#thanos is dumb

So I’ve been watching Sliders and Luck of the Draw is a good but frustrating episode especially in the Hollywood ethics and America’s take of eugenics in it does the same shitty morality of consider the positives of human culling. The characters run from it for themselves when Wade wins the lotto, plays the game without reading or knowing the fine print, and they arbor or want to rescue the other winners only by reason of emotional attachment.

The intellectual and hypocritical privilege of waltzing in to a world and declaring it potential utopia after less than three days because less people means more personal wealth for you is wildly unexamined. Yeah, it’s because the poor all won the lotto last month guys! That’s why people pick up your dropped wallet and kindly return it and the fruit-stands has low prices. 

But it’s so darn creepy what the episode and therefore the characters are not focusing on but actually hinting at. At Ryan who wanted to die as a conclusion to well I paid to do everything else interesting, like climbing Everest, what else is there? The nihilism in that. Or Julianne, which is much more tragic and layered than given Rembrandt’s reaction. Her giddy-ness in thinking he wants to die with her and what that says about the value or sell of death. The way her wishes and medically assisted death as she forces Rembrandt to participate by seeing and being with her is framed as peaceful and comforting instead of a choice of person, and the question of why, and horrific for Rembrandt’s lack as a bystander. Her lack of family or resource hinted at why she’s a lotto contestant in the first place is eerie. Her fear of pain, and the fact that painful death is the punishment of this world rings all the alarms. 

Yeah a world that encourages death for money and if you don’t follow or abide that structure pain. I’m arguing the results don’t justify the means Prof.

What in the world is it that every time sci-fi wants to argue pop control or the question of humanity’s numbers against it’s use of resources it likes to edge into death is better and hey it’s only a concern for death if it’s a loss of resource or person that impacts you? So icky.