I know this is going to be a hugely unpopular opinion, but life has no purpose if it was not for offspring. To me not wanting children gives me the same vibes as someone playing a sport or entering a competition and then not giving their absolute everything to win Gold.
Most people play sport to enjoy the game, not to become champions at it.
What about having offspring gives life purpose?
Do you just beget children to... help them grow up to beget more children so they can... help their children to beget more children so...
That doesn't sound (or vibe) purposeful to me. That description is obviously missing something essential.
If life has a purpose (or feeling/vibe of one) there must be something else than merely having offspring to propagate the species for its own sake.
Whatever that something else is, it seems obvious to me that it is not conditional on your own offspring specifically.
For example if you love children in person, there are a lot of orphans who would like soneone to raise them. And plenty of teaching and medicine to do.
If you love children more generally, there's plenty of science, entertainment, ending hunger, looking after the planet etc which lots of children really appreciate. They find that stuff purposeful, and that feels to me like that counts for a lot.
It won't happen anytime soon, so you don't have to worry. I am not arguing that everyone should stop having kids. This comment will not be read by everyone.
I wasn't worried. Research assumes a lot of things, like how the future will go. Humanity tends to do things to affect the course of the future. It may be that we use less, run out of stuff, or find alternatives. We have wars, famines, acts of god, or even plain old cultural shifts. Not having kids because you're worried about something like climate change that won't happen anytime soon feels kind of silly. The humans in the future will either adapt and survive, or not. Nothing I do will change the fact that life will change and they'll need to adapt in various ways.
> Research assumes a lot of things, like how the future will go.
The current expectations are based on many decades of data, when humanity did nothing to stop the climate change. Even starting to act right now will not have quick consequences, and even this is not really happening. Act of God could indeed change that, but I would not rely on it for my plans.
> climate change that won't happen anytime soon
For you it won't, but for your kids it will happen soon enough and may be devastating. Many other kids are already born and lack parental care. What forces you to care for your own kids only? Instincts? From the logic, all genes are already present in sufficient quantities, so it's not necessary to preserve your own ones.
> Nothing I do will change the fact that life will change and they'll need to adapt in various ways.
Do you believe that you actions do not affect the future? Sounds a bit like learned helplessness.
There's no "winning" life. We're all going to die, the sun will expand to engulf the earth, and the universe has several possible endings but it ending is something physicists are pretty confident about. There's no such thing as forever, not for you, not for your genetic lineage, not for anyone or anything. So there's no clear way that having offspring is any more purposeful than anything else.
My father was a lot like you when it came to pushing the "giving everything to win" mindset. It fucked me up for life because it made it very difficult for me to relax and enjoy things for the sake of them.
> To me not wanting children gives me the same vibes as someone playing a sport or entering a competition and then not giving their absolute everything to win Gold
God forbid someone tried a sport to help get in shape or to enjoy themselves
I have a son, and he's awesome and I can't imagine life without him, nor would I want to experience life without him, but I find the propagation of our species the least interesting purpose of life. If nothing is done during that life except propagate, then nothing is happening of interest, just people hedonistically living. What is done with your life is the most important purpose, otherwise we are just cycling around to no end.
