The Origin of Economic Failures and Depressions

The Origin of Economic Failures and Depressions

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Forbidden Planet is a class Sci-Fi tour de force staring Leslie Nielson, Walter Pidgeon and Anne Francis. Released in 1956, it holds up surprisingly well against Star Wars, the Star Trek series and even the most recent digital entries into the genre.

The story of Dr. Morbius, re-discovering the technological marvels of a lost race of Krell on the distant distant planet Altair, is updated Shakespeare: The Tempest! Forbidden Planet excels in special effects, but it's enduring fascinations is to be found in its story –a parable of technology vs its inventor 

The story of Dr. Morbius, re-discovering the technological marvels of a lost race of Krell on the distant planet Altair, is updated Shakespeare: The Tempest. 

Forbidden Planet excels in special effects, but it's enduring fascination is to be found in its story, a parable of technology vs its inventor, the monster vs Dr. Frankenstein, the enemy of our own making.

Forbidden Planet shows us the dark side of human kind, a forbidding gestalt of uncontrollable urges that lies within all of us. It is, indeed, a monster from the ID! 

Even intelligence —seemingly papered over the more powerful id —cannot negate our darkest, deepest reservoirs. Just as Lord of the Rings depicts the absolute corruption of absolute power, Forbidden Planet confronts us with a question we would rather not answer: what are we to do with the physical manifestations of our inmost monsters? Far fetched? Consider this: what are nuclear weapons if not the "physical manifestations" of our darkest, unconscious impulses?

Is "Terrorism" a Monster From the ID?

Forbidden Planet shows us the dark side of human kind, a forbidding gestalt of uncontrollable urges that lies within all of us –a monster from the ID! Even intelligence –seemingly papered over the more more powerful ID –cannot negate our darkest, deepest reservoirs. Just as the Lord of the Rings depicts the absolute power, Forbidden Planet confronts us with a question we would rather not answer: what are we to do with the physical manifestations of our most inmost monsters?

Far fetched? Consider this: what are nuclear weapons if not the "physical manifestations" of our darkest, unconscious impulses?

Not so long ago, it was said by many writers that the U.S. Was hated by 100% of terrorists. Aside from being an amusing tautology, it misses the point. FBI statistics, for example, published by the Brookings Institution, utterly repudiate the political exploitation of terror. The FBI'S's own number are conclusive: while Ronald Reagan waged his famous “War on Terrorism”, terrorist attacks against the United States actually increased. Terrorist attacks were much greater under R. Reagan than under Clinton. Yet Clinton was criticized for not having waged such a war, if war it was! It raises the questions: is it preferable to wage a war and fail than to not wage a war and succeed?

Shakespeare's “The Tempest” deals with the same question: what does it mean to be human? The traditions of the enlightenment and more recently of existentialism come down heavily on the side of the fully realized individual –free to be human in the context of a free society. How oddly quaint and surrealistically naive that seems after a few years of debacle and the unleashed madness of the monster of the Id!.

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