"Thomas Mal-Thanos and Cosmic Conservation" by Jake S.

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The new edition of the Avengers series has everyone up in arms. Infinity War has many political and social standings in the movie. All have been debated and talked about frequently. One that has brought a lot of interest, is the similarities between the infamous, cosmic god,  Thanos of Titan, and the geographic theorist / political economist Thomas Malthus. The similarities stem from their theories of conservation. Malthus proposed the idea that the resources at the present time in 1798 would not sustain the upcoming population. His work proved that the increase of food was linear and not inclined to handle the exponential population increase. He was not prepared for the Industrial Revolution. This proved that food production was no longer linear and became a stepping progression. The steps followed the exponential population growth. Thanos of Titan had similar fears of the population growth within the universe. His solution was bit more direct and obviously a little more drastic. Thanos was convinced that wiping out half of the intelligent life would save the universe from total resource depletion. He didn’t use theories and a board of trustees to accomplish his goal, but used the Infinity Gauntlet bejeweled with six Infinity Gems. With a snap of his fingers, Thanos became literal Death.


Thanos and Thomas Malthus both proposed ideas that they believed were for the “Greater Good”. Malthus believed that Earth was going to run out of food for the remaining people. Thanos believed that because no one on Titan believed his plan to solve the overpopulation problem. So, he decided to just kill half of the intelligent life on his home planet, even if they didn’t believe that it would work.This turned his planet into a wasteland.  This is continued on Earth and he uses the same overpopulation plan. Although his plan is fictional and flawed, it does propose a question, such as Malthus’ Theory. The question is whether or not we are prepared for a world that is vastly overpopulated. Thanos was obviously hurt by his world rejecting his theory and killed them. Of course, Thomas Malthus could not act this way with his theory, but it made sense to people and laws and bills starting being passed because of his theory. His writings laid out plans to prevent population growth based on checks he deemed helpful. He proposed his idea and named two types of checks. The first type of check was a “preventive” check. These types of checks were moral obligations such as abstinence (or delayed marriage so that the finances would be in order). Malthus said that these restrictions would be for the poor or “defective” population. The other checks were “positive”. These lead to premature death: disease, starvation, and war. These were certain factors leading to a decrease in population.


These were definite Human Rights violations, and bring Thanos that much closer to Malthus.   Many other laws, bills, and “population experiments” were proposed by Malthus, such as the Yale Corn laws, or Avalon Project, etcetera. Malthus may not have killed half the population and a certain Tom Holland, as did Thanos, but was definitely evil and immoral. Thanos took life by force and Malthus took to the government to act his plans out. 


Citations:

Shermer, Michael. “Why Malthus Is Still Wrong.” Scientific American, 1 May 2016, www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-malthus-is-still-wrong/ 

“The Avalon Project : The Corn Laws by Malthus.” Avalon Project - Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/cornlaws.asp. 

Infinity Gauntlet (Item).” Marvel Database, marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Infinity_Gauntlet_(Item).  
Armitage, Hugh. “We Love You Thanos, but Your Master Plan Sucks.” Digital Spy, 28 Apr. 2018, www.digitalspy.com/movies/the-avengers/feature/a855818/avengers-infinity-war-thanos-plot-death-criticism/. 

Potenza, Alessandra. “Thanos' Plan in Avengers: Infinity War Has Historical Precedent.” The Verge, The Verge, 4 May 2018, www.theverge.com/2018/5/4/17319992/thanos-plan-avengers-infinity-war-historical-precedent-science-malthus. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 16, 2018 at 9:35 AM

    As we all know, OHS APHuG loves Avengers. Sooo AWESOME BLOG! Who would have thought that a superhero movie would apply to a theory of human demographics ? I loved how you simply compared the two in an easy way that all could understand. I can easily look at Thanos now and apply it to the theory. This means we should be able to watch it in class... right Dawa? ;)

    ReplyDelete

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