(cc) freeparking on flickrI had a creative writing professor who would search antique stores for old portraits, subjects long since separated from kith and kin. She would use the portraits to help generate character sketches, even if just as a jumping off point.

We don’t know much about Kate, the character Jane Jacobs uses to compile the two lists of “esteemed behavior” in Systems of Survival. Jacobs manages to sneak in a few details and traits about Kate—more than in your average Platonic dialogue—but we’re left with far fewer than for most characters in your contemporary novel.

Here’s the short list I provided earlier about Kate:

Kate:

• 30
• Academic - Biologist
• Enjoyed popular success with book on animal memory published by Armbruster, to dismay of peers
• Volunteers to go first; needs just over four weeks to research the systems behind morality

I also forgot that during the first meeting, while everyone else but Ben is drinking alcohol, she chooses coffee. Jacobs also applies the adjectives “tired” and “rumpled” to her appearance at this meeting.

Also, she’s not just your run-of-the-mill biologist. The academic denegration she’d received for the popular success of her book had landed her on a project involving rabbit neurobiology, edging out her research on squirrel behavior. In other words, she presents as both a generalist and a specialist: presenting her passion popularly while pursuing a very specific target in her academic discipline.

Within all this, Jacobs presents Kate as a keen observer of all manner of systems. In Kate’s words: “I like uncovering systems…” (p21) While her specialty is neurobiology, she proves that the same observation skills apply to systems of morality. Jacobs proved herself as a keen observer of urban systems in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (tags: organized complexity, processes).

That’s not to necessarily equate the real Jacobs and the fictional Kate, but I would imagine Jacobs’ methods to ferret out these systems of morality were similar to Kate’s. The latter, though fictional, has the advantage of age, position, and eagerness on the real Jacobs, yielding results in four weeks, compared to Jacobs’ 15 years.

Kate: First I immured myself in the library, opening to closing. Read, read, read, and took notes.

…Biographies; business histories; scandals; sociology, although that was less help than I expected, except for some of the Europeans. I dipped into general history and…skimmed some cultural anthropology. Nights at home I clipped newspapers.

I drew on three kinds of evidence. Whenever I ran across a behavior that was extolled as admirable, I cast it in the form of a precept….

I did the same with behavior that was laid out as expected or proper….

My third type of evidence was behavior that was deemed scandalous, disgraceful, or criminal….

…I kept running across much the same underlying moral principle in [other] contexts…I cast it as the more embracing precept…

Then I holed up at home and tried to make sense of my notes. First I sequestered off the universals….

…I noticed that specific precepts were repeatedly associated with specific others…. Aha! Precepts came in linked clusters! Each kind overlapped with other clusters. Combining the overlaps resolved the clusters into these two lists…

~”A pair of contradictions” Systems of Survival (p25-27)

The other characters bring different perspective and modes of thinking to the dialogue, but it’s comforting to see some of the habits Jacobs relies on in other works reflected in Kate.

[T]he government did such a really good job of scaring the jeebers out of us that this recession has creating what he called a legacy of doubt. And that may be the case.

~Bob Moon, “Economy really not as bad as it looks” Marketplace

 

Through Kate, Jane Jacobs points out that newspapers formed for the sake of business:

Business people are forever trying to protect themselves from nasty surprises. They try to penetrate the future with forecasts, surveys, and voracious consumption of the news. “Kate on the Commercial Syndrome” Systems of Survival (p43)

This would be why I enjoy the Wall Street Journal and The Economist, even though I don’t always agree with their viewpoint: their coverage of the world’s events is excellent. This obsession with security and forecasting may not seem in line with one of the virtures of the commercial syndrome: be optimistic. However, Kate makes the point that the very preoccupation suggest that commercial people aren’t fatalistic, which will come up in discussion of the guardian syndrome. Rather, they hope to forstall misfortune.

Failing to follow other attributes of the commercial syndrome, commerce failed. Recession. Optimism has been in short supply. The government has been catapulted into fulfilling the roles of both the guardian and the commercial syndrome, doing better at the former than the latter.

That should be worth exploring next week.

Kate, the academic systems-loving biologist, undertakes weeks of research to ferret out the systems of behind morality. Through the character Kate, Jane Jacobs introduces two “moral syndromes.”

Moral Syndrome A

• Shun force
• Come to voluntary agreements
• Be honest
• Collaborate easily with strangers and aliens
• Compete
• Respect contracts
• Use initiative and enterprise
• Be open to inventiveness and novelty
• Promote comfort and convenience
• Dissent for the sake of the task
• Invest for productive purposes
• Be industrious
• Be thrifty
• Be optimistic

Moral Syndrome B

• Shun trading
• Exert prowess
• Be obedient and disciplined
• Adhere to tradition
• Respect hierarchy
• Be loyal
• Take vengeance
• Deceive for the sake of the task
• Make rich use of leisure
• Be ostentatious
• Dispense largesse
• Be exclusive
• Show fortitude
• Be fatalistic
• Treasure honor

Ben starts a moral absolutist tirade, pointing out the contradictions between Kate’s two lists. Jasper begins a bit random in his musings, which later become rather pointed, attacking the convenience of the binary pairing. Armbruster turns to Plato to give Kate some backing. As Kate elaborates on syndrome A, Ben tries to forge a third path; Hortense, the lawyer and moral relativist, provides insight into contract law and Kate’s first list.

This play by play will make more sense as I look a little deeper at each character. The important result of these initial discussions during their second meeting: names for the two syndromes.

1. Moral Syndrome A: The Commercial Syndrome
2. Moral Syndrome B: The Guardian Syndrome

The syndromes - these lists of “things that hang together” - become apparent because we have two ways of living:

1. We trade.
2. We hunt, gather, take, occupy, etc.

Kate, the biologist, recognizes the latter behavior in all animals. The former is unique to humans, around which the morals of the Commercial Syndrome hang.