Persistent structure is not the default outcome of physical, biological, or social processes. Under dissipation, uncertainty, and finite information, coherence must be actively maintained or it dissolves. Yet across scales — from cosmology to living systems to human institutions — organized structures endure for long periods, suggesting the presence of shared constraints on persistence.
This paper develops a constraint-based orientation to persistence grounded in three unavoidable conditions: finite information, delayed feedback, and coupling between interacting processes. We argue that systems fail predictably when coupling outruns feedback, and that long-horizon viability depends on remaining within bounded regions of state space where error, delay, and fluctuation remain recoverable. These regions are described as viable corridors.
Rather than proposing a new mechanism or theory, the paper offers a lens for re-reading familiar problems. It shows why dyadic systems are structurally unstable under delay, why regulation requires an independent degree of freedom, and why resistance and buffering — often treated as inefficiencies — are preconditions for durable transformation. Impedance emerges naturally as the variable through which systems shape temporal compatibility between action and correction.
Applied across domains, this orientation reframes fine-tuning as corridor geometry, health as navigational capacity, and governance as stewardship of coupling rather than optimization. The aim is not closure, but opening: to provide a shared way of seeing that clarifies recurring failure modes and invites new questions about persistence, resilience, and long-horizon viability.
