Infinity War. Marianne. The Myth of Limited Resources

My student walked down the hallway of the tutoring center with me tonight, my last student of the evening, a regular of mine. He sat down at my table across from me, and we begin discussing his upcoming final essay for his Freshman English course at the local community college. “Tragedy of the Commons,” he told me. “We’re reading about how there are limited resources, and some people are wasting them, which will be the ruin of us all.” My jaw dropped open. “Shut up.” I said. “Shut up.” I had seen Infinity War just one week prior to our meeting, and then I had heard Marianne Williamson speak just two days later. Universal forces clearly wanted me to talk about this myth of “limited resources.”

Infinity War

Without giving anything from the movie, I can tell you that the main villain, Thanos, has a plan to collect all six of the infinity stones that are hidden and protected from around the universe. Once he collects them all in his gauntlet, a special glove that can harness the power of these stones that can control and manipulate universal forces like time, reality, the soul, and so much more, he plans to snap his fingers and wipe out half of the universe. 

At first I just thought he was evil and wanted to kill a bunch of people, but I soon learned that his intentions were, while misguided, born of a twisted, and uneducated, sense of compassion. “There are too many mouths and not enough food.” He says at one point in the film. It all began on his own planet, Titan, when resources began to get slim. He warned heads of state, and they did nothing. Eventually, resources grew too scarce, war and famine grew, and the entire population was decimated, leaving only a handful of Titans, him being one of them.

His entire mission now is to “create balance” in the universe by mercifully wiping out half of the population, at random, rich and poor alike, so that the other half can thrive.

The Russo brothers (Infinity War’s directors) did a great job of humanizing Thanos. You can disagree about whether his way is right, but you can understand why he feels the way he does, especially if you’re from earth (as most of us are). You get the clear connection.

Limited Resources

This conversation is a common one: we don’t have enough food, people are starving around the world, we are running out of land, we have limited resources, more babies are being born, and we don’t have enough to provide for them.

In fact, I used to buy into and perpetuate this storyline myself. The oceans will rise, wipe out half our land, take out our ports, people will die, we’ll run out of resources, and start killing each other.

It’s all very gloom and doom.

And what I realized recently is that it is profoundly untrue.

Marianne Williamson at the New Living Expo

I have been on a love revolution journey for the better half of a year now, and I have been traveling to different conferences around my home in the SF Bay Area to hear different thought leaders on this subject matter speak. My latest talk was just two days after I saw Infinity War. I still had a pit in my stomach from the ending of that movie. (Did I just give away too much?) I went into that conference looking for some uplifting unity. I don’t know much about the author and speaker, but I have heard wonderful things about her. I knew that she had gotten more political lately, and that she was on a Love America book tour for her latest publication.

I was really interested to hear what she had to say because most law of attraction, Science of the Mind, new thought people don’t talk much about politics. And I have always been highly political. I wanted to hear someone who could bring the two worlds together.

Sadly, I was disappointed. The conference was angry and demanding. Marianne spoke of “us” and “them” of how “they” were taking what was “ours” and how their time was over. She reflected on slavery, on Civil Rights, on the foundations of our country, how the founding fathers were slaveholders, and on the duality of our nation, free but enslaved.

This was all history I had learned long ago and that I now teach to my own students. In fact, that could have been me up there on stage, raging about inequality and reparations. That was me just a year ago. So none of it was new to me, but I wondered where she was going with it. How was she going to turn us toward love?

She spoke about educating ourselves, voting in November, taking back our country, marching forward in the footsteps of Bobby Kennedy and MLK Jr.

Again, none of this was new. I wasn’t necessarily surprised to hear someone talk about these subjects, but I was surprised that none of it was new.

Where Was the Hope? Where Was the Love?

I raised my hand during Q&A.

I never raise my hand at these gatherings. Never. I observe. I listen. I leave. I reflect.

But I had a question, I had an impulse, and I raised my hand.

She called on me almost immediately and walked across the room to stand with me while I asked “can you talk a little bit about how we can love each other better? About how a gun control advocate can love an NRA supporter? How a gay couple can love a homophobe?” The crowd began to clap in support of my question.

She walked away from me before I was done speaking, got back up on the stage and began talking to the crowd about how she doesn’t understand why people ask that question “how do I talk to Trump supporters?”

Um…

That’s not what I asked.

She went on to tell the crowd that it is election season and that now is not the time to worry about changing minds and talking to people different from us. We needed to focus on people like us, build coalitions, and take back our country.

Um…

Okay.

There Is Enough for Everyone

So I have been working through these thoughts I have had since the movie, since the talk. I have been talking to friends and family to feel my way through my own ideas. I have been reflecting on how to formulate my beliefs and the connections among these experiences. And why I thought these two experiences were connected at all.

Finally, after days of reflection, I think I’ve got it: there is enough for everyone. Thanos is mistaken. Resources are not limited. Marianne is mistaken. Political space is not finite. There is enough food and water and fresh air for all of us, every single mouth can be fed today without communism, without a massive shift in political policy, without taking drastically from those who already have plenty.

There is room for NRA supporters and gun control advocates. There is room for gay couples and people who don’t know how they feel about gay couples. There is room for black men and police officers. There is room for Democrats and Republicans and people who just don’t feel like voting.

We only end up in trouble when people insist that there is not. We find ourselves buying into the myth of limited resources and limited space when we give in to fear. We hoard, we hate, we fight, we divide, we make our circles smaller and strike out at everyone not in our circle. We dig into positions we may not even be fully bought into. All because of fear.

We allow ourselves to be pitted against each other in a struggle for food and water where the table is full. We allow ourselves to fight to be heard when the microphone is on all the time and we all end up with opportunities to speak.

The Solution

In the end, here’s what I was hoping to hear from Marianne:

What we can do is reject that “reality.”

First, there is ample evidence that earth’s resources are enough to feed the earth many times over. We will figure out how to get food to everyone if we decide as a global community that that is what we want.

Second, and more pressing, we can turn away from divisiveness and love each other. We can find common ground. We can coo at each other’s babies and congratulate each other on our successes. We can be the light in the darkness for people still stuck in the cave, desperate to get out. We can make sure that we ourselves are happy, feeling good, and well cared for, and then lead by example. We can show each other how we love ourselves, helping them learn to love themselves. And when someone loves him or herself, it is impossible to hate someone else.

Sure, there will be those who hold on to their hate, who are firm in their hate and cannot be talked down.

Don’t even bother. All you do by trying to persuade someone insistent on hating is grow hate. Keep those people at a distance, and love them from afar. The less attention we pay to hate, the less power it has, the more quickly it fades away.

I realized through all of this, with deep conviction and solid confirmation that my work is not out there in the world shouting down hate filled enraged strangers. My work is here, with you, with my family and friends and all of the beautiful wonderful joyful people I have met since this love journey began.

We begin with the light within, and we grow it with others who either already have a little bit or a lot of light, or with those who are seeking the light.

And much faster than we can even imagine, our little corners of light that we all work in will grow, and touch each other, and expand until hate has no more refuge.

Until only love grows here.