Dr. Morbius, in the great movie
Forbidden Planet was a linguist, or philologist, and the only suvivor of a
curse that struck a
scientific investigation team on a distant planet.
It is interesting that NONE of the military, or natural science, or physical science members of the team survived. It was only the man concerned with words, the philologist.
As for the Krell, the advanced race who had populated this world, their demise was not caused by their technology, though it was facilitated by it, anymore than Dr. Jeykell's was by his chemical potion. It was the great Victorian ideal of progress.
Or even the great Promethian notion, as represented throughout the history of the western world by the myth of, my hero, Dr. John Faustus.
We are compelled to see the ourselves as divided into two, the good and the evil. Whether it was the Krell who created themselves into ethereal beings of light and intellect, but were then exterminated by the release of what Morbius called the Monster of the Id, or whether it was the good Dr. Jeykell who was destroyed by his Id Monster, Mr. Hyde, or even the great Faustus who offered, in the end, to burn his books, in Christopher Marlowe's play, IT WAS THE DIVISION OF THE SELF AGAINST ITSELF that destroyed all.
But it is only we who tell the story who survive. Like Marlowe in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. We who delve into the arcane whorls of language who survive, for a time--at least we tell the story, and that is all anyone ever really knows anyway.
So why not have a little fun along the way, a little passion, a little intoxication! And through it all, it IS the intoxication of words that brings us all down.
But, what a MARVELLOUS END!