IF YOU have the power – i.e., a gauntlet complete with Infinity Stones – to wipe out half of the population of the universe in a snap of your fingers, would you do it?
Thanos, the supervillain in the latest Hollywood movie “Avengers: Infinity War,” believes he will bring balance to the universe by solving its overpopulation issue. His motivation is to end the suffering caused by collapsing ecosystems, greedy consumption, and crowded planets. He talks about balance and “mercy” while carrying out his master plan of genocide.
I will not spoil the movie here but we all know that two dozen superheroes will be in action working together to stop Thanos. We root for the “heroes” and call Thanos sick in the mind, perhaps evil, to even think of his solution.
But Thanos profoundly thinks he has a noble cause, something that makes his character more nuanced than those who just seek pure power or world domination, and he speaks his message with eloquence it gave me the chills.
It is disarming to hear a supervillain wish for the day that his mission for ecological balance is accomplished and “watch the sunset with a grateful universe.”
A lot of people left the movie theater in shock. We all had different (many) reasons, but what shook me most was the cause of Thanos. I have heard it before, and I confess I have even entertained thoughts about how it could be necessary.
In the late 90s, I have first seen this Malthusian narrative in “12 Monkeys” (an early Brad Pitt film), and in recent films like Dan Brown’s “Inferno.” Charismatic fanatics turn into messianic terrorists with misplaced megalomania, as they act on what they believe will be better for the world. Even in the history Wizarding World, at one point Albus Dumbledore coined “For the Greater Good” as a motivation for the horrible crimes of Grindelwald.
I constantly warn myself not to harbor such thoughts leading to extremism. In real life, haven’t we heard of political leaders declaring certain kinds of people the “scum of the Earth” and vowing to kill them all, for the sake of our society’s peace?
A friend would tell me the crusade of Thanos is different from our country’s Drug War, since the former was in random and fictional, while the latter is targeting criminals, drug pushers, and drug addicts, and is a functional method accepted by the majority of our country’s citizens. I personally do not subscribe to this approach, and even protest it.
But who am I to wash my hands clean as I also, as a conservationist, sometimes talk about how in our relatively little time on the planet, we humans have caused climate change, pushed other species to extinction, and suffocated our planet with waste – and thus think about how much chance we got in the midst of the problems we face today, if there were just half as many people on Earth?
It scared me. Yes, it was just a movie, and we succumbed to this commercial franchise flirting with moral discourse. I will not pretend to have the ability or higher understanding to interpret what Thanos stood for, so I need support from the community who reads this column to make sense of our post-Infinity War thoughts and feelings, and allow us to treat each other and the planet better. It felt like I needed a post-traumatic stress disorder therapy, with respect to real PTSD patients everywhere.
After the film, I had to sit down with Charley, our Advocacy Officer, and talked about what our feelings about Thanos meant. She told me how interesting it is (spoiler alert, sorry) that Thanos did end up watching the sunset in the Philippines. He looked at peace, and the surrounding Banaue-looking scenery is peaceful.
But we were in turmoil, those who have been affected by the movie and similar artistic expressions of life and death. In myself, it was due to the moral dilemma of a drastic population control for the sake of ecological balance. Because of this turmoil, we know it wasn’t peace that Thanos brought.
We know in our hearts that peace does not mean killing and that it is not for any human, no matter how genius or noble, to have an exclusive claim to righteousness. We have pitfalls and flaws, so we cannot, and should not, play God.
And we know in our hearts that there are other ways because Thanos’ plan sucks – that even if he wiped out half of the population of the universe, we would still re-populate exponentially and mess up our resources to extinction after a couple hundred years. And, I’m pretty sure the Avengers will “avenge” themselves in the next movie (nice plan, Marvel!) while there are a million other, nonviolent plans for the world to be peaceful and sustainable for us to participate in.