{
  "id": "our-way-of-life.pattern",
  "term": "our way of life",
  "sense": "pattern",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 17,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "A pattern of acting that a collective self reads as what it is, so it reads those who act otherwise as outside its boundary.",
  "folk_gloss": "the customs and values a community sees as defining it, often invoked as under threat",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "collective-self.shared",
      "boundary.limit",
      "pattern.regularity",
      "act.deed",
      "identity.self",
      "out-group.outside",
      "read.information",
      "outside.spatial"
    ],
    "interaction": "The self model identifies the group with a pattern and not with its members, so difference in acting reads as distance from the boundary and change to the pattern reads as a threat to the self.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "a boundary drawn by conduct",
      "change read as loss of self"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "tradition.kept",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "a tradition is kept because it has always been; a way of life also marks who is inside"
    },
    {
      "id": "identity.self",
      "type": "abstracts",
      "note": "identity at group scale, made into an edge"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "our values",
    "our way of life",
    "they do not share our values",
    "they dont share our values",
    "way of life"
  ],
  "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-our-way-of-life.pattern"
}