damage their empathy networks in their brain. This can cause the individual to become extremely impulsive and even sociopathic (How Power Makes People Selfish).
Darwin believed that sympathy was the strongest instinct that humans have (We Are Built To Be Kind). When we see another person in pain our brain lights up and reacts the same way as if we experienced that pain. Studies discovered that when we feel compassion a nerve called the vagus nerve actually lights up. Scientist studied how much different individuals vagus nerves reacted when shown images of people suffering. They discovered that lower class people vagus nerves lit up more than a wealthier persons. So poorer people actually felt more compassion that those who were more