Pat Kane: The #scotspirit world is somewhat different from the real one in which we live

A Scotland where sculptors forge giant Kelpies. Where hipster graduates return to their father’s scallop farm on Skye. Where pipers and weavers and steam train drivers keep it in the communal tradition. Where natural wonders are tended by lissom park rangers, and hymned by barge owners and windsurfers.

Slightly off-frame, you can just see Burt Lancaster as the oil man in Local Hero, breathing his huge sigh of relief. I can cast the modern world and its alienating, instrumental demands aside. I can dally with beachcombers and mermaids, eccentrics and whisky-drinkers. I am home... But is this our home, as we – Scots actually living here – would fully recognise it? And in terms of the tourist dollar, does that question even matter? Any independence supporter would wish to tell an amazing, profound story about Scotland to the wider world. But for the sake of a healthy flyting, I want to pose some questions about this latest expedition of “Scotland the Brand”.

There’s an old and honourable critique to draw on here, started by Tom Nairn and continued by Tom Devine and David McCrone. It says that Scottish identity is based on an excess of cultural, geographical and historical materials – which only compensates for our centuries-long deficit of real economic and political power.

In his books and royal pageantry, Walter Scott produced a mystical, mythical “Scott-land”, as one book recently put it. His continuing influence can be seen in the parade of castles, armour, tartan and depopulated glens across the #scotspirit ads.

In Devine’s harsh words, “while history might well be written by the winners, heritage increasingly belongs to the losers”. Of course I understand the context of this campaign. We shouldn’t mistake it for other marketing campaigns more precisely targeted at trade, industry and commerce.

But the head of VisitScotland has pointed out that powerful tourism drives can have a “halo effect”, attracting decisions to invest and produce in Scotland. Is it a halo, however, or an obscuring, misrepresenting, even disempowering mist?

I have a Google Alerts update programmed for mentions of Scotland in the New York Times. Other than the obvious recent political earthquakes, the only times that we appear in the editorial of the paper is as a food, craft, festive or property destination. Very little in terms of Scotland’s non-comestible industries, or policies, or even scientific achievement, make it to the Old Lady’s pages.

So VisitScotland, and its advertising partner The Union (yep, that’s what the agency is called), haven’t in any way missed their target here. Indeed they’ve gone straight for the quivering bullseye.

Are there lingering dangers here? Any student of 19th century Romanticism and 20th century nationalism might pause amid their shelves at the elaborate hyping (and typologising) of the Scottish “spirit”. Does invoking the “mystical, magical” essence to any nation have all that smart a record over the last 150 years?

To make the obvious joke, “spirit” often needs careful handling – but it can be used well. In the late 90s I used to run pages in our sister paper The Herald called Scotgeist (I guess it meant, literally, “scotspirit”) where the aim was to curate the best of Scottish arts, letters and culture, in a humane and critical direction. And there is no doubt the term “spiritual” has become, in recent years, a holding word for a whole range of developed-world objections to the pace and nature of modern life.

The Scots chess grandmaster and social philosopher Jonathan Rowson recently brought out a study of contemporary thinking about spirituality. His definition is worth considering here: “The overarching societal role of spirituality however is to serve as a counterweight to instrumental and utilitarian thinking. At an economic level, that means intelligently critiquing the fetishisation of economic growth as a panacea and global competition as the only game in town.

“At a political level, it means that citizens need to be the subjects of social change, not just its objects, with spiritual perspectives playing a key role in shaping and expressing the roots and values of democratic culture. Within organisations of all kinds, the spiritual deepens our vision of intrinsic motivations, and gives structure and texture to human development and maturation.”

If a radical definition of the “spiritual” holds – as a way of resisting being treated like machines or units – then Visit Scotland’s “Spirit of a Nation” is missing a few elements.

For example, I note the First Minister mentioned some charity holiday schemes attached to #scotspirit in the papers the other day – but it hardly matches the civic energy and vision described above. Why are “grit”, “determination” and “guts” (three of the seven Scottish “spirits” conjured up by the campaign) seemingly disconnected from Scotland’s positive political traditions? And for that matter, our negative British-imperial/colonial complicity?

As if you’d just punched your own face, you’ll instantly know the answer. A wee bit tragically, the indyref No vote haunts this whole campaign. Yes, the point for an Indy-minded ScotGov is to act “as if” Scotland is fully sovereign already – proclaiming yourself an innovation nation for a year, doing rogue trade trips to Iran and China, and now this “global” visitor brand. It’s all top-down hustle and bustle. Sturgeon’s “raise the collective confidence, grow the Yes majority” tactic may be a subplot here.

But it just feels wrong for marketing campaigns to urge “the harnessing of a nation behind tourism”, even invoking the “#scotspirit movement” at one point. As if we all have to “perform our authenticity” exhaustively, and at all times, to ensure Burt Lancaster gets his meaning-driven tourist tingle, on his fortnight off from hydrocarbon extraction. Having flown there on an increasing number of tax-break-enabled jet liners, spewing carbon trails into the clear blue. Is it against the #scotspirit to point this out?

Shouldn’t it be possible to include a story about Scotland’s intellectual and civic smeddum in all this? The “waters”, “rocks” and “land” are incessantly invoked in the promo videos.

But what about the ambiguity about fracking, the planetary costs of North Sea oil extraction, the political suppression of our sustainable energy industry, the struggles to own and repopulate land in Scotland, rather than gaze upon its dehumanised, “awe-inspiring” beauty...

I said at the start the videos got to me – but partly because I wanted to see the same beautiful, surging treatment also given to health workers, grumpy novelists, thoughtful teachers, dogged engineers, indefatigable activists. I’d love to hear their “spirits” of Scotland beamed out to the world, as confident workers, careers, creators and citizens.

The point about nation-state independence is that it plants your feet firmly in and on the world – and importantly, the world recognises this.

Who we are is how we exert sovereignty over ourselves. The arms are opened wide to “aye – but you’ll have to take us as we are”. Because we are here, fully and properly.

We’re not just a place to visit. We’re a ground that owns itself, a ground you are more than welcome to come and enjoy. But it’s a ground upon which arguments about its development and direction will rage, vigorously and healthily – because the direction of an independent nation is at stake. And that’s who we are, too.

Maybe that’s a future marketing campaign, on some eccentric planet... OK: I’m enough of a patriot to wish any positive, globally-oriented endeavour well.

But let’s be vigilant that VisitScotland doesn’t really mean AnaesthetiseScotland. No matter how well-crafted the “project milestones on the sectoral revenue plan up to 2020” may be, the prize for Scotland should always be bigger.