A letter to Thanos (because life has just been too serious lately)

Dear Sir,

I wish to discourage you most vigorously from your stated plan to destroy approximately half the living things in the galaxy. I think this is a badly short-sighted plan and bound to cause more harm than good.

Before I begin, I must assure you that I am not entirely unsympathetic to your concerns. Indeed, anyone who has been recently stuck in 401 traffic, or struggled to find a seat on the GO-Train would probably find themselves tempted by your plan. Yet at times like this it is important not to let our emotions get the better of us, and not do anything rash.

 To begin with, it is not your decision who lives and who dies. Every person has an equal right to live, and it is not up to you to decide which is which. You can decide for your fate, but not anyone else’s – if you’re concerned about overcrowding, you may start with yourself.

More importantly, you cannot be sure who you will be eliminating. There will be no guarantee that you would get the right half. You could be getting rid of some of the world’s best people, doctors and scientists and artists, and people who could do great good.

Furthermore, people are needed to run the world and organize the planet. It will fall into chaos if half of everyone just disappears. Schoolboards in Ontario are already having a devil of a time finding qualified French teachers as is. It is already next to impossible to get a human being on the phone when you ring any customer service department, and I am having a great deal of trouble finding a qualified electrician to rewire my home. Following your plan, there will be an even more acute shortage of supermarket cashiers, and I shudder to think what it may do to local garbage collection. Furthermore, there is currently an election going on in Ontario, and my party needs all the votes that it can.

I also suggest that you could not guarantee that your purge would not include my neighbour before he returns my rake, which he has had now since November.

You have probably not considered either, that your plan would place nearly impossible demands on this community’s funeral parlours, and lengthen their waiting lists intolerably.

But ultimately, it shouldn’t matter who is chosen for culling, as every person has a right to live out their lives and waste them in the manner they see fit. It would be an act of unspeakable barbarity and cruelty to simply murder every second man, woman, and child on the planet, especially before they’ve seen the new season of Doctor Who.

In hope that you will reconsider, I remain humbly yours,  

Steve AJ Dylan