If Thanos were vegetarian
Not as Hollywood-worthy as mass genocide.
Thanos is a fascinating character from the Marvel superhero universe who starred in the last two Avengers films, and who’s chin has been likened to the dangliest part of the male parts. He’s a super-powerful “villain”, who wanted to save the planet from overpopulation by (SPOILER ALERT!!) randomly killing 1 in every 2 people(!)
Debate raged as to whether Thanos was a villain, or a twisted hero.
I was debating with a friend the other night, if you had Thanos’s power, but not his brutality, what would you do to save our own planet? (Yes we had a lot of time on our hands)
He decided that he might start by forcing the world to go veggie. Not as Hollywood-worthy as mass genocide but it’s a start.
Firstly, to read this article you have to assume the premise “A vegetarian diet is more environmentally friendly” — I put some info at the end of the article for my fellow geeks*
The conclusion we came to was that for Thanos to turn the world veggie softly softly style, he would have to deal with 4 different groups of people.
- People who don’t care.
- People who don’t know.
- People who have higher priorities.
- People who have health problems.
People who don’t care
Most people look at a puppy and go awwwww.
Unless they’re a psychopath…(I advocate giving all potential partners and besties the puppy test!)
These are people born without empathy. They simply don’t care about you, me, cute puppy dogs, baby seals, or anyone.
As Abigail Marsh showed in her great book “Good For Nothing”, psychopaths have a very small amygdala and are unable to recognise suffering**. The result is that other people become nothing more than objects. Psychopaths treat people like we treat inanimate objects (25% of people are reading this on a smashed screen)
Studies suggest they make up 0.75–1% of our population, and probably higher numbers of people in positions of power.
This is very scary
These are Proponents of Truly Unnecessary Suffering (POTUS). There is simply no way a POTUS would ever become vegetarian unless there was some kind of personal gain.
So we have no option…right? We measure everyone’s amygdala size (Perhaps a future test for US presidents??) and obliterate the ones with the smallest amygdalas?
A slightly kinder approach might be to fund research into gene therapy and zap the worst genes out of existence instead? Unfortunately…life is rarely so easy.
But lets go with it for now.
People who don’t know
The world is full of fake news, fake facts and fake people (Which err…sucks)
It can be really hard to know who to trust, because if you know anything about statistics, you’ll know they can be manipulated, mined and “cherry picked” to fit almost any argument. (Did you know the average human has one breast and one testicle?)
Which is why Thanos would need to reinstate humanity’s greatest invention at the top of civilisation — The scientific method.
“Science is a way to keep us from fooling ourselves, and each other.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson
Well said Neil.
The problem with the scientific method is that you have to take your time, not jump to conclusions and be absolutely rigorous i.e. be able to cope with profound boredom.
This is why many people don’t do it, or even worse — do it badly (as Ben Goldacre explains so well in Bad Science)
“Repeat after me: pharma being shit does not mean magic beans cure cancer.”
― Ben Goldacre
Thanos would control bad science by firstly slaughtering all unqualified health bloggers (#sorrynotsorry). Then he would equip scientists with high-level charisma and intensive media training and set them loose on the world.
These conscientious but newly charismatic science warriors would educate the public properly using memes, cat videos, and listicles. And hey presto-armed with science, people would make the right choices…(right??)
People who have higher priorities
If you lived in Aleppo during the Syrian civil war, would you mourn the absence of curly kale? No. Just like my grandfather did as a P.O.W— you’d eat soup teeming with sandflies just to survive.
If you lived on the poverty line in Brooklyn with 2 jobs and 3 kids would you ponder whether Walmart’s discounted chicken thighs were organic, or buy them because they’re cheap and easy?
First survival, then relationships, then self-esteem and respect, and if you have managed that feat, then yes maybe you can breathe and start thinking about your effect on society.
In other words, many people won’t go veggie until vegetarianism becomes the default option because it takes a lot of willpower to fight the status quo.
Ironically though, if did make veggie the default option overnight and stopped feeding human-edible food to farm animals, we’d be able to feed everyone on the planet and have plenty leftover. (A brilliantly researched book on this topic is Simon Fairlie’s Meat: A benign extravagance.)
People who feel ill
Some people have health problems which won’t resolve without a ketogenic diet (Very low carb, the energy comes from fats and proteins).
It is recommended by the medical community for intractable epilepsy and there are a small number of anecdotes suggesting benefit in autoimmune disease (Though there is no good evidence to suggest it as a treatment for the vast majority)
Going vegetarian would be hard for these people (though not impossible) as most edible sources of fat and protein come from animals. They would need specially designed meals (?Lab grown meat) to make their lives more palatable.
Conclusion
So if nice-Thanos could champion charismatic scientists, purge us of psychopaths, ease life for the extreme poor and create a veggie-keto-diet-plan, then the world could finally go full veggie.
Then there’s just the small matters of food waste, energy production, education for girls, refrigerant use etc etc (See Project Drawdown) to solve in order to save humanity.
It might not make very fun viewing though…
Epilogue.
Interestingly enough, lots of the actors in Infinity Wars are actually vegan or veggie — in no particular order.
Dr Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) , Gamora (Zoe Saldana) , Thor (Chris Hemsworth) , Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Eitri (Peter Dinklage), Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Drax (Dave Bautista), Okoye (Danai Gurira).
- *Evidence for vegetarian diet being better: I have a ton of references, but the reality is, the best resource is Meat: A benign extravagance, a short summary of which is here.
- **More precisely they don’t recognise fear in others (See her book “The fear factor”), but it is this which makes them so callous.
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As well as a writer, I’m a medical doctor, environmentalist and podcaster in London, UK.