From this claim it is implied, and rightly so, that life is meaningless in itself. But the decision to create and raise children does not give meaning to life itself; at most it provides an illusion of meaning to the life of those who decided to create and raise children, who by the way are also meaningless in themselves, and will gain meaning, according to the logic of this claim, only if and when they themselves create their own children.
First of all, it is obviously a moral injustice to force someone to live a life that is meaningless in itself, and that can only be meaningful if the created people would create more people themselves.
And secondly, this idea, if you think about it, is disturbingly similar to models of pyramid schemes.
If the meaning of life depends on raising children, it means that each generation is thrown into a world without meaning in itself, and the only way to cast meaning into the life of each generation is to create another generation and raise it, and thereby fill the life of the parents’ generation with meaning. And what about the children who were thrown into a meaningless world? They will do the same. If life has no meaning in itself and the only way to give meaning to life is by creating new life, then it is simply passing on the meaninglessness to the next generation.
This structure of the meaning of life holds up only because people continue to feed it, but by itself it does not hold water. Each layer relies only on there being another one, and nothing else.
One can look at those who make this argument as victims of a meaningless life who are actually taking action in order to rescue themselves from a meaningless life. But obviously this cannot justify putting new people in a similar situation. The moral thing to do is to break this chain of meaninglessness, not to continue it because it is the preferred rescue path in the face of a meaningless life. People need to find other ways of escape, ones that do not impose a similar fate on others. Indeed, many certainly find meaning in life even without creating more people. There are many ways to find meaning in life without procreating. There are so many potential goals, there are so many humans and animals of other species that need assistance, so many wrongs to make right, so many experiences to be experienced independently and that do not require the creation of new people.
The question that arises here is what’s the point if there is no next generation, but the question that should be asked is what is the point if there is a next generation? After all, it is not important in itself to have a next generation. It is not important to the world, it is not important to the planet, it is not important to God because there is no such thing, and most importantly, it is not important to the next generation itself because before one was created, it had no interest in being created. The existence of the next generation is only important to the current generation, and that is only because its own existence is meaningless. And this is certainly not a justification to create more and more generations, who will rely on more and more generations in order to give reason for their own existence, but the opposite. If something has no point in itself, if something has no purpose in itself, if something has no external justification but exists only because there are those who continue its existence, it is time to recognize that this something is nothing special.
If the only meaning people manage to give to life lies in its very continuity, they probably shouldn’t continue.
If people’s only reason for continuing to do something is that if they stopped they would have no reason to continue, then they should definitely stop.