How an 18th-Century Scottish Poet Became the Patron Saint of Global Burnout

James Beattie: The Scottish Philosopher Who Accidentally Invented Global Burnout Culture
By Our Correspondent in a Café That Still Charges for Wi-Fi (Edinburgh, GMT+1)

It is 4:07 p.m. local time, and the Edinburgh drizzle is performing its usual impression of a world-weary accountant: constant, grey, and impossible to fire. Inside the café, a barista misspells “Beattie” on a paper cup, proving that even 250 years after his death the man still can’t get proper recognition. Yet the ghost of James Beattie—poet, philosopher, and unwitting godfather of the planet’s collective anxiety attack—hovers over every smartphone screen, every doom-scroll, every motivational quote that tells you to “hustle harder” while your soul quietly files for bankruptcy.

Born in 1735 in Laurencekirk, a village whose main export was probably drizzle and second sons, Beattie grew up to write “The Minstrel,” a poem that romanticized solitary genius and the nobility of endless labor. It sold faster than gin in a Glasgow tenement and was swiftly translated into French, German, and, for all we know, Klingon. Europe’s intelligentsia lapped it up the way modern influencers inhale oat-milk lattes. What they missed—perhaps conveniently—was that Beattie had sketched the first blueprint for turning individual neurosis into a trans-continental lifestyle brand.

Cut to 2024: from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen, the poem’s DNA is stitched into every corporate mission statement that exhorts you to “find your passion,” while conveniently forgetting to mention the 2 a.m. Slack messages. South Korean office workers collapse at their desks; Brazilian fintech founders brag about 120-hour weeks; and somewhere in Nigeria, a start-up bro tweets a sunrise selfie captioned “#RiseAndGrind.” None of them have read Beattie, yet they are all unpaid extras in his long-running tragedy.

The irony is thicker than haggis. Beattie himself ended his days plagued by migraines, convinced that intellectual overwork had shattered his nerves. His personal correspondence reads like an 18th-century WebMD thread: “Am I dying or merely enlightened?” Swap quill for iPhone, and the man could be any modern coder Googling “early signs of burnout” between sprints. The global supply chain of angst, it turns out, was forged in Scottish peat smoke.

Politicians adore the Beattie ethos because it lets them slash social safety nets while sermonizing about “resilience.” The World Economic Forum now sells tickets to panels titled “Quiet Thriving,” as if rebranding exhaustion were the same as curing it. Meanwhile, the IMF politely reminds indebted nations that their citizens should probably work until the heat death of the universe. Somewhere, Beattie’s ghost is updating his LinkedIn: “Thought Leader in Productivity Masochism.”

Environmental implications? Oh, they’re peachy. Nothing fuels a 3% quarterly growth target like convincing seven billion people they’re one side hustle away from transcendence. The planet wheezes under the carbon bootprint of all that striving; polar ice reads Beattie’s verses aloud and spontaneously fractures. COP delegates quote him in the gift shop, then fly home in business class comforted by the knowledge that someone, somewhere, is definitely offsetting their guilt.

And yet, every empire needs its dissidents. In Copenhagen, employees stage “Beattie Breaks,” mandatory naps printed on the calendar like dentist appointments. Japanese unions push “Premium Fridays,” a charming euphemism for leaving work before the last train turns into a pumpkin. Even the Swedes—who once gave us flat-pack anxiety—now experiment with six-hour days, presumably so they can spend more time assembling shelves and contemplating mortality.

Conclusion: James Beattie wanted to celebrate the dignity of labor; the world heard “never log off.” His legacy is a planet-wide hamster wheel painted with inspirational quotes, generating profits for the few and panic attacks for the rest. The next time an app pings you at midnight with a cheery “You’re on a 7-day streak!” remember that somewhere in the Scottish rain, a long-dead poet is shrugging: “I wrote a poem, you lot built a dystopia. My bad.” Perhaps the most international lesson of all is this: genius is portable, but so is the misery it accidentally exports. Drink your misspelled coffee and try not to think about it.