It feels odd reading this now. I can't help but see someone saying they don't see a point in things as a "well, yeah, that's obvious" sort of statement. Even though I understand what you are trying to get across here. See, I believe there is no such thing as objective meaning, which makes me a nihilist I guess. I like to call myself existentialist, however, because I like to say that while objective meaning does not exist, our motivations and subjective ideal of meaning does, and since there is no objective ideal, nothing overrides that subjective one. What you feel matters is what matters, in this case. No need to back it up or prove it. If you say it is meaningful, if you say it is what you want from the world then that is what has meaning. No exceptions or contradictions. I see what you are saying when you talk about generations passing before they face problems just as we do today, how bigger problems may arise that undermine the "little" ones in the peaceful world. However, I think you are absolutely wrong in how you view the whole topic. Stop looking at the big picture. You aren't in that picture, not as anything more than a little pointless dot. Stop looking forward into the future where you are long dead. Look at today. We can change today, we can change right now. We can have an impact. We can speak to just one person, change just the views of one person, and be happy with that. Stop looking at society, you aren't society. Stop caring about that massive picture you have no control over, and learn to let go of it. Work where you can, change what you can. Assume that there are billions of people, people just like you, acting in their own way. That's where the meaning exists. It's not in the big picture, it's nowhere in the big picture. It's in your day to day life, it's in the way you talk to another person. It's in the little things you say to make the world better in the scope you can change it. That's all you should ever ask of yourself, and that's all you should define yourself as needing to be important in. That isn't to say you shouldn't fight for a large-scale cause. Just fight for that cause on your scale, with the people you can speak to and effect. Don't worry about the ones you can't, the ones you don't see, because they don't matter to you. They shouldn't matter to you. We can't all be renounced and famous, and even those who are so famous will fade and die with time. Stop worrying about it. Ultimately, everything will fade into nothing and our lives will be tiny specs on a giant galaxy that doesn't give two shits about us. So stop looking at the big galaxy where you have no say. Realize you matter here, and you matter now, because you say so. If you want to have kids. Have them. Enjoy raising children who are like you, seeing them learn to change the world around them and growing as people. If you do not want to have kids. Don't. Don't base your decisions on that big picture. Again, you have no say and no ability to judge that picture. You can never tell what having kids really does to the environment, and you should trust that you are good at making decisions with the information you have. Trust your feelings, trust your instincts, and do what feels right based on what you know about the world you live in, not the world everyone else lives in. Society is a big network of individuals, and by operating inside our scope we participate in a system that makes those big decisions. You should trust the system you were born in and live in, and you should do what feels right in the space you know. If it's a good thing, or a bad thing, that system will figure out the answer and you'll feel it. It will be felt in your wallet maybe, or the way you presently feel you shouldn't have kids, I don't know. Let the big picture be handled on the scope of the big picture. Live in the little picture, live where you can live, not where you have no authority or ability to create change.I see no point in this generation and I see no point in future generations, you know?
Kind of teetering on a decision not to have children ever due to environmental concerns, to provide insight on where all these lines of thought are.