Guardian vs. Commercial Ethical Syndromes
In Systems of Survival, Jane Jacobs argues that there are two different, equally valid/successful systems (or rather 'syndromes') of ethics: the Guardian Syndrome which is concerned with taking and/or protecting limited resources and the Commercial Syndrome, which is concerned with creating and trading produced (and thus non-limited) goods. Military, police, civil servants and environmentalists are Guardians, while merchants, workers, etc. are Traders (Commercial Syndrome followers).

A Third Syndrome?
While I have found Jacobs' Trader/Guardian categorization to be quite useful in understanding many, if not most, workplace transactions, I find that there is a large group of people with a clear ethos that is not well described by either of these syndromes. I think that these people actually subscribe to a third syndrome, which I call the Idealor Syndrome.

Idealor Syndrome

• Dedication to the Ideal

• Be Passionate

• Exert Prowess

• Honor Prowess

• Respect Authorship

• Be Unique

• Shun Force

• Shun Authority

• Shun Trading

• Shun Comfort

• Ignore Ownership

• Accept Largesse

Dedication to the Ideal

Dedication to an ideal is the central virtue of this syndrome. The ideal may be artistic or it may be concerned with the pursuit of knowledge (science, journalism) - it may even be concerned with some action of the body (baseball, boxing, mountain climbing, dancing).

Be Passionate

The emphasis on passion strengthens the pursuit of the ideal against the temptations of power and comfort. If one were not passionate and dedicated, then one would likely slip into either the guardian or trader community.

Exert Prowess, Honor Prowess

Much of the emotional drive of Idealors comes from the acquisition of prestige, earned through competitive displays of prowess. By prowess, I mean the prowess appropriate to the ideal, e.g., artistic, scientific, journalistic, athletic, etc..

Idealors tends to favor quality over quantity, because the single great work is a better demonstration of prowess than several merely good works. There's a pragmatic advantage too: for one's fellow Idealors, it's less time consuming to judge 10 fellow artists on the basis of one work apiece than it is to judge them on the basis of 100 works apiece. Thus prolificacy is not a great virtue in the world of Idealors.

Note that there is a trade implicit in these two commandments, which might be expressed as, "Judge so that you may be judged."

Respect Authorship

Respecting authorship means, in commercial terms, giving credit where credit is due. If an artist follows the style of another artist, or an author relates another artists idea, then explicit credit should be given to the originator.

This virtue is a consequence of the virtue of Honoring Prowess.

Be Unique

This commandment is largely an implication of Exerting Prowess and Honoring Prowess. Uniqueness guarantees that one gets credit for the full of one's creation rather than having to share it with other artists/authors from whom one is "borrowing".

This command also extends into one's own work - the author should only get credit once for a new idea.

Shun Force, Shun Authority

This equates to the commandment "Don't become a Guardian" - i.e., stay within the Idealor community and live by its ethics. This commandment is reinforced by the commandment to "Be Unique" - to which authority is antithetical.

Note that the distribution of largesse to Idealors does require the intervention of authority (since there are limited resources to distribute). However, this is considered to be a necessary and dangerous evil. (Dangerous since it can replace Dedication to the Ideal with pandering to the judges.)

Shun Trading

This equates to the commandment, "don't become a Trader" - i.e., stay within the Idealor community and live by its ethics. The primary reason for this rule is to keep Idealors pursuing the ideal despite its lack of comfort or power.

Shun Comfort

Comfort would distract from pursuit of the ideal, and hence is to be avoided. More pragmatically, pursuit of comfort requires more income, and hence would lead to the Trader syndrome.

Ignore Ownership

The Idealor is not particularly interested in ownership, either in the Trader sense, or in the Guardian sense. If the resource is necessary for his creation, and if taking it does not violate "Respect Authorship", then he feels justified in doing so. Again, a large part of the motivation for this command is economic - Idealors are simply short of funds to purchase the resources that they need to pursue their calling.

Accept Largesse

This is both an admonition against becoming a Trader and a consequence of the shortage of funds suffered by the Idealor.

Vs. Other Syndromes
Since the products of the Idealors are (generally) of low (immediate) economic value, they must seek accommodation with the other two syndromes. On the other hand, they must also maintain their community and values. This results in an arms-length relationship which is maintained by balancing "Accept Largesse" with "Shun Trading" and "Shun Authority". When largesse is insufficient, Idealors accede to their patrons interests, reluctantly creating art that glorifies merchants and their families, conducting weapons research, etc..

