The Forest Lives: Notes on Structural Immortality

Do you remember Trigger, the hapless street cleaner from Only Fools and Horses, who once proudly claimed he’d had the same broom for 20 years? A remarkable feat of loyalty and maintenance, for which, he told his friends, he’d won a community medal. He did add, in passing, that he’d replaced the head 17 times and the handle 14.

The pub landlord, Sid, replies with understandable confusion:“How the hell can it be the same bloody broom then?”

Philosophers would call this the Ship of Theseus paradox. According to legend, the Athenians kept the ship Theseus sailed to Crete to slay the Minotaur in their harbour for centuries. But over time, its planks, sails, and oars began to rot. So, they replaced them—one by one—until, eventually, not a single original part remained. And yet it was still honoured as Theseus’s ship.

But if every part is replaced, is it still the same thing? If not, where did the original go?

A short thought experiment for you. Think back to a distinctive memory from roughly ten years ago. Think about where you were, who you were with, what you were doing, and how you felt. That was you right? And yet virtually all the cells in your body will have been replaced/regenerated since then. The material that made up you ten years ago is now dissipated, somehow scattered across the world.

We laugh at Trigger, but he might be onto something. Because in a strange way, his broom is the same broom. It has a continuity beyond its parts—a story, a function, a name. It endures not in the materials, but in a pattern that persists. The broom lives on, even if no part of it is original.

In this blog, I want to explore an idea I’ve been calling structural immortality.

To be clear: I fully subscribe to the thermodynamic reality of entropy. Everything is in a state of change and flux. Buddhists call this anicca—the impermanence of all things.

But there's a kind of hypothetical immortality I think is worth considering.

Mortality and the Nesting of Systems

Let’s say the planet’s life-supporting systems remained consistent—stable temperatures, breathable air, access to food and water, peace, and social cohesion. Even in that hypothetical, you and I would still age and die. Our bodies, like trees or cars or toasters, are structurally mortal—they wear out, give way to entropy, even within a stable nesting system.

But some structures are different. They have no built-in expiry. Provided their larger nesting systems remain intact, they could continue without end.

Think of:

• The reproductive cycle or family lineage

• The general election cycle

• The higher education system

• A football league

• The mathematical framework

• The transmission of knowledge—from elders to apprentices, from textbooks to TikTok

A tree dies, but the forest lives. A woman dies, but the village lives. The player retires, but the league continues. The torchbearer passes, but the race goes on.

Structural immortality is concerned with those patterns that appear to defy entropy and impermanence. But they don’t. It’s just the continuation of the nesting systems, such as continued energy from the Sun (which is finite) or of continued planetary health (which is not guaranteed), or of continued social stability and relative wealth (which will fluctuate through the centuries). Because the nesting systems operate in longer time frames than the nested systems, the latter might appear to regenerate themselves as though immortal. But it’s not that they’re immortal and defying entropy per se but that they continue to reproduce as long as the nesting systems support them.

The Immortal Behind the Mortal

So behind the mortal stands the immortal.

A human is a product of a (hypothetically) immortal bloodline.

A tree is a product of a (hypothetically) immortal forest.

So what about you?

If you were asked to list your identity, chances are you’d name archetypes that have existed for generations and will persist after you. On my own profile, I describe myself as a psychotherapist and educator. A husband, dad, stepdad. I’m a musician. And, if these blogs are anything to go by, I fancy myself a philosopher too.

None of these roles were created by me. I was drawn to them, almost gravitationally. They ‘fit’ my phenotype. I am better suited to being a psychotherapist than a basketball player. A better musician than I am a mountaineer.

And there is a joy in realising our potential through these roles we find ourselves in; to be the best we can be.  But no sooner have we realised our own phenotypes in their fullness then we face the limitations of those same phenotypes.  E.g. this might be as good a psychotherapist, as good a teacher, as good a musician etc. as I am ever likely to be, and as I get older those capacities will go into decline. 

So perhaps there is some comfort in learning to locate the immortal behind the mortal.

“I Am” Just the Latest

In every generation, there will be matriarchs, patriarchs; historians, healers; lawmakers, lawbreakers; crooks, clowns, and critics; gardeners, gamblers, godparents; midwives and morticians; dancers, drummers, and daydreamers; soldiers and scribes; surgeons and sages; bakers, barbers, brewers; tricksters, teachers, tinkers; lovers, loners, and leaders.

“I am” just the latest incarnation of these.  Through our archetypal roles “we are” incarnations, and we have some choice over who and what incarnates. 

Each of these archetypes is a lineage similar to a genetic lineage.  I say this because they each have their own informational heritages (the Blueprints) – this is true whether we are talking about the DNA passed on in cell nuclei, or the information held in oral histories, or libraries, or training centres, or the social networks of the fields that we enter and contribute to during our lifespan.  The information heritage is the inheritance that each generation takes up, takes forward, and then passes on. 

The individual is mortal. The line is—structurally, hypothetically—immortal.  There’s a lot of potential playfulness in this idea, and so I’ll return to it later.