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.
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".
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.
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 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.