Is there a purpose to illness?

Day three I believe of this flu and I'm now wondering is there a purpose to illness?

Now the Bible thumping severe right wing fundamentalist would tell you it is because we are sinners. SINNERS think shouting with Bible raised high in the air here. And this thinking Christian who has a real relationship with God says bullshit and think raised two middle fingers high in the air here. Which now brings to mind an encounter I had with a young girl recently. She was four or five years old maybe? She came up to me and held up her index finger and said "this is good for you" then she held up her middle finger and said "this is bad for you" then she went on to show me her shoes and tell me how pretty they were. Hysterical.

We are fragile, us humans. We don't like to think about it. We are in severe denial over it. But, we are fragile and we get sick. And it sucks. But what purpose does it serve? Is illness really to make sure we don't stay on this planet forever? Because I'm thinking that if there were no illnesses of any kind we would be fine. There wouldn't be an overabundance of us because we are stupid. Yes we are and we find ways of doing ourselves in without the help of illness.

Well that was my assumption. After a bit of surfing the internet I have come to a couple of interesting conclusions. One is we are all going to die. We know we are going to die and the perverse bastards that we are apparently we like to keep track of just how we accomplish this. There are tons of sources on this data for how we end it all for everyone all over the world. Here's one source if you care to gander. It's interesting actually. Alarming in someways and comforting in others. We aren't whipping out those firearms as much as the news would have us believe. But, damned those seniors over 85? higher than what I expected. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate This is a bit outdated for my taste at 2002.

My second conclusion is that well, illness does do us in far more than stupidity. Not sure if I'm comforted or alarmed by this realization. Means less control over our demise but, it also means we are not that stupid.

So I guess illness does have a purpose. Although it seems to be a pretty shitty one, our destiny is not to stay on this planet forever.

There was a marathon on yesterday. 12 hours of America's Top Model. Tyra Banks show. I had it on for the whole 12 hours while I slept off and on through out the day. It was nice quiet background noise while I slept and when I did wake up, I didn't miss anything and wasn't lost. Some girls were missing and I knew they were sent home. Losers. In the end Nicole won. And at the end is where I found out this was an old season. 2005.

Seemed harmless at the time, but I think it has caused me brain damage.