Isn't life worth taking time to try to save?

Last night I was struck by some things my friends were saying about current world overpopulation issues. I was amazed at how many of them suggested violent revolution or war as the only plausible solution. The sample of the population that these friends of mine may represent would be the blue-collar, creative and artistic, alcohol and marijuana consuming, no higher education experience part of the work force. I had to wonder how many on this level might feel this way. I am hoping that they are a minority but when I thought about some of the things I heard while working construction last year, I fear that they are probably not just a few.

I am not trying to hold myself on a moral high ground, but the thought crossed my mind that I am indeed thankful for my years spent in college that have made me aware of other possibilities. They mentioned the necessity of the deaths of a few hundred thousand people as casually as if they were talking about taking out the trash. Unfortunately, the conversation got cut short before I could bring up education as a method of birthrate control or even the idea that the part of this problematic concept they were not considering was the fact that a few hundred thousand human lives is not just a faceless number. Had I more time I would have suggested that they think about it in terms of having all of the people closest to them being part of that number and then asking them how they felt about it.

This tendency for people to over-simplify and dehumanize life, turning it into an expendable six or seven digit number on a page, really disturbs me. The fact that I fear this opinion is being held by more than just a few of my friends makes it even scarier. I won't pretend that I have the answers, but before we go touting the death of thousands of individual human lives, it stands to reason that we exhaust all of the other non-violent possibilities available to us first. I know it will be harder, and take more work that way, but damn, aren't we past taking lives for the sake of simplicity by now? Hasn't history taught us that much?