# greatest generation (past-cohort)

*Ordinarily means:* the generation that lived through the Great Depression and the Second World War, praised as a model

Past members a collective self reads as its highest standard, so current members are read by how near they come to it.

- Computed level: L19 (depth in the emergence graph, not abstraction)
- Status: published  ·  Domain: agency

## Emergence
**Emerges from:** [past](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-past.temporal), [member](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-member.social), [collective self](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-collective-self.shared), [read](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-read.information), [high](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-high.spatial), [standard](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-standard.norm), [current](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-current.present), [near](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-near.spatial), [come](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-come.arrive), [narrative](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-narrative.self-story)

**Through:** The narrative takes the members of one past period as the measure of members; later members inherit the standard without the walls that produced it, and are read by the distance.

**Novel properties:**
- members measured against members
- a standard set by the dead
- a debt the living read themselves as owing

## Examples
- Tom Brokaw's 1998 book The Greatest Generation named Americans who grew up in the Great Depression and fought in or supported the Second World War. *(history)*

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*Canonical: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-greatest-generation.past-cohort*  
*Structured data: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-greatest-generation.past-cohort.json*  
*Every definition provably resolves to space, time, energy and pattern.*