I'd need an explanation for why those two things are worth doing to begin with. If there is no absolute explanation then its left up to each of us to decide if this life is even worth living, and whether its right to produce more of it.
People reproduce for the same reasons any other species reproduces though; they are a vehicle for their genetic code. That's what biological life is and we are not somehow separate or unique from the rest of nature in that regard.
To do that just because it is my biological imperative has never seemed like a very good justification to me. So my ancestors all reproduced over the cause of many millennia and that means I should also reproduce...why exactly? To continue the bloodline? For what purpose? I don't have any interest in being a part of that.
Your second point seems sensible though. Don't make things worse while you're here, leave it the same or better and try to live your life without causing harm to others.
I tend to believe that life is mostly suffering (and for most of the world it demonstrably is) sporadically dotted with short periods of joy or contentment. None of us have a choice in being born but the least we can do is try to make life easier for ourselves and everybody else as we struggle through this experience in quiet desperation.
Beyond that it all starts to sound like baseless ideology and narrow-minded religion pushed on us by people who desire to (with futility) control all the variables in their own subjective experience of this life.
People reproduce for the same reasons any other species reproduces though; they are a vehicle for their genetic code. That's what biological life is and we are not somehow separate or unique from the rest of nature in that regard.
To do that just because it is my biological imperative has never seemed like a very good justification to me. So my ancestors all reproduced over the cause of many millennia and that means I should also reproduce...why exactly? To continue the bloodline? For what purpose? I don't have any interest in being a part of that.
Your second point seems sensible though. Don't make things worse while you're here, leave it the same or better and try to live your life without causing harm to others.
I tend to believe that life is mostly suffering (and for most of the world it demonstrably is) sporadically dotted with short periods of joy or contentment. None of us have a choice in being born but the least we can do is try to make life easier for ourselves and everybody else as we struggle through this experience in quiet desperation.
Beyond that it all starts to sound like baseless ideology and narrow-minded religion pushed on us by people who desire to (with futility) control all the variables in their own subjective experience of this life.