The Goat and the Scapegoat

#Chessdrama as a morality tale distantly inspired by Orwell's Animal Farm

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a goat and a scapegoat​ in a field.

The goat was the Greatest Of All Time. He was admired and revered​ in his field, and known as a star in the sky to the world beyond​.

The scapegoat was different. He was younger, and ​an outsider. He was neither much liked nor trusted by the others in the field, who were mostly cows. The scapegoat was not known to the world beyond, though he longed to be, and soon would be, though not in the way he had hoped for.

The scapegoat worked hard to become stronger in battle. He was growing in confidence, almost an adult, waiting for his moment. One day, to the surprise of the cows, the scapegoat crept up on the goat while he was in the woods, and defeated him in battle. The battle featured kicks and bites and charges the like of which the cows were familiar with, but the goat said they were unusual. He later said he felt as if they came from another place, or even another kind of animal. The goat was very angry, and left the field of battle. 

When the goat next saw the scapegoat it was a different kind of battle, and he took just one step into the field. And after the scapegoat took his second step, the goat did not copy, but left the field and slammed the gate. It was as if the goat wanted to say loud and clear to the world beyond that he never wanted to be with the scapegoat in the field again.

The goat carried on being the best, seemingly unperturbed. The scapegoat pleaded his case to the world beyond. He had not cheated against the goat he said. He admitted he had cheated twice before, but in a different way in a different place, and for that he was sorry. He even offered to have all his hair shaved off in front of all the cows to leave no doubt that he was hiding nothing. The cows were generally unimpressed, mooing in particularly baleful tones whenever the subject of the scapegoat came up.

Everyone waited to hear from the goat.

After several days of tense expectation, he passed a note to the blue bird, who flew around the world telling all who would listen what was on it, namely that cheating is an existential threat to the field. The goat’s uncharacteristic actions were justified, the world was told, because the scapegoat is a cheater and cheating in the field must stop.

The world waited to hear from the scapegoat, but he was not the one who spoke next. The goat is lucky to have a powerful friend, an elephant, who seemed eager to get involved. 

The elephant is friendly and widely liked and enjoyed, but he is imperious too. Although he would not dare to try to milk the goat, he does like the cows in the field to be milked for tasty dairy products to feed his elephant calves. He cannot fulfill this desire himself, due to his lack of opposable thumbs and the insufficient agility of his trunk. The field therefore sometimes call the elephant by his nickname - CheeseNotCome - but sometimes they just call him ‘the elephant’.

Elephants never forget. He studied the scapegoat's prior battles on the field that the cows gave testimony to, going back more than five years. Then he used those records and placed them in frot of some special new plants he’d found, looking for signals of movements in the plants to corroborate the goat's story for the world beyond. Remember, the elephant was not in the field when the scapegoat was alleged to have cheated the goat. Nonetheless somehow the elephant succeeded in making itself central to this story for the world beyond, attracting new fans and accruing more land in the process. 

It’s fair to say that the world beyond was perplexed. Those outside the field are simply not aware that the battle no longer always takes place in the woods, and nor do we speak anymore of horses or castles. Since the field now exists in so many parts of the world beyond, we communicate our moves with the help of spiders who move them through vibrations in their webs, and they work really fast. The rapid vibrations create a kind of screen for us to see by indenting air or water. So now, when we can’t play in the woods, we see and imagine our battles in the lake or the sky, what we call the lakesky. The battle is still fundamentally about the woods, but millions of cows play in the lakesky every day. It is not widely known in the world beyond, but due to his recent agreement with the goat, the elephant controls the part of the lakesky that matters most for our battles.

The relationship between the elephant and the scapegoat was never straightforward but the main problem for the scapegoat is that the elephant did so much work for the goat that the world beyond forgot the origin of the story. 

The scapegoat committed transgressions in the lakesky in the past, no doubt. It’s not a small thing to cheat, in any context, and it’s only natural that the cows have doubts about you after that. But the question remains: did the scapegoat cheat when it defeated the goat in the woods?

That question is how this story began. It matters because none of the cows saw anything to suggest it actually happened, and none of the animals, or even the spiders, can fathom how it even might have happened. There are far-fetched stories, and minds boggle in the world beyond.

The goat said the scapegoat defeated him too easily, and that he was acting as if he need not apply any effort. The goat also expressed surprise, as others have, about how quickly the scapegoat became so strong. Yet the strongest part of these claims is that they came from the goat. We should of course respect the intuition of the goat, but given he was responding to a loss, we also have reason to doubt it.

As for the rest of the field, and the world beyond, it is wrong to assume that someone who was guilty before, elsewhere, in a somewhat different context, must always be guilty again. All animals know that while the presumption of innocence applies not to a person’s character in general, in perpetuity, it does apply to all acts allegedly committed in particular times and places, and that is the heart of the matter here.

The goat is keen to show leadership in the world on the matter of cheating in the field. But might he have been so keen that he failed to make a critical distinction?

Cheating in the lakesky in the past is not the same as cheating in the woods in the present. Perhaps he didn't care about that distinction, because it seems fussy, and he’s the goat. And he felt angry, and someone had to represent the wider problem, and the scapegoat looked like he would do that job well because he was known to be a cheat who had cheated in the field before. Maybe he’d just go away, and, with luck, the problem might start to go away with him.

But this is a morality tale.

The charge against the scapegoat is that he cheated, and that he lied about his cheating. There has yet to be a council of the cows, but the wisest cows already find it at least ‘likely’ that he did not cheat in the battle that matters most for this tale, and none of the animals, even the elephant, think he has cheated in the lakesky or the woods in the past two years. Strange though it sounds, the scapegoat might well be a guilty victim in this tale, rightly accused of past wrongdoing, but also the subject of unjustified harm in the present, with disproportionate effect.

The charge against the elephant is that he profiteered, muscling in on the story and using it as a case study to market his own platform and tool, while choosing not to highlight by name all the other lakesky cheats in the field, thereby misleading the world beyond that the scapegoat had done something particularly egregious. The elephant will say he cares deeply about the field, and was only trying to help. That might be true, but he may not realise that is possible to be too powerful.

The charge against the goat is that he scapegoated to deal with his anger at losing a particular game, and projected his hatred of cheating in general onto a particular person. He may have done this unconsciously and in haste and then struggled to change course. He may have wanted to take the lead on cheating in the field with the best of intentions, and he may have genuinely suspected his opponent of cheating in the woods; but without evidence or rationale he was unwise and unkind to go public with a targeted attack. In effect, he demanded that the scapegoat should bear the burden of a wider systemic problem. When the goat makes a mistake, the goat remains the goat, and the mistake remains a mistake.

In his quiet moments alone by the hill side the scapegoat wonders if the goat really hates him. He regrets his skylake cheating, but oh my the thrill at the time. Those days are gone, he hopes. Surely his youthful cheating in skylake games for just a few berries will not forever haunt him? I am so strong now, he thinks, that I want to get back to fighting the goat in the woods.

There are many endings to this tale, but this is how one cow tells it.

A few days later, to everyone’s surprise, the goat invited the scapegoat to the elephant’s estate. They chewed grass together happily, forgave each other, had a few fast and friendly battles in the woods, and soon went back to the field to play.

Thereafter, the whole field became gently watchful and nobody ever cheated again.