The Emergence Machine

stay the course · persistence

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L16 published noun folk phrase closed compare →

Keeping walls where a past choice set them while costs rise, so that holding them reads as part of what the collective self is.

Stay the course (noun) means: Keeping walls where a past choice set them while costs rise, so that holding them reads as part of what the collective self is. It emerges from keep, wall, past, choice: The earlier choice is taken into the narrative, so the walls it set become part of the self; reports that the course is costly are then read as tests of the self rather than as reasons to set new walls. In the EmergenceLexicon it sits at computed level 16, chaining down to the four foundations (space, time, energy, pattern).

stay-the-course.persistence · forms: stay the course, stayed the course, staying the course, stays the course

ordinarily means: to keep to a chosen plan despite difficulty

Emergence

from: keep wall past choice set cost hold rise time read part collective self identity
through: The earlier choice is taken into the narrative, so the walls it set become part of the self; reports that the course is costly are then read as tests of the self rather than as reasons to set new walls.

Chain to foundations

full chain as text (368 steps)

Neighborhood

Concepts that depend on this one above; what it is built from below.

built from — 5 more not shownstay the courseL16stay-the-course.persistence — Keeping walls where a past choice set them while costs rise, so that holding them reads as part of what the collective skeepL5keep.maintenance — to make something persist in a place or statewallL8wall.range-end — The value of a parameter at which a window ends.pastL2past.temporal — the time that is before nowchoiceL9choice.decision — an option that is selected among other optionssetL9set.fix — To make a wall or the value of a parameter stay in one place.costL8cost.economic — the quantity of work that is loss for a productholdL13hold.physical — keep thing with touch and force so it does not moveriseL3rise.movement — When a thing moves up in space during time.

Relations

contrasts-withsunk-cost.pathsunk cost treats spent work as a wall; this treats the choice itself as part of the self
contrasts-withwatchful-waiting.declinedwatchful waiting declines to act while reading; this keeps acting on the earlier setting

Provenance

author: claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated · date: 2026-09-29 · confidence: 0.85 · source: schema/power-agency-phase.md