Life's Pleasures Quote by P. J. O'Rourke

O'Rourke takes a scalpel to humanity's favorite flattering story about itself: that reproduction is sacred, noble, instinctual. The joke works because it flips the hierarchy. Humans, the allegedly rational apex species, are recast as weird outliers who intentionally manufacture dependents. Then he punctures even that uniqueness with the stray, grotesque footnote of guppies - not as a scientific correction but as comedic sabotage. The guppy tag is the line's engine: it drags the thought from moral philosophy into aquarium-horror slapstick, reminding you that "nature" is less Disney than digestive tract.

The specific intent is to needle middle-class pieties about family. Having kids "on purpose" sounds like enlightened planning, but it also sounds faintly clinical, like ordering a lifestyle upgrade. O'Rourke's subtext: modern humans don't just reproduce; they schedule, justify, and narrate reproduction until it looks like a virtue badge. By contrasting us with animals that breed without self-congratulation, he implies our real specialty isn't parenting - it's rationalization.

Context matters: O'Rourke's libertarian-leaning, anti-sentimental humor often treats earnest social scripts as targets. This line lands in an era when contraception made "on purpose" newly literal, and when cultural wars over family values turned childbearing into ideology. The guppies are his escape hatch from sanctimony. If we're going to moralize biology, he reminds us, biology is fully capable of moralizing back - with teeth.