Everyone kept asking me the same question as soon as I was captured: Why did I do it? Which is to say, why did I make the entire population of Scotland disappear?
I admit I never had an answer. I had assumed that, once accomplished in full, the positive results (the overall lifting of global well-being) would be answer enough.
Clearly I had miscalculated. So, as a courtesy, I provide this (somewhat belated) statement of purpose. To put things in their proper context.
I don’t think I need to go into anymore detail as to how I did it. It wasn’t by magic, though I’d hoped it would look like magic. Neither the process nor the result were no more excessive than required. I think most rational people would agree that it was technical prowess at its finest: efficiency, scope, and cost-effectiveness working hand-in-hand to settle once and for all Scotland’s ominous nuisance. I’m pretty sure Nobel Prizes used to be given out for stuff like this. But I guess politeness counts for much more these days than bold engineering. Fine. But I think if I do explain my motives with clarity and candor, the added sympathy I will garner will be its own reward.
Make no mistake: I have my weaknesses. My most debilitating is a need to be liked by my fellow man, woman, and whomever. It is my easiest motivator to achievement and my most consistent enabler to hardship. I’d like to think I have good character. I’d like to think that I had useful things to contribute to everyone’s benefit. Yet if this drive was ultimately wrongheaded, I don’t think the spirit was.
I seek admiration because I’d like to think the feeling is mutual. I’m quite pleased that our species is the dominant one. I feel a deep connection with every human. If I’ve met them we are instantly bonded as friends. If I haven’t they at least get the benefit of the doubt, like siblings. I am not a believer in individualism. Individualism is atomization; atomization is death—living death; a true nightmare. Only through a people acting in unison is progress possible.
In that spirit, I had hoped to have more unanimity in my scheme. But allies among intimates and even acquaintances were few. In fact there were none. Perhaps my first failure was continuing on in isolation. But, in my defense, my rationale was clear at the time. If they only saw what I had done, I reasoned, then they would understand.
I’m no one special; no different from those who imprison me or those who would presume to judge me. But in the heat of my magnanimity, I can become sensitive to the things I believe we collectively, if not intentionally, neglect, and let accumulate in bad consequences. If everyone else does nothing, that’s on them. If I do nothing, I morally compromise myself. I and the world are worse for wear.
Now some people have insisted in answering the question for me; often without knowing the first thing about me; admittedly putting something of a dent in my previous statement. They claim with total ignorance of the facts that I hated the Scottish people. “Hate” is a strong word. I can’t say that I had any strong feelings towards the Scottish people. It’s even possible that I had met people who identified as Scottish and gotten along fine with them. I mean I can’t say for sure, I never went out looking for them, but it’s not impossible.
And if I had, the question then becomes, what made me set aside any individual good will in favor of mass suspicion? Simple deduction. Once I had detected that things were not all right in the world, I undertook a process to determine its most likely source. My findings showed that, of the people possessing the most likely potentiality to retard human civilization, the people within the borders of Scotland ranked highest.
Now I didn’t take this at face value. No one who respects science as much as I do does. But when I took a closer look at the Scottish people, I found nothing that would make me doubt my process. They seemed blithe to any sort of higher aspirations. I discovered no innovations worthy of my esteem. Scotland had no fount of ideas applicable to the needs and hopes of humanity. Scots had no fondness for accessible music, art, or literature. Their films depicted a sort of zoo-like society on another planet set up for the alien race’s amusement. Even with more modest aspirations they failed to measure up. Scots took unorthodox approaches to hygiene, interacted more gracefully with livestock than with each other, and held fried food and alcohol in eminent civilizational prestige.
The Scottish people had no apparent reverence for anything greater than themselves. What was in front of their faces was sufficient for their desires; even if what was in front of their faces was a mound of fertilizer. I found that anything more complex than a paperclip baffled them. Nuance and subtlety taxed their patience. In general, Scots carried themselves as if their land was a fortress through which no idea, good tiding, encouragement, or moral affirmation from outside could penetrate. And yet at the same time, I feared that nothing of theirs would stay in.
Our great preoccupation is, understandably, with contagions and how difficult they are to contain. But concern over biological contagions causes us to overlook those contagions that are psychological. Apathy, to take one example, is a psychological contagion; and one for which the Scottish people seemed like ideal carriers. I lost a lot of sleep at the thought of apathy spreading all over the world to such an extent that all of mankind was made Scottish. Every dream of every child became a twisted joke of itself. The whole foundation of human achievement and progress would sink into a peat bog of muddy futility.
I wanted to make it through the night again. I wanted to be at ease knowing that a troublesome effect and the people who enabled it were under control. I decided to deal with them through a method that would leave no ambiguity as to its intent and to its long-term outcome. And obviously If I couldn’t get any of the beneficiaries on board, time prevented me from consulting the objects of my scheme. But I believe that if I brought my case to them, worded as closely to their patterns of thought and speech as I could make them, I am sure that even they would have come around to the soundness of the idea. In fact I’m sure they would have agreed with my framework; they would have understood clearly how incompatible and irreconcilable their way of being was with the rest of the world. Some Scots, perhaps carrying a residual humanity carried over from places like Northumbria may have even been moved to applause. I’d like to think so, anyway.
Not that it matters, because once the plan was accomplished I gained an unexpected number of detractors. Vehement ones, at that. I soothed myself at first on the hope that of course they would not approve of the plan. They would see the least benefit! Only the subsequent generations would understand the full measure of my actions and reap the fruits of a Scotless world. I was ahead of my time. A goddamn pioneer. Like Marie Curie and the Tesla guy.
It was thanks to one of my few sympathizers, though, who helped me see the error of my ways. He wrote to me in prison telling me that, while he broadly agreed that my plan was sound and its intent was noble, he was perplexed by my choice of target. He was no fan of the Scots, he made clear, but he noted that the traits I had seized upon as being singularly Scottish were either equally or more applicable to Nebraskans.
This feedback disturbed me. And when I regained access to my papers and data, I discovered to my horror that in the fervor of carrying out my mission to improve mankind, I had at some point in the process confused one for the other.
I doubt that I am the first innovator to be so caught up in a monumental task as to lose sight of certain details, no matter what the size. Still, my mistake left me with a profound feeling of failure. I had no impact on the world at all. I innovated no new paradigm, no higher ideals, rose to no higher moral stratum. I wasted resources, misled my peers and loved ones, contained no contagion. Ultimately what I accomplished amounted to kicking over an anthill on a sidewalk crack. Worse, humanity was as vulnerable to apathy as ever.
Why is Scotland now a desert of peat? Why are the Scottish people in the past tense forever? Simply because of constipated thinking, shoddy research, and flawed methodology.
I admit that I caused the Scottish people inconvenience by bringing about their extinction. Mistakes of that scope tend to compel apology. But I’m not so certain just where the blame should go. Am I, a well-meaning philanthropist and entrepreneur who made a regrettable oversight, really at fault? Or was it the Scottish people who were to blame, for taking so little care to distinguish themselves from other species that would seed the earth with apathy?
I see my confinement as a technical matter. The Scottish people are unavailable to be penalized for their negligence, so I take the penalty in their place. I do so gladly! I see my confinement as being more moral than legal. Why aim low for the admiration of humanity when you can be a role model for the world’s youth? I had hoped it would be for a more majestic cause but I’m happy to serve as one for the reduced but still important one I ended up with.
To the young people: you have my encouragement to dream big, to follow your hearts, and to never compromise on what your reason tells you is right. Just be sure to be clear in your thinking, thorough in your research, and sound in your methodology.
To the Scottish people: you have my thanks and my forgiveness.