{
  "id": "ordinary-people.core",
  "term": "ordinary people",
  "sense": "core",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 17,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "A collective self that divides into an in-group and an out-group by power: the members who hold none over its walls, against the few who do.",
  "folk_gloss": "people without special wealth, rank or power, seen as the bulk of the public",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "collective-self.shared",
      "boundary.limit",
      "in-group.inside",
      "out-group.outside",
      "power.over",
      "hold.physical",
      "division.process",
      "member.social",
      "none.quantity",
      "wall.range-end",
      "against.opposition"
    ],
    "interaction": "The line is drawn by who sets the walls and who lives inside them; the in-group is named by lacking power, so the group's true self reads as the ones it is done to.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "an in-group defined by lacking power",
      "the many read as the group itself"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "Aaron Copland's 1942 'Fanfare for the Common Man' took its title from a speech by US Vice President Henry Wallace.",
      "domain": "music"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "elite.few",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "the elite names the other pole of this split, the few read as setting the walls"
    },
    {
      "id": "silent-majority.unheard",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "the silent majority is split off by not speaking; ordinary people by holding no power"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "common man",
    "everyday people",
    "ordinary folk",
    "ordinary people",
    "the common man",
    "the little guy"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-29",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-ordinary-people.core"
}