Life Before and After Death

In our houses, our villages, our towns, our cities, our nations, time passes. Each individual will be involved, directly or indirectly, in some 150 years of history – before birth, during life, and after his death. Part of this experience will be received from parents or other adults, from old men; part will be received from his own life, and his experience will, in time, become part of his children’s experience. Thus a generation is 150 years. That is how long we live. Our behaviour, our prejudices, our opinions, our preferences are the produce [sic] of the fifty or sixty years before we were born and in the same way do we influence the fifty following our deaths. Such knowledge is apt to make a man like me feel that it is useless to try to alter the nature of his society. It would be pleasant, I think, if we could somehow produce a completely blank generation – a generation which has not acquired the habits of the previous generation and would pass no habits on to the next. Ah, well, I thank you, gentlemen, for listening to this nonsense with patience. I bid you Au Revoir.

‘Prinz Lobkowitz’ in The English Assassin by Michael Moorcock, 1972