The Thanos Solution

If you never saw any of Marvel’s Avengers movies or read any of their comics, you may have no idea who Thanos, the Mad Titan is (or was…spoiler alert!).  He’s not your typical comic villain.  Actually, you might not consider him a villain at all considering his intentions are selfless.  All he wants is for everyone in the universe to have enough resources.  The problem is resources are scarce, too scarce for half the population to survive and thrive.  His solution is to obliterate half the population of the universe, which he eventually does with a snap of his fingers once he has possession of the magical Infinity Stones.

We don’t know if he ever considers doubling the universe’s resources with a snap of his fingers rather than “unexisting” half the population.  That might have been a much easier (and humane) solution, but a much sleepier story.  Disregarding that particular alternate solution…was he right?  Did Thanos do the right thing?  Or should he have left everything alone and let the population of the universe eat itself until all resources were gone?

Surely if left alone, populations would balance out so that current resources would become plentiful by natural selection.  Charles Darwin saw it happening in nature when resources were scarce.  Competition for resources not only reduces the population, but also makes sure the strongest of the population survives and gives future generations a greater chance of thriving.  In fact, culling the population at random would only make the species weaker as a whole as compared to the process of natural selection. 

On the other hand, the Thanos solution was instantaneous.  There was no suffering for those that were “snapped” out of existence (although there was plenty of emotional suffering for those left alive).  Look at it this way and it seems Thanos was quite humane about the whole situation.

“But Thanos was playing God,” you may say.  Well, yeah, but not really PLAYING God…he was BEING God…and he did the culling at random the same way God seems to, right?  No judgement, no prejudice, no problem.  But I’d think you could get rid of the selfish people (at least at first) and maybe the scarce resources would go a lot farther with the remaining population of selfless.  Certainly get rid of the criminals first, the ones willing to make others suffer for their own pleasure or well-being.  Start with the violent offenders…murderers, rapists, child abusers, etc…first on the list, no question.  Thieves next…sorry, no more catalytic converters for you!  And the litterers next…just because that shit really pisses me off.  Let’s include grammar police at this point (just for you, Mike!). I mean as long as we’re playing God and creating a better universe for those that survive, why not discriminate a little and make the universe a little brighter as well as less populated.  I don’t know about Infinity Stones…maybe it’s just easier to flip a cosmic coin.

Really, I kind of relate to Thanos.  I get it.  He’s just trying to make the universe a better place…eliminate hunger, want, and suffering at any cost.  His heart is in the right place, and he remains true to his convictions.  Except at the end when he says he’s going to enjoy destroying the Earth…then he showed his cruelty.  Dang it, I was right there with ya, big guy!

But then at the end, he realized the right and proper thing to do would be to shred the universe and rebuild it with more resources per capita.  Yeah, that would solve everything.  I’m with ya again…just don’t be a dick about it, dude!

Here on Earth, we’re now supporting just shy of 8 BILLION people.  That’s doubled since I was born! This while China was limiting parents to one kid per couple.  Lots of folks have been screaming about scarce resources not just lately, but at least since the eighties when I first heard the term “zero population growth.”  Now it’s not just limited resources, but also climate change due to carbon emissions.  We’re killing the planet!  Except no, according to the late great George Carlin, we’re just killing ourselves and the planet will fix itself once we’re gone.  That’s encouraging.

What we need is a real virus, not this covid wimp.  Something on the bubonic plague scale.  Something like Stephen King’s Captain Trips.  Something that’ll make a real impact on the Earth’s population.  Keep working on it, China!  And maybe name it the “Thanos virus” when it’s done. Something’s gotta kill us off…it’s inevitable.

PS, don’t sue me, Disney. 

-Big Steve