# this is who we are (identity-claim)

*Ordinarily means:* a statement that some value or practice defines a group, often used to say an act does or does not fit it

A collective self naming a pattern as what it has always been, so only acts inside it read as its own.

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

## Emergence
**Emerges from:** [collective self](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-collective-self.shared), [narrative](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-narrative.self-story), [identity](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-identity.self), [name](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-name.identifier), [pattern](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-pattern.regularity), [always](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-always.temporal), [act](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-act.deed), [read](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-read.information), [inside](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-inside.spatial), [self-model](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-self-model.reflexive)

**Through:** The narrative takes one pattern and reads it back across the whole past; that reading then works as a wall in the current window, sorting acts into the group's own and not its own before any act is weighed on its results.

**Novel properties:**
- a past claimed as a rule for current acts
- exclusion of an act by reading it as foreign, not wrong
- the same sentence used to keep a pattern and to disown a break from it

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*Canonical: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-is-who-we-are.identity-claim*  
*Structured data: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-this-is-who-we-are.identity-claim.json*  
*Every definition provably resolves to space, time, energy and pattern.*