What If Thanos Was Right?

Little one, it’s a simple calculus. This universe is finite, it’s resources finite. If life is left unchecked, it will cease to exist. - Thanos, 2018

How many of you were convinced about Thanos’s master plan when you heard him say this? Look through his calm demeanour, strip away the purple skin, towering stature and super strength, and he’s just another person who’s convinced that overpopulation is the source of all evil.

Travel back in time, to the 1700s, and you’ll hear of another individual who shared this idea and; in fact, predicted the arrival of Thanos.

The power of population is so superior to the power of the Earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. - Thomas Malthus, 1798

Thomas Robert Malthus was an English cleric and scholar who published this theory in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population.

He believed that :
The Earth has a certain population limit called the sustainable level. Beyond this limit, populations grow faster than the supply of food and resources, resulting in a shortage.

At this point, the vices of man show up. Nations go to war with each other in a bid to secure the remaining resources.

These wars effectively bring the population down to the sustainable level.
But should wars fail this extermination; epidemic, plague and disease will sweep thousands and tens of thousands.

Should these also fail, an inevitable famine will level the population, in one gigantic blow.

Pessimism personified.

Now, compare this to what Thanos said to Gamora -

Going to bed hungry. Scrounging for scraps. Your planet was on the brink of collapse. I was the one who stopped that. You know what’s happened since then? The children born have known nothing but full bellies and clear skies. It’s a paradise.

He refers to an age where her home planet Zen-Whoberi, had crossed its sustainable level. He obliterated half the population in a bid to save the planet and according to him, it worked.

However, today's researchers claim that Malthus’s ideas are overstated or premature because the green revolution has brought substantial increases in food production and will be able to keep up with continued population growth.

The growth of human population, which Malthus believed had peaked during his lifetime, has risen relentlessly and rapidly over the past three centuries. Malthus did not anticipate the development of powerful new vaccines for diseases like smallpox and equally powerful advances in public health infrastructure like modern sewage systems and so forth.

This has led many researchers to shift the blame from "population" to "consumption”. This could be the subject of another article.

But for now, it’s left to you to decide whether Thanos was in fact, being merciful by giving half the population quick deaths.

After all,

The hardest choices require the strongest wills.