Piper Lindsay Davidson wonders whether Scotland is in need of the assistance of a self-help guru when it comes to independence
Anyone who has read Stephen Covey’s The seven habits of highly effective people will be familiar with his diagram illustrating these habits and how they relate to each other. Right or wrong, his suggestions may have something to offer even an entire nation when considering the issue of independence.
As Covey continually emphasises, change must happen from the inside out
and we must take responsibility for our own actions, not forgetting
also to recognise which things are beyond our control.
For ‘democracy’ to be successful, it too needs to grow strong from the inside out, and recognise its own influence, possibilities and limitations. For ‘a democracy’ to succeed, perhaps we can say the same thing.
The insides of both ‘democracy’ and ‘a democracy’ are made of the same thing – people. We need to recognise their relationship with the society and the state within which we live and recognise that every individual has a part to play in creating that society. Or perhaps one should say, we all need to be aware of what we create, just by being.
Before talking about independence, I believe we need to spend more time building our democracy from the inside out. In my opinion, that means building ourselves as people.
So, back to basics…
Building our economy from the inside out surely means firstly securing our energy supplies, based on renewables, at the same time, building our innovation capacity so that we lead the changes of the future. When the UK was leading the world in innovation and technology, it was the most powerful nation on earth, especially in economic terms.
All change takes time, and in the meantime, we need to look at ourselves as people, each with an equal role in contributing to the society in which we exist. Let’s look to what it means to be a person in Scotland. Start there, and then see if we want independence.
Both nature and nurture are involved in who we are – our hardwiring gives us potential and our environment affects how that is realised. By the time we reach adulthood, we should be able to look at ourselves honestly and with full awareness and decide who we want to be and what we want to do with our lives. We need to understand what our upbringing and education did to us and then either better ourselves, or make ourselves better.
How many people can honestly say that they have done this? It is Nietzsche’s third metamorphosis of the spirit, it is the coming-of-age ritual. At least it should be. How many of us (and I suppose I did it too) have a monstrous pub crawl as our coming-of-age ritual around our 21st birthday and call it a day, no more questions asked?
True, at some point in our lives, most of us come to understand our place in the world and come to terms with it. But perhaps this should be written into the agenda, and perhaps we should seek not to find our place, but to make it and take it; our camels should be in school and our lions should emerge when we start to reach maturity so that we can become the children who inherit tomorrow’s world.
I say that before we ask the question of independence for the country, we should look at independence of thought, and of being, for our citizens, and give them not only the strength to change the lot fate dished them up with, but also the savvy to figure out how to and why.
Evidently, some extra subject should be added to our schooling system to help us deal with this. Why not take a chance and call it something like ‘personal development’?
What role does culture play in this?
Norman Davies wrote that ‘Culture is anything which can be grown’ and goes on to explain that this is anything which can be taught and learnt. Each community teaches its youngsters different things, be that different languages, values, religions or even different dances. Each family, likewise, and each parent too. Culture comes from many places, but there is one thing which is universal, and that is humanity.
Develop the person and we develop the humanity within. In doing this, we stand a better chance of developing our nation and then in time, that nation as a state.
However, progress should not be confined to schools. We should be establishing ‘cultural’ projects across the country, in different social units, to help each group develop the individuals within it and in so doing, to develop our society and our nation.
Working from the inside out, instead of manufacturing artificial social projects, we should be finding cultural entrepreneurs and giving them material assistance to help develop their own social/cultural projects. Our cultural market has several unique features. We are a small country with very distinctive national symbols and traditions. And yes, I mean tartan, clans, bagpipes, highland dancing, country dancing, Burns, whisky and the rest.
Scotland is by no means a desert and many things are going in a good direction
Scotland is by no means a desert and many things are going in a good direction 
. But there are many gaps which need filling, and demonstrable unevenness in coverage. Sad to say, many of the answers are actually not very difficult, and can be applied without creating a dependency culture.
Success in culture is about self-confidence, and that is founded upon financial security. Success in business also comes from self-confidence, which can be gained from being good at something, for example, playing the fiddle. It would clearly be foolish to say that if we all played the fiddle we’d be rich. But it is not foolish to say that if we all tried something tricky but fun, and discovered how to succeed to some degree despite our reservations, and did it with other people who were equally finding their feet, no matter what their station in life, then not only would we see each other more clearly as people, beyond our class (and other) stereotypes, but we might also, bit by bit, start to believe in our own capacity for progress. It is a minuscule step to apply that ability for positive change to other activities in life.
The Commonwealth Games are going to provide a fantastic opportunity to put Scotland on display. Let this be a grand chance to find our feet and our confidence, to go out there, hold our heads up and have a go. Let us as a nation make it possible for the athletes to realise their potential to win, for themselves, and the nation will get the benefit.
Homecoming 2009 looks like it is going to be a great step in this process of building self-confidence. Let’s hope it has the desired effect. Let us listen to our far-away birds and learn how they see themselves (and why), and how they promote our values, as seen from a distance. We’re a’ Jock Tamson’s Bairns…
Whilst the UK is our pie, it is divided amongst 60 million people. Independence would divide a smaller pie, but divide it among 5 million. I believe that if we each owned one five-millionth part of the state rather than one sixty-millionth part, more people would feel it belonged to them and so become active members of our democracy. Personal development in schooling and more meaningful, transformational support of the arts and sports as a participatory thing for amateurs as well as competitive professionals, are tools that can be used to help each member of our society start to value themselves, and see that they too can make a contribution.
I firmly believe that many things are going in the right direction to make our society a better place, and to help people transform themselves. But I don’t think we should sit back and leave this to chance, or the forces of fate. We control our own future, and we should be proactive about making each and every person more independent of thought and confident to make a contribution. Particularly, we should work on not being ashamed of our bagpipes, tartan and shortbread-tin symbols to promote ourselves abroad.
As a bagpipe-playing composer of Scottish music, setting Scots texts, I feel no draw to empty nationalism, nor to define myself in national terms. My composing voice comes from my instrumental background, and I feel no need to explain or apologise for it. Bagpipes are a musical instrument and national symbol or not, I play them because I like them. I teach them to give my students a tool for personal development, not nationalist indoctrination. But I also recognise how powerful they are, in sound, as well as imagery. I have advertised many things with bagpipes abroad (Tesco, language schools, British Airways, books and even Polish vodka!), but alas, very few Scottish products or companies.
I am in favour of independence as I believe Scotland belongs to us and we need to accept the responsibility of ownership and stop hiding behind the excuse that Westminster is plotting against us. As Gandhi said, no one can take your dignity from you if you don’t give it to them. Likewise, no one can take responsibility for governing our country from us, if we don’t give it to them. In a democracy, we need to use our voice and use it well, and ensure our parliamentarians listen.
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