From the Guardian's and Trader's viewpoints, Idealors are useful to the degree that they produce desirable goods - i.e., they provide value like Traders. However, they must be distinguished from traders since they have present different risks than traders. A Trader might reveal a military secret when presented with a large enough bribe, but an Idealor might reveal the secret to the world at large because he believes that Knowledge must be made available to everyone.

If one looks at mixing Idealor and Commercial virtues or mixing Idealor and Guardian virtues, one finds that Idealor virtues are fairly compatible with Commercial virtues and partially compatible with Guardian virtues. I.e., these Idealor virtues are less corrupting of Commercial and Guardian syndromes, then these two syndromes are of each other. This may be due to the lack of economic focus to Idealor ethics.

Contended Fields
Many fields of Idealor endeavor have subsets which are primarily commercial, e.g., advertising artists and copywriters, commercial research scientists, and the highest ranks of popular sports performers. Performers in these subfields are likely to subscribe to Commercial instead of Idealor ethics. Idealors will tend to denigrate Traders, and vice versa, but stronger animosity will be shown by the Idealors whose members must continually fight off the siren call of creature comforts (as well as support for family, etc.).

Note that many journalists are Idealors, and thus will tend to sympathize with the Idealor side of contended fields. Baseball journalists are probably a good example of this - they see baseball as an Idealor pursuit, and are dismayed by the commercial aspects of the sport. Similarly, Idealor journalists will tend to prefer "pure" (i.e., non-commercial) scientific research over commercial research.

Cultural Value of Idealor Syndrome
The Idealor Syndrome has at least two cultural benefits. First, as Jacobs pointed out, Idealor pursuits (e.g., art) provide occupation for otherwise idle hands. Second, while the goods produced by Idealors may not be of great economic benefit to the originator, the pursuit of ideals in general provides a long term payoff to the culture - generally in the form of increased knowledge of the world (this is particularly true of pure science).

Vs. Jane Jacobs
Jacobs does briefly consider art as a third syndrome, but then rejects this idea - apparently considering it to be an action outside of ethics of the workplace, comparing it to romantic love. The immediate argument against this, is that art is indeed involved in the sort of transactions of goods and services - and ownership that are the focus of the Commercial and Guardian Syndromes. The more fundamental argument is that Idealors do have communities and do have rules which act to sustain both the community and the pursuit of the ideal. Specifically, the group imposes discipline on members of the group - and this is a characteristic of the social ethics that Jacobs is considering.

Lacking the Idealor Syndrome, Jacobs misidentifies the ethical syndromes of several groups. Jacobs identifies journalists as basically Guardians working within a commercial context - actually, they are Idealors working within a commercial context. Some artists are Idealors, others are Traders, with commercial artist being concentrated in the more lucrative applications (e.g., pop music). Scientists divide about the same as artists, with those in industry being predominantly Traders, while those in academia are primarily Idealors. Athletes are divided in a similar fashion.

Questions and Speculations

• How is military and civic artwork regarded by artists? From this syndrome, one would expect an artistic reaction against such art, since it would tend to contaminate the Idealor Syndrome with guardian ethics.

• Military research labs are likely to mix Knowledge Idealors with Guardians, especially when the research involves advanced physics and/or math. One would expect conflicts to arise from the mix of syndromes. The problems at Los Alamos National labs might be due to an Idealor/Guardian clash.

• How do Idealors with differing ideals regard one another? If their ideals are not opposed, then one would expect sympathy, since they share the same ethical syndrome, and belong to similar communities. If the ideals do conflict, then they might hold the other person in contempt, or they might reject the other person's ideals, but sympathize, even like the person.

• When did the Idealor Syndrome develop? Ideals are by definition abstract, so that would suggest that the syndrome would require a high level of cultural development. On the other hand, the obsessive focus that characterizes Idealors may be basically neurological, and thus in a sense, Idealors might extend far back into prehistory.

Notes

• In retrospect, I find that my conception of the Idealor Syndrome is strongly inspired by Eric Raymond's description of Open-Source/Hacker Culture in Homesteading the Noosphere. Jacobs also addresses the artists mentality briefly, focussing upon the idealistic nature of the work, but fails to address the quest for prestige that Raymond describes.

[5/27/2001: Changed document to use "Idealor" instead of "Idealist".]