{
  "id": "stay-the-course.persistence",
  "term": "stay the course",
  "sense": "persistence",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 16,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "Keeping walls where a past choice set them while costs rise, so that holding them reads as part of what the collective self is.",
  "folk_gloss": "to keep to a chosen plan despite difficulty",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "keep.maintenance",
      "wall.range-end",
      "past.temporal",
      "choice.decision",
      "set.fix",
      "cost.economic",
      "hold.physical",
      "rise.movement",
      "time.dimension",
      "read.information",
      "part.relation",
      "collective-self.shared",
      "identity.self"
    ],
    "interaction": "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.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "a choice promoted into identity",
      "costs read as tests",
      "changing course heard as ceasing to be the self"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "sunk-cost.path",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "sunk cost treats spent work as a wall; this treats the choice itself as part of the self"
    },
    {
      "id": "watchful-waiting.declined",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "watchful waiting declines to act while reading; this keeps acting on the earlier setting"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "stay the course",
    "stayed the course",
    "staying the course",
    "stays the course"
  ],
  "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-stay-the-course.persistence"
}