If Thanos is the force of moral evil in Infinity War, what is the force of moral good?

Critics and fans were both worried that Infinity War might fall into the trap that Avengers: Age of Ultron ran into, one where it had too many characters, and the plot either failed to get them all in and out in ways that developed each of them in meaningfully or it would slog as they all ran into each other. Those who are praising Infinity War-which seems to be the majority of people--find that the movie managed to avoid the pitfalls of having dozens of protagonists by making the central narrative focus instead upon the one villain, Thanos.

Thanos is both complicated and, in many ways, sympathetic. He is willing to use power to remake the world not for himself, but for others, at least as he sees it. He believes the universe has a problem with its intelligent life: it is the nature of sentient life to use up its resources, leading to famine, war, plague, and pestilence. His solution is a cataclysmic culling of the population. He wants to wipe out half the population of intelligent life in the Universe, and he fights to obtain the six infinity stones that will give him the power to do it effortlessly. He is willing to be brutal in order to obtain the stones--the torture of his quasi-daughter Nebula is unsettling--but by obtaining the stones, he is able to complete his objective of taking out half the universe by simply snapping his fingers. There is no suffering for any of those who are randomly chosen to die. They simply disintegrate softly.

Thanos and Malthus

Thanos's philosophy is so reminiscent of 18th-Century thinker Thomas Malthus, I was sure I wasn't the only one who noticed it. Sure enough, Googling "Thanos and Maltus" overwhelmed me with results. A lot of them dealt with the links between Malthus and Thanos better than I could. (see here, here, and here, for example, or even here for a quiz on whether a quote is from Malthus or Thanos.)

Malthus wrote his most influential work right before the industrial revolution. He saw a frightening increase in not just the population, but of the indigent population, and he theorized that people increase faster than resources to feed them. Therefore, if civilizations did not intentionally manage their own populations, they would inevitably find themselves in cyclical, cataclysmic events that culled the population for them: wars, famines, etc. Britain once used this thinking to justify not giving aid to the poor.

The only beauty contest Malthus would ever win

The main rebuttal of Malthus' thinking is that a technological society can break free of the limitations on its resources. Our world has done this on a number of occasions. The Industrial Revolution was one. A second was the revolution in food production of the 60s and 70s, which is one reason why zero population growth hasn't been an important agenda item for any politician in recent memory. In a knowledge economy, people are not just a thing to feed; they are themselves the resources that find ways to feed them. Losing one person might mean losing the one person who can figure out the solutions to our problems.

It's worth noting that at least one review seriously treated the question of whether Thanos has a point. It's possible that we will soon come to an end of our ability to solve our problems with technical solutions, and we may end up with a Malthusian conundrum after all. Thanos is a villain who presages a problem we all sense may face soon. 

What's the good guys' answer? 

The Avengers/Guardians/Dr. Strange don't offer the "knowledge economy" response as their reason for why Thanos is wrong. Most don't offer much reason at all. Their objections are instinctive and not deeply thoughtful: "You're insane," that kind of thing. Those to whom Thanos explains himself somewhat: Dr. Strange, Tony Stark, Gamora, tend to critique his plan rather crudely, by simply asking "so your solution is genocide?" or something like that.

The closest we get to an antithesis to the villain's belief comes, we shouldn't be surprised, from Captain America, the moral center of the Avengers since they first formed. Thanos is a utilitarian thinker. He believes the individual should be sacrificed for the good of society. Captain America, from his first scene, refuses to listen to a plan that involves sacrificing one member of the group for the rest of them. This is consistent with Captain's character; he has, through many movies, refused to surrender individual autonomy for the good of the state. Some even think he took his beliefs too far in Civil War, and should have been more willing to listen to a UN plan to control the Avengers. (He is never more American than in his resistance to the UN.)

So maybe Captain is the voice of moral good in the movie: all human (or whatever Vision is) life has value. We treat every single person as though their  individual lives have as much value as all of us. It is worth risking many to save one. To lose one person is a tragedy as great as losing everyone. By treating life--every life--as though it has this much meaning, we are morally centered in a coherent way where it makes sense to fight Thanos.

