Action, Super heroes

“Avengers: Infinity War” or: Overpopulation

The universe is in danger and our hero will save us… Thanos. Wait, what?!

thanos

In the new “Avengers: Infinity War” there’s one concept that is the main theme of the bad guy, overpopulation and its consequences. The enemy is an alien named Thanos (similar to Thanatos, the Greek personification of death) and his goal is to destroy half of the living intelligent beings across the universe. In the comic, this goal came as a gift for a love one, Lady Death (the personification of death); but in the movie, it’s only an idea from an inner child that has faced the dead of his planet… I like more the second one.

Overpopulation is a main subject of every country. The consequences are great demands on resources and land, leading to widespread environmental issues in addition to impacting global economies and standards of living (1).

crowd 1.jpg
Photo by Riccardo Bresciani from Pexels

Since the time of the Bubonic Plague in the 1400’s, the growth of population has been on a constant increase. Between the time of the plague and the 21st century, there was been hundreds and thousands of wars, natural calamities and man-made hazards. However, none of these have made a dent on the population. Developing nations face the problem of overpopulation more than developed countries, but it affects most of the Earth as of now. When we are talking about overpopulation, we should first understand the causes of it (2).

Thomas R.  Malthus, a British economist of the century XIX (1766-1834), in his book “Trial on the Principle of the Populations”, expressed his theory about populations, saying that while the populations make bigger logarithmically (geometrically), the natural resources for the survival of those populations grow in arithmetically. In his book, Malthus predicted the collapse of the human populations if they were not submitted voluntarily to the reduction of birth rates. It would be a Secundum Natura (3).
Lemmings

I must add that every overpopulation situation has have a difficult time when it gets decreased, that’s how nature works. Let’s take just one example, the lemmings, when they have overpopulation, they commit mass suicide… well, that’s a myth (4). But the lemmings migrate jumping off the cliff to water and swim long distances. Some humans do the same when they cannot have a decent job and a good place to live.

I’m not saying that we must jump off the cliff to death or something. There are some proposals of solutions (1, 2):
  • Better sex education and access to contraceptives.
  • Family planning.
  • Changes in policy (like tax benefits, not China’s one-child policy)

This is not a easy topic to solve but we need to try to control it. Maybe you want to have three children but you have to think about the resources and economy that we are going to leave them.

What do you think?

Leave a comment