Was the Cosmic Man Right, After All?

I was just watching The Cosmic Man (1959), one of a number of cheaply made knock offs of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) that appeared in the fifties. (You can tell just how cheaply made it was by the fact that it top-lined John Carradine - who'd appear in anything for money in order to finance his stage work - and Bruce Bennett, one time serial and B-movie star.  Not that either were bad actors, they just tended to appear in movies featuring in the bottom half of double bills).  Like all of these movies, taking their cue from the original, the film features a lot of sermonising on the part of the title character on the subject of how potentially dangerous to the rest of the universe that mankind was, because his intellectual and moral maturity hadn't reached the same level as his technological achievements.  Humanity just couldn't be trusted not to abuse such things as nuclear power and rocketry in order to destroy each other, but also not to spread this irresponsibility into outer space, threatening any other civilisations they might encounter.  I remember that, as a kid, I always thought this sort of attitude, particularly when propounded as piously as it was in these films, as being incredibly patronising.  After all, juvenile me reasoned, we've had the bomb for thirty plus years, but have refrained from using it in anger since 1945, despite the number of regional conflicts in that time, not to mention the tensions of the Cold War.  Which, I thought, showed considerable responsibility and restraint on the part of our leaders.  Moreover, we were pushing out into space, not militarily, but in a spirit of exploration and discovery.

Nowadays, though, the landscape has changed dramatically.  Not one, but two Trump pesidencies have amply demonstrated that, even in supposedly civilised democracies, utterly irresponsible, reckless, stupid and venal leaders can be put into office and allowed to rule without restraint, leaving us subject to their childish tantrums and whims.  Leaders who have no qualms about abusing the power they control.  It isn't just Trump, though.  He has been the herald of the rise of all manner of extreme right neo-Nazis across the globe, some of whom have also gained power, while others have grown in strength and influence, raising the spectre of yet more of the world's most dangerous technologies falling into the hands of the evil and immature.  These arseholes have a knock on effect - they are propelled into power, or near power, by the ultra-wealthy, who bankroll them with the expectation that they will do their bidding: lowering the taxes they pay, reducing the restrictions, such as health and safety for their workers and environmental protections,, that are placed upon them by responsible governments.  This sort of de-regulation results in the likes of Altman at OpenAI, who apparently thinks that their work should be unrestricted as a few 'bad' things happening as a result of them being allowed to do whatever they please, is a small price to pay for progress.  (Just so long as those 'bad' things don't happen to them, presumably).  This folks, is that unfettered capitalism which is much vaunted by the right.  All of which brings me to the inevitable conclusion that the likes of the Cosmic Man might have had a point.  Perhaps we really are too immature to be trusted to actually utilise our technologies responsibly.  Maybe reality has finally caught up with those old movies.