May 24, 2019
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Why Janus was a stupid idea (Channel 4's Utopia)
Some spoilers for the show as of the end of the current series.
I'm really looking forward to the next season, but something really bothered me about the way in which Wilson Wilson swallowed the Janus project thing. I'm REALLY hoping he doesn't come back as some sort of Darth Vader character because that's really where it's going. Maybe it was meant to show that conspiracy nuts can be inherently gullible despite seeing themselves as enlightened, objective truth-seekers, I don't know.
There are a lot of problems with Janus that I think the other characters really needed to point out instead of just calling him stupid. Here's a list I've come up with:
1. Doing nothing is almost invariably better.
Wilson says "It's better than Genocide", but what is the Genocide being proposed here? Everything it's avoiding is speculative. The characters say that MAYBE they'll see it in their life time - potentially 70-80 years away(though that is being quite conservative). Janus wipes out more or less a GUARANTEED 95% of the population, and in a probably horrible way from Becky's experiences. Even if a resource war and increased poverty are inevitable, will that really be as bad? Who did the cost/benefit analysis on this? It's avoiding a worst case scenario, but we have no idea how likely that is. There's an almost religious mentality behind it, ending the human suffering by purging them. It doesn't rationally seem like a better option than doing nothing. It almost strikes me as an exaggeration of the Austerity mentality.
2. It's a Hard Sell.
95% of the population is huge. Again, it's hard to say "it's better than Genocide" when it wipes almost everyone else out. Sure people will eventually repopulate, but again, it's extremely likely to be worse than the alternative of doing nothing. If they had set a less extreme standard, it would have been easier to get more people on their side because it seems less brutal, though this also creates another problem I mention later. Not to mention the side effects - it's just unnecessarily brutal and again harder to sell than the speculative "genocide".
3. It puts some countries/cultures at a disadvantage.
There are countries with ageing populations like Japan. Japan is also a hotspot for technology and research. It may even be possibly that some ethnicities are wholly susceptible to Janus, so outright extermination will occur. In general more civilised areas will have lower birth rates, so it's a pretty direct attack on civilisation itself.
4. It doesn't address the real problem.
Meanwhile, in countries with very high birth rates, it may actually be not enough, given how population grows 5% is more than enough to replenish the population within a century. A sudden drop in population may increase higher birth rates than before. The problem isn't really population - it's birth rates. As far as we know, Janus is binary, there's no "Middle ground" where many of the survivors experience reduced fertility.
5. Lack of resources is not that only trigger for what they're trying to avoid.
A near mass extinction would have huge consequences and likely brutalise society for decades or even centuries to come. Fertile humans would just become another resource. Rape may even become seen as a "Beneficial act" since it potentially helps population growth; and there are likely to be countless other ways in which people's morals will erode and society will degrade further. By the time such standards are restored, we will be back where we started in terms of population.
6. You can't trust the people implementing it.
One of the pitfalls of the idea of a direct democracy is that not everyone can be fully educated on every issue. For that reason, we have to trust the word of professionals and representatives to some degree. This isn't something conspiracy theorists usually buy into, yet Wilson takes things on word of a shady character that things will work out.
7. The alternatives have not been explored.
Why is Janus the only answer? If we potentially have a lifetime to look for another solution, why are they so desperate to use Janus? Technology 20 years from now will be quite different to what it looks like now, as it was 20 years before now, and there would be more focus put into finding such an alternative in the first place. What if they found an alternative to Janus that reduced birth rates without the nasty side effects for example? With the ridiculous in-universe resources The Network have, this is probably realistic. Janus seems to be based on a lot of old research, too. They had these ideas in their head long before the population issue became so huge. They put far too much time and effort into finding what's ultimately a shoddy product. They should have worked with what they had and perfected it. The "perfect formula" was shit in the first place since it was unnecessarily brutal.