Forbidden Planet Syndrome

 

In 1956 we were between two milestones that the human species had fantasized over, probably for most of its existence as an abstract thinking animal. We were about a decade past the mastery of physics that had culminated in exploiting potentially unlimited nuclear energy, although unfortunately initially as a destructive device. We were also less than a decade away from man's initial leap into space (a year from Sputnik) and less than one and a half decades from actually venturing to another world, although one near home.

1956 was also the year of one of the best science fiction movies to that date. Forbidden Planet not only had some great special effects for that time, it had a plot that was centered around the two physics subjects mentioned above. Cast a couple of centuries in the future, the remains of an advanced civilization had been discovered on a distant planet. The aliens of the planet, the Krell, had engineered an infrastructure that provided virtually unlimited energy (nuclear, obviously). They had also developed the ability to control all that energy by just thinking about it. The plot twist was that their subconscious also had access to the energy, and they unwittingly destroyed each other in an apparent orgy of subconscious rage.

Now any intelligent species anywhere in the universe would have to have evolved to the level of intellectual sophistication that permits the development of nuclear energy, including the human species here on Earth. But on the way up, so to speak, the species must survive through a continuum of ancestors that had to fight and defend their existence in a harsh and unforgiving world. The primitive emotions that allowed that survival are still resident in the brainstem of the human species, and can be reactivated any time there is a threat or other such stimulus to an otherwise civilized being.

With more and more nations on Earth having an arsenal of nuclear weapons, it would not take subconscious control of them to submit the human population to an extinction event. All it takes is the reactivation of the brainstem emotions of one or more hotheads with access to the launch buttons. The fate of the Krell is now within the reach of humanity and may indeed be unavoidable because of the role of the brainstem in evolution.

The relevant question of the day is whether mankind has in fact reached the point in evolution that cannot be passed by any species in the universe. The kill or be killed past in such evolution will still be lurking in the brains of any such advanced species. It may be inevitable that we succumb to the ultimate self-extinction that nuclear energy provides. In fact, maybe the lack of concrete evidence of alien UFOs visiting the Earth is because no species can make it past the Forbidden Planet Syndrome.