Only, as Vision points out, Captain America doesn't really believe his own philosophy. Captain America once sacrificed himself for the greater good (in a scene that really makes no sense and has been mocked over and over). Vision keeps trying throughout the movie to convince Scarlet Witch to use her powers to destroy one of the infinity stones that lies in his head, even if it means killing him in the process. Vision can see that there is a place for sacrifice, for putting the good of everyone ahead of the good of one person.

So there are limits to Steve Rogers's way of thinking. Steve himself is too stubborn to see the contradictions in his own thought, but it works for him. His certainty gives him clarity and the ability to work with resolution. He is like Thanos, in a way, in  his admirable resolution and his ability to carry on in a single direction in spite of obvious flaws in his philosophy.

Rogers/Captain doesn't refute Thanos's utilitarianism on utilitarian grounds the way an economist would. Rather than saying that Thanos's strategy will not achieve its end because humans and others like them can be resources for solving problems as well as consumers that cause problems to solve, Steve objects to Thanos's utilitarianism on idealistic grounds: life is valuable, even life that is inconvenient for the rest of us.

Roger's idealism is neatly counter-balanced in the film by Doctor Strange. Strange is willing, he says, to sacrifice others for the common good. He tells Iron Man he won't hesitate to sacrifice either him or Spider Man to protect the stone in his keeping, because too much is at stake. Strange is a utilitarian, although of a more limited variety than Thanos. His willingness to sacrifice some lives to save others is pitted against Thanos's willingness to do the same, even if Thanos's method is far more shocking and extreme.

But Doctor Strange makes an unexpected pivot. After holding his own against Thanos perhaps better than any of the other good guys (except the mighty Thor at the very end), Strange unexpectedly offers his infinity stone to Thanos if Thanos will spare Iron Man's life. It seems like the most foolish act in the movie (except dumb-ass Star Lord losing his shit when they almost had the gauntlet off Thanos's hand), but we are led to believe that it is actually part of Doctor Strange's plan.

Strange, we know, traveled forward in time to view over 14 million different possible future outcomes. The good guys only win one of those outcomes, and Doctor Strange is making choices to try to bring about that one outcome. Neither the audience nor the other heroes know the plan, but it evidently involves a logic in which a Rogers-like idealism on Doctor Strange's part can somehow stop Thanos.

Sacrifice

We don't know how this is going to work. I don't even really know yet if Infinity War was a great or just a good movie. I kind of need the next installment to tell me. As Doctor Strange is being disintegrated by Thanos at the end after Thanos has all six stones, he tells Iron Man that "this was the only way." We are back to the notion of sacrifice. Strange has sacrificed the many for the one, his belief in utilitarianism for idealism, and himself for Iron Man.

The idea of sacrifice is at the heart of the story now, although in an enigmatic way. Thanos had to sacrifice his daughter to obtain one of the stones, and we find that he--unexpectedly--actually loved her. Vision keeps insisting he be allowed to sacrifice himself. He finally convinces the woman he loves to destroy the stone and himself with it, but the sacrifice ultimately fails.

Since I assume that not all of the heroes (and half the world) who died at the end of the movie are going to stay dead, I'm wondering if we're going to end up in territory where those who sacrifice themselves come back from the dead. I'm wondering if we will get an ancient and mystical answer to a modern philosophical question.

The Marvel movies of the last decade have been an incredible cultural achievement. Just keeping the business side working while still making movies that nearly everyone found fun to watch was an amazing achievement. But the movies have only occasionally challenged our notions of good and evil. Civil War was the best at this, but most of the movies have given us good and bad where it was easy to know where your allegiances should be placed. If the sequel to Infinity War manages to satisfactorily offer an answer to the utilitarian-idealist question it has raised, the series will have become something more than just an impressive business model. It will have been a true work of art for our times.