Passing on the Torch - Live at St. James's Piccadilly, London, 2016

We can also look further into it and see
That if our death could be indefinitely postponed
We would not actually go on postponing it indefinitely

Because after a certain point we would realise that
That isn't the way in which we wanted to survive
Why else would we have children?

Because children arrange for us to survive in another way
By, as it were, passing on a torch
So you don't have to carry it all the time
It comes a point where you can give it up
And say: now you work

It's a far more amusing arrangement for nature
To continue the process of life through different individuals
Than it is always with the same individual

Because as each new individual approaches life
Life is renewed and one remembers
How fascinating the most ordinary everyday things are to a child

Because they see them all as marvellous
Because they see them all in a way
That is not related to survival and profit value

When we get to thinking of everything
In terms of survival and profit value, as we do
Then the shapes of scratches on the floor cease to have magic
And most things, in fact, cease to have magic

So, therefore, in the course of nature
Once we have ceased to see magic in the world anymore
We are no longer fulfilling nature's game of being aware of itself
There's no point in it anymore, and so we die
And so something else comes to birth which gets an entirely new view

It is not therefore natural for us
To wish to prolong life indefinitely
But we live in a culture, where it has been rubbed into us
In every conceivable way, that to die is a terrible thing
And that is a tremendous disease
From which our culture in particular suffers