We should prioritize people with children. The entire biological point of your life is to reproduce and we should value this. If you can’t reproduce (for a variety of reasons) but you take care of a child then this should be valued just the same. Society should prioritize people with children to raise instead of having a nihilistic philosophy of “ain’t my problem”.
The social benefit of well raised children benefits all. There are no benefits to having you get equal time off. You’re only serving yourself, not society.
Btw - smokers got to go outside to have a smoke break because we banned smoking from inside. Before that a smoke break didn’t exist. So it’s a trade off. Smokers stop creating second hand smoke in exchange for us tolerating them getting a “break” to feed their nicotine addiction so they can function. Cigarettes are legal and taxes are collected - we should tolerate them getting time to service their addiction so the rest of us don’t have to breath it.
> The entire biological point of your life is to reproduce
There is no biological point of anyone’s life. This is nonsensical, it is also extremely offensive both to childless by choice and, especially, to infertile people.
I’m not trying to insult anyone but just stating an objective fact - life exists to reproduce life. Weak life dies out and strong life continues until it too is superseded. Evolution is a thing. Look outside and you see it everywhere.
I’m not a biological essentialist but I also won’t deny this simple fact that binds humans to plants - we exist to generate new variations of ourselves.
It doesn’t mean someone who won’t or can’t have children can’t contribute to humanity in a range of ways for their lives are just as worthy. But regardless if you choose to not or can not have children, this biological imperative has not selected you and your DNA will die with you. That’s just a fact.
You have taken the rules of a biological system and extrapolated them as a moral framework, placing a value judgement on it.
It is like saying the sky is blue, therefore the point of the sky existing is to be blue, or all physical interactions generate entropy, so the point of the universe is to create entropy.
Yes, life often replicates itself, but that is not why it exists. Any possible reason for existence is a story assigned by a conscious observer. Humans are conscious and decide their own purposes.
Lifeforms can have their own purposes, which may or may not involve reproduction. Yes, those that don't reproduce go extinct, but that doesn't mean their purpose is not fulfilled. There is no objective value in evolutionary fitness or replication.
>Weak life dies out and strong life continues until it too is superseded. Evolution is a thing. Look outside and you see it everywhere.
To this
>life exists to reproduce life
You make a logical leap when you change "we generate new variations of ourselves" to "we exist to generate new variations of ourselves."
>It doesn’t mean someone who won’t or can’t have children can’t contribute to humanity in a range of ways for their lives are just as worthy. But regardless if you choose to not or can not have children, this biological imperative has not selected you and your DNA will die with you. That’s just a fact.
Exactly. So it is as meaningless and wrong as saying that the point of a falling ball is to hit the floor and bounce or that the point of the sun is to become a red giant. There is no "point", it is just a fact that will happen.
I’m not saying the only point. I made this clear I believe.
The biological point still exists. It’s up to you to judge how much that means to you - to some nothing; to others everything. Why else would we have an entire chromosome dedicated to aiding in the reproduction of ourselves? Why do my plants spend so many calories on developing seedlings to reproduce a variation on themselves?
Reproducing doesn’t say anything about you in my opinion. It is our biological purpose I believe through the science of evolution, however. And to the original point of the thread - it’s a benefit to society to have healthy, educated children in our society. This is the gift to all of us that parents give us. We should privilege that. We shouldn’t penalize this because of not only the societal benefit but because it’s objectively natural. The proof is the 7 billion people on earth. (Natural doesn’t mean better. It just means the biological drive our sex hormones and sex mechanisms grant us)
>It is our biological purpose I believe through the science of evolution, however.
The science of evolution doesn't say that it is our purpose. In fact, biology students are sometimes even trained to rewrite statements about natural selection that imply any teleology (stuff like "in order to"). Again, saying that something is the biological point is as meaningless as saying that the physical point of the sun is to become a red giant.
Evolution doesn’t try and say why - it says how. Yes, I’ll grant that. I believe it implies the why though as a biological organism. It’s not everything or even anything in the grand scheme. However it is the purpose since our biology is removed from our sense of self or humanity in the end. We, like plants, biologically exist to reproduce and carry on.
The Sun analogy doesn’t make sense. You are describing the existence of an object/being in terms of existence and death. This is more analogous to an individual than a biological _system_.
Indeed a star can’t reproduce as far as we/I know. However I’d argue a star that contributes to life, as the Sun does, is far more meaningful than one that does not. My evidence is me. There is no one to speak for the stars that don’t contribute to life.
You're going too far with "the purpose". It may be true that one purpose of life is to reproduce (although I don't empathise with that at all, having an incompatible sexuality), but the fact that you aren't spending your life pumping out children and/or swamping the sperm banks and egg donation facilities indicates that it's not your sole purpose; and if you personally are allowed to do things which aren't the purpose of your life, then why are you justified in calling it the purpose of your life?
I agree 100%. I never said it’s the total purpose of a life. There are infinitely many ways to find purpose. Not having kids (or having them) doesn’t make anyone’s life better or worse or necessarily have more or less purpose. That’s up to the individual.
Perhaps my language was too strong. I do believe it’s important we make accommodations (extra time off when having or adopting a child for both parents, accommodations during Covid and work from home, etc) that those of us (myself!) don’t get.
I feel like more and more society is penalizing people for having kids and I feel like that’s a sickness in a society.
> I feel like more and more society is penalizing people for having kids and I feel like that’s a sickness in a society.
How, though? Tax breaks haven't gone away and FMLA has been expanded. This, despite the fact that we're seeing the environmental impacts of rampant, unchecked population growth every day. If there's a sickness in society, maybe it's an inability to look in the mirror and say "hey, maybe we don't need humanity to occupy every square inch of the planet".
> However it is the purpose since our biology is removed from our sense of self or humanity in the end.
At the risk of over-using a tired phrase: that's just, like, your opinion, man.
Life has no purpose beyond what we individually ascribe to it.
> However I’d argue a star that contributes to life, as the Sun does, is far more meaningful than one that does not.
That may be true, but a human that reproduces does not necessarily contribute to life more than one that does not. And even under individual circumstances where that reproducing human contributes to life more, that does not make reproduction its purpose.
For the record, I have no issue with parents getting some more work flexibility due to COVID. It's absolutely the right thing to do. But this has nothing to do with some abstract notion of life's purpose; it's because children need child care, and not allowing parents the time to fulfill that obligation is an awful thing to do to both child and parent.
Keeping within the original context of “I should get extra time for my personal obligations” based on a premise of “I choose not to have kids” - I’m saying no, you don’t.
I am explicitly privileging society allowing additional time for parenting. It should not be a game of everyone gets x-days. “Use them to go to a ball game or take care of your kids. Your choice.”. It’s equivocating raiding kids with personal obligations. Our biology drives most of us to want to create life and a just society should appreciate that. Putting it on the same level as personal interests doesn’t make sense to me.
And to clarify as I have in other responses - I’m not saying it is the purpose of life. But that it’s pretty much the biological purpose. We have infinite other purposes and it’s up to each individual to find theirs and their priorities. As a society though I think we can and should privilege the raising of children.
The social benefit of well raised children benefits all. There are no benefits to having you get equal time off. You’re only serving yourself, not society.
Btw - smokers got to go outside to have a smoke break because we banned smoking from inside. Before that a smoke break didn’t exist. So it’s a trade off. Smokers stop creating second hand smoke in exchange for us tolerating them getting a “break” to feed their nicotine addiction so they can function. Cigarettes are legal and taxes are collected - we should tolerate them getting time to service their addiction so the rest of us don’t have to breath it.