I’ve got to be honest, when I watched Avengers: Infinity War, somewhere deep down in my heart I felt, “Well, Thanos kind of has a point.”
In a philosophical perspective, Thanos is the ultimate Malthusian. He made his decision to wipe out half of the universe based on a simple yet highly effective data model: a regression analysis of the universe’s resources (Variables X) and population growth (Variable Y). He concluded the universe wasn’t sustainable at its current rate. Thanos is also a Utilitarian in a way: The Snap was to do the greatest good for the greatest number, which would be through wiping out half of the universe’s population.
Perhaps it is because I run the Truth Review and am obsessed with fact-checking but while many see Thanos as an iconic villain, I see him as a terrible data scientist. Here’s why.
In causing The Blip, Thanos committed a classic error: he confused “efficiency” with “stability. Émile Durkheim famously talked about the “Anomie”—a state when there is normlessness due to the fast-changing society. According to this idea, Thano’s decision wouldn’t make a paradise or sustainable universe, it creates chaos. Supply chains no longer function (similar to pandemic periods). Anarchy takes over. The trauma induced upon the public causes social trust to break down and society no longer able to maintain its stability.
Marvel did a great job in elaborating on this through the “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” introducing the term “Flag Smashers.” They were depicted as a group of people who preferred times during The Blip because the chaos dismantled borders and ironically, everyone united in suffering. Counterintuitively, crisis seems to create community, and the idea of returning to normal can in fact be radical.
Tony Stark’s philosophy is on the flipped side, as he believes in Technocracy. Stark relies on Technocratic Solutionism. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Stark argues “a better suit of armor” around the world can protect humans and create a better society. This is why he becomes obsessed with building better AI, and eventually Ultron. I have often fallen into similar traps when coding the tools on the Truth Review website. For a moment, I think “If only I could build a better tool, people would stop believing in fake news.” But reality proves this false. Just as Captain America: Civil War portrayed the disaster that may be incurred when technology is advanced without political consensus (The Sokovia Accords), technology isn’t the sole solution to all our problems.
Marvel movies aren’t just for kids, they’re for everyone. They tell us we can’t just try to engineer our way out of social solutions, we must communicate and collaborate in unity. Thanos’s subtraction and Stark’s addition were both top-down efforts to completely fix the system. But this doesn’t work. What’s more important is to lay down the groundwork and build communities, just as Sam Wilson (Captain America) did—we need to talk with each other, not just snap fingers.