People say you can’t kill an idea.

But ideas die all the time, both from natural causes and from murder.

An example of ideaicide:

Do you remember in 2014 or so what the hot political issue was? Sure, groups of all kinds were talking about all the usual things. Health, defense, social security, racism, corruption …

But you couldn’t go a day without someone talking about income inequality.

They all compared graphs of this with graphs of that. The Occupy movement had attracted attention and everything turned to this.

So Trump decided to run for president. Obviously, that’s a tricky subject to navigate for any billionaire, but especially for that billionaire. So instead he talked about building ‘a big beautiful wall’.

Boom. Suddenly, the topic of the day was immigration.

Attribute it to luck or skill, massive manipulation or an idea whose time had come. Either way, the old idea was dead, or at least bled out.

Do you want a more complete example?

Well, I can’t give one. How could i If an idea is dead, then I don’t know.

But I can point to a delightfully intriguing anti-example, which turns out to be one of the last political fixation points:

Porcelain.

If you look at the history of China, it seems like an endless stream of innovation. The relevant Wikipedia article contains hundreds of inventions; at the top, he mentions the “Four Great Inventions”: paper, compasses, gunpowder, and the printing press.

These alone are amazing feats of science, and China invented them in ancient history. What other country can boast of such a story?

Better question: how did they manage?

Genetic superiority? Unlikely.

A culture that favors innovation? Hardly. Chinese society, then and now, hardly embraces radical and deviant thinking.

I have a theory

And my theory explains why China invented these things but did not use them.

I don’t want to mention a sore point, but the Century of Humiliation involved an alliance of Western powers dividing China. They did so, in part, thanks to their superior technology. But it was ‘superior’ because European navies had compasses to navigate and many guns, using, wait, gunpowder.

Industrial-age Europe used the same technology invented in ancient China … so how could it be superior?

My theory is simple:

China has been, for most of its history, politically stable. Sure, sure, the dynasties ended up bloody, they were invaded a couple of times, then there was that mess with the Cultural Revolution.

But look at any corner of the world for thousands of years. Most other cultures collapsed and rebuilt dozens of times.

Today, the buzzword is “disruption.” Back then, it was ‘stability’! Industries stayed the same for centuries, in contrast to today’s tech rotation, so stability gives you an edge.

Because, back then, maybe new inventions appeared every few decades, by sheer luck or inspiration.

But without a stable trading system, that idea wouldn’t get out of town.

And without a strong rule of law, that village would soon become bandit pasture sooner or later.

So a politically sound society could hoard and share its inventions, while other societies would lose them due to entropy.

But if it is too stable, you will have a hard time using those inventions.

In Europe, the printing press changed the rules of the game. In ancient China, it probably only reinforced the existing game.

Maybe he is right, maybe not. At best, it’s a partial explanation … although it fits the facts nicely.

(Even if it has horrible implications, most of our good ideas have been lost to time.)

But suppose it is true.

You can be sure I’m going to use this as a metaphor.

It is a call for you to accept chaos and routine, because too much of either one suffocates you.

And a reminder that nothing is permanent.

But the big one?

You have so many great ideas, so many solutions to the challenges you face. But they won’t do you any good on their own.

Gunpowder as a novelty today is less useful than gunpowder as a weapon a thousand years from now.

Learn to act on your ideas and instincts. Anything else is like letting foreign imperialists engrave their initials on your back.