I consider one of my parents to be an objectively 'terrible' person. I don't think I 'owe' them a god damned thing. However, due to good fortune, I am a person of some means. Its trivial to me to help them out in a mild sense. I do so not out of a sense of parental homage or heritage or any of that garbage. I do so because they are a person in need and its less effort to subsidize some of their costs than it would be for me to feign love or appreciation for the their failures as a parent. However, if it wasn't them, I'd be helping someone else in a similar position. Why? Because the fact is you do owe the rest of society. The non-sense idea that has never been the case is that we are islands unto ourselves. Only pissbabies who never aged mentally past the maturity of a adolescent believe they are their own making.
I actually do agree with you on this one. This wasn't intended as an individualist libertarian take (most of those people would call me a communist, though I don't call myself one), so much as an anti-preferential-treatment-for-family take.
> However, if it wasn't them, I'd be helping someone else in a similar position.
Exactly. I just skip to this part. Ignoring any sort of judgement of their actions, there are many people who need help far more than my parents do, and I'd sooner give money to them.
If my parents legitimately were the most in-need people I could find, I'd have some mental gymnastics to do to justify this, but that is not the case.
