The most durable things are those that can be replicated easily and therefore transmitted widely, kept whole and undivided, and both near and far. The most durable things therefore, are Ideas.
The extraordinary durability of Ideas is such that an Idea could theoretically be completely extinguished from the earth, all trace of it wiped out, every mind it had ever inhabited passed on, and still reappear at some later date, in any language, even a language (also an Idea) that didn’t exist in the previous era of that Idea.
Photographs are not as durable as Ideas. Nor indeed are words, mere semantics in comparison. The durability of Ideas is such that I think they are subordinate only to the entropic durability of the universe. In that hierarchy, it is inescapable that we/humans are ourselves subordinate to Ideas. This echoes of Nadia’s writing,
Once ideas find an audience, they’re hard to eradicate. Many a surprised creator has found that they’ve lost control over an idea, watching helplessly as it’s shaped and reinterpreted in ways they didn’t intend. It is enormously difficult for a successful creator to escape their own idea, because ideas need hosts to survive.
