In an unprecedented event over 19 films, The Mad titan Thanos, was built up as the ultimate villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
With him successfully achieving his goal of collecting all infinity stones to eradicate half of all life, specifically creatures, with the snap of his finger.
For a film franchise known for happy endings and feel good glimmers of home, Avengers Infinity had a very sad and demoralizing ending.
And as much as I am glad that Thanos is a fictional character and did instantly kill half of all creatures in the universe, I can't help but realize, that thanos was right.
And by that I mean, we need to step and look at the situation. As thanos rationally puts it, there just are not enough resources in the universe.
And more importantly, the universe is incapable of sustaining so much life. But historically, catastrophic events that resulted in large amounts of death have greatly benefited humanity as a whole.
Take for instance, the Black death, the bubonic plague, the one and only yersinia pestis. From 1347 to 1351 upto 200 million people in eurasia died. Killing upwards of 1/3 of people in asia. While certainly devastating at the time, over 600 years later our world is a better place because of the plague.
For starters, the plague ended feudalism in Europe. Feudalism was a glorified system of slavery where peasants, the majority of europeans, worked for their feudal lords in exchange for their feudal lords protecting them. Feudalism was a corrupt system where the peasants worked hard for their feudal lords so they could be taxed to earn their protection, so the feudal lords could pay tribute to the monarchies that offered the bulk of the military protection, and those monarchies could give money to the catholic church, where the church would endorse the monarchy as having the divine right to rule over the land.
So in a nutshell, people worked to send their money up the ladder to keep powerful people in power while getting very little in return. Unless of course a monarch declared war on another monarch, in which case these poor overworked people would then be drafted to fight a war fight for the king that was supposed to protecting them.
But a 1/3 drop in the population quickly ended this system and allowed people to do it style.
Oh yeah, because under feudalism, was only for procreation hence the name
But the end of feudalism brought other benefits, with churches and monasteries being the primary places to provide treatment for the sick, the clergy suffered the greatest levels of casualties. Upwards of 90% in some places. The sudden loss of clergy had some major effects. The first was that over the course of a few years the well educated and proficient clergy that died were replaced with hastily trained and less than competent replacements. These subpar clergy led to european wide investment in training of the clergy. Before the plague europe had 29 universities that opened over the course of 400 years, which by the way there was only one thing someone could major in back then and it was being a priest. Within 45 years, the number would jump to 40. That is a steep increase in devotion to education.
The second benefit was technology. With feudalism being glorified slavery, there was no incentive to invest in technology as there was no worries about the scarcity of labor; it is no coincidence that the black plague of the 14th century gave rise to the renaisance and age of discover in the 15th century. feudalism kept people so busy working, that they had no time to worry about anything else. But the massive death brought about by the plague made people see that there was more to life. Feudalism wasn't providing the protection that was promised and the persistent death gave birth to the idea of distractions to numb the emotional pain. The collapse of feudalism lead to mass migrations of people that lead to a sharing of ideas that gave birth music, art, and theater that made the renaissance famous.
So while the black plague was devastating at the time, it dramatically shaped the world for the better in the long run. And with it taking european cities over 300 years to reach their pre-plague populations, it shows that thanos's snap would have long term effects to the benefit of the galaxy.
But if that isn't enough to show the long term benefits of how thanos was ultimately saving the universe, look at the world's leading economies. According to the UN, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom are three of the top 5 economies in the world. They have a devastating similarity. They all suffered catastrophic loss of population and infrastructure during world war 2. With many areas of these nations being bombed into oblivion. The destruction of these nations, forced them to rebuild. New York City's pre war sky scrapers the metropolitan life tower, woolworth building, bank of manhattan trust building, chrysler building,
27 авг 2024
