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O'Rourke Looks on the Sunny Side of Death

Posted Sep 30, 08 9:30 PM CDT in Opinion,  Arts & Living 

(Newser) – A cancer diagnosis with a 95% chance of survival, while it might not let one “stare death in the face,” at least gives PJ O’Rourke a chance to muse on the end of the road. At first, he “cursed God, as we all do when we get bad news and pain,” he writes in Search magazine. But then he reconsidered: perhaps death really helps us “learn right from wrong” in a chaotic world.

God made a world where life forms can “exercise freedom to an idiotic extent,” with subatomic particles free to combine as they please. “If death weren’t around to 'finalize' the Darwinian process, we’d all still be amoebas,” O’Rourke writes. Besides, in light of dictators and unsavory stepfathers, “do we really want everyone to live forever?” he asks.
Source: Search Magazine

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PJ O'Rourke faces cancer that is 95% curable.   (Getty Images)
Humorist and reporter PJ O'Rourke considers the usefulness of death.   (Getty Images)
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With the help of death, matter began to learn right from wrong—how to save itself and its ilk, how to nurture, how to love (or, anyway, how to build a Facebook page), and how to know God and His rules. - PJ O'Rourke

Obviously pain had to be included in God’s plan. Otherwise we’d never learn that our actions have consequences. - PJ O'Rourke

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