Better to have loved and lost

There is a saying that it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. I think you could say the same thing about living, i.e. it is better to have lived and died than to have never lived at all. This would mean that it is better to have a society with a high birth and mortality rate than with a low birth and mortality rate, i.e. a society with no birth control and either a lot of violence or starvation.

Now I'm not suggesting that I would like to live in such a society; I've grown way to accustomed to a peaceful life where I have time to contemplate questions like this. In a society such as I'm describing, you would need to focus all of your energy on either defending yourself or aquiring food. However, I think there is an argument in favor of such a society, call it a "rough" society. A society such as this would respect bravery and foolhardiness more than caution. I think the old Norse culture as well as the old Arabic culture (pre-Mohammad) were like this, as well, I'm sure, as a lot of other cultures. It could be said that certain sub-cultures, such as gangs, the military, police and fire fighters have a little bit of that attitude even today.

I think it's important to recognise this as we deal with other cultures today, because this is a valid attitude and we shouldn't judge all other cultures based on our own worship of safety.

Of course, in any rough society your going to get people who are having a hard time making it. These people are going to naturally want to leave that society and try to make it in a more peaceful society, and that causes a problem. Ideally we, who live in a peaceful society, are trying to create a good place to live for our descendants, but if we have a low birth rate, because of birth control, and other societies have a high birth rate, we'll be constantly getting an influx of people from the rough societies, gradually replacing our own descendants.

This is not a hypothetical situation. It's happening right now in Europe and in the U.S., where the birth rate is relatively low and the imigration rate is high. Although this is a little disconcerting to think about, it's not necessarily a bad thing. However, we do need to control it. We can't let immigration get out of control because our population would go out of control and the society that we've created would be lost.