The Avengers: Infinity War and the Issue of Overpopulation
The movie “Avengers: Infinity War” is a science fiction movie directed by both Anthony and Joe Russo, and was released in 2018. Avengers: Infinity War became the most anticipated of 2018 as it earned a total of 2.048 billion USD in box office. The film’s story goes the Avengers would unite to battle their greatest enemy yet, Thanos, who plans to bring balance to the universe by wiping half of all life in the universe through the use of the six almighty Infinity Stones. Thanos claims that: “This universe is finite, its resources, finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist.” Despite all the heroes’ efforts to stop him, Thanos still manages to get all six Infinity Stones and wipes half of all life by the snap of his fingers.
Throughout the entirety of the film, it is depicted that Thanos only had one goal: to bring balance to the universe by wiping half of all life. This goal of his is not entirely nonsensical as the film depicts that his home planet, Titan, was once a beautiful planet; but then, it became overpopulated, draining its finite resources, leading to its inevitable doom. Through Thanos and his insanely absurd goal, the film tells us that overpopulation could lead us humans to our own extinction as our planet itself just does not have enough resources to infinitely sustain us forever. Sooner or later, our planet’s resources would deplete if our population keeps on increasing at an exponential rate.
Currently, global human population sits at about 7.6 billion, and it does not seem to stop increasing anytime soon. Human population grows exponentially, meaning, as human population increases, the rate at which it increases would also grow. On the contrary, our food supply grows arithmetically, meaning it grows steadily. Over time, we could say that the population would eventually catch-up and outpower our food supply, no matter how big it is.
Overpopulation long has been considered a problem regarding finite resources thus, overpopulation has taken the blame for many of our biggest problems including starvation, diseases, lack of access to clean water, pollution, and many other things many times. If you take the time to look at what is happening around us, it is quite undeniable that overpopulation has indeed caused a lot of problems to us and the society, especially underprivileged people. One could argue that it is the poor people who tend to ‘overpopulate’, i.e. it is poverty that causes overpopulation. If you would consider their lack of educational attainment due to poverty, which in turn affected their decisions later in life, then we could say that this is the case. On the other hand, maybe it is overpopulation that caused poverty in the first place. Overpopulation can cause an individual to be deprived of the most basic needs because there are not enough resources to be allocated among each individual, which in turn affected the course of their life and caused them to be poor in the future.
While it is true that we cannot rely on our planet forever to sustain us, this does not mean that the human race’s fate is inevitable like Thanos’ home planet, Titan. I believe that God gave us the ingenuity and the power to charter the course of our own species’ future. We have the capacity and the capability to create a tomorrow that is dedicated for the good of all mankind. With the help of science, technology and the intellect we possess, I believe that overpopulation is just another problem that we, as a species, could overcome together.
