Imagine a Country by Val McDermid

Author:Val McDermid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books

* Shelter Scotland, Living Home Standard, 2018 <https://scotland.shelter.org.uk/50/living_homes_standard>.

SANJEEV KOHLI

My vision of an ideal country would centre on the development of a device that would be issued to every single citizen. Let me explain . . .

The perceived physical beauty of humans has always been vastly over-valued. In the sense that it’s valued at all. For example, the metric distance between your eyes is seemingly a measure of your trustworthiness and will directly impact on the shrift you receive at the returns desk in Debenhams. And we’re supposed to be the most evolved of the animals.

Surely, as a species, we should have transcended this biological imperative. And yet many of us are guilty of perpetuating it. I am certainly as much a slave to this phenomenon as anyone; I care way too much about my appearance. Despite approaching fifty, I still use ‘sludge’, ‘mud’, ‘fudge’, ‘mudge’ and ‘ectoplasm’ in my hair. And I still attempt to rock jeggings, despite the fact that they make me resemble an amputee spider.

However, I am far from the biggest offender: this phenomenon has been magnified exponentially by the Insta generation, one of whom I witnessed flicking her mermaid hair around whilst taking pictures of herself on her phone for the full eighty-minute duration of an Edinburgh to Glasgow train journey.

Maybe she was an influencer; maybe 100,000 people were locked in suspended animation whilst awaiting her verdict on an eyebrow pencil. In my world, though, no such creature would exist. Because physical appearance would no longer be any kind of measure of value. And this would be down to the Humanitometer™.

The Humanitometer is a device, to be issued free to everyone, which measures human decency, empathy and kindness. It will be either hand-held or perhaps strapped onto the forehead – this might seem ridiculous now, but in my future looking ridiculous won’t even be a thing.

How does the Humanitometer work? It will be calibrated to detect and measure the positive alpha and beta waves that emanate unseen from the empathy centre of the brain. OK, I made all that up, but I’ll make sure that the right boffins get the right funding so that one day we can value people by their humanity and not the curve of their buttock or the gap between their thighs or the price of their Yeezy Boost 700 Inertias (they’re trainers, Grandad).

In fact, to formalise the arrangement, your Empathiscore™ will be converted into credits which will then in turn be converted into a tangible equivalent. So if (for example) you give up your seat on a heaving train, you will be able to purchase an M&S dine-in deal. If you nurse a small sparrow back to health in your kitchen, you will be entitled to a high-end squash racquet. And if you help to lift a stranger’s fridge to his top-floor flat you will get a second-hand Vauxhall Astra.

This will of course have a massive impact on the economy, as it will effectively result in mass wage restructuring. Basically, the

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