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The unselfish spirit: human evolution

in a time of global crisis
Michael Brett-Crowther
Published online: 11 Mar 2015.

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To cite this article: Michael Brett-Crowther (2015) The unselfish spirit: human evolution in
a time of global crisis, International Journal of Environmental Studies, 72:2, 372-375, DOI:
10.1080/00207233.2014.997985
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Book reviews

both Australias Law Base and Russias Progress Station. Chinas Communist Party is
really an entire institution. Chinas economic interests are universal.
Hund works in Abu Dhabi, which has built Masdar City, focused on clean energy.
European nance is associated with this. May not an initiative of the Gulf Co-operation
Council lead to efforts at changing policy? Political institutions untrammelled by parties
and bound by Islam have possibilities unavailable to the West. The member states of the
Council have taken huge prots from selling the oil with which the Americanised world
has accelerated global warming. Can the West be more likely to produce a change than
those who have already agreed to cut prices and thus slow production?
Malala Yousafazi has called on David Cameron to do more about human rights and
climate change [3]. Can the Pakistan government strengthen the role of its Antarctic
station, with work conrming the Fifth IPCC report [4]? On 10 December 2014, it was
announced that Australia would give A$200 mn to the Green Climate Fund [5].
Converging risks may produce converging solutions.
References
[1] Morrell, M. and Capparell, S., 2001, Shackeltons Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic
Explorer, (New York: Viking).
[2] Available online at: www.spiritofmawson.com/the-science-case/.
[3] Available online at: www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/malala-calls-on-david-cameron-to-do-betteron-human-rights-and-climat e-change-9913587.html.
[4] Available online at: https://ipcc.ch/.
[5] Available online at: www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-30408036.

Michael Brett-Crowther, 2015

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207233.2014.997984

The unselsh spirit: human evolution in a time of global crisis, by Mick Collins,
Permanent Publications, East Meon, Hants, 2014, xxiv + 230 pp., 16.95, pbk (ISBN 9781-85623-193-0).
In 1984, Joyce Pearce of the Ockenden Venture founded a movement called A Strategy
of Hope for a World in Crisis, with a meeting at the House of Commons. In 1972,
Edward Goldsmith published A Blueprint for Survival [1]. The Blueprint preceded the
rst UN Conference on the Human Environment, in Stockholm (1972). None of these
three things seems to have made any impression on international governmental operations.
Politics and economics continued as they had been; and as they were then, so are they
now. The rise of UKIP or of le Front National represents the desire of individuals for a
representation better than the unconvincing persons who dominate their lives, achieving
nothing to improve them. Those who cast their minds back to the 1930s can see disturbing
parallels in Britain, France and Germany. Population Matters has issued its manifesto for
the British general election, 2015 [2]. It can be read without any reliance on Collins
views, but echoes A Blueprint for Survival.
Should one seek to withdraw into an un-political Eastern world, where spirituality and
self-healing are available? When John Seymour commended self-sufciency to the British
in the days of the Blueprint, he did not see any need to introduce such arguments [3]. He

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confronted the system differently: British pragmatism. There is a long tradition of kitchen
garden wisdom; e.g. growing gigantic leeks in the North of England; planting in France
according to the lunar calendar. This is no different from the muck and magic idea of what
has become the greatly praised notion of organic farming. But it scarcely requires a philosophical essay. Indeed, the grower of the largest-ever leek (9.2 kg) modestly stated in 2011
that he had merely used the right seeds. A practical book Seymours validated the
notions of self-sufciency; as did the counter-cultural Ecologist under Goldsmiths capable
(and well-funded) stewardship. Goldsmith expounded a distinctive interpretation of history
and anthropology. He had and his journal continues to have a wide inuence.
In the urban Western world, provided that the market economy satises the needs
of the modern consumer, neither Christian religion nor any other demands acceptance.
Besides, an animistic merging of the modern person with the universe is unlikely in
most circumstances. Gathering mushrooms in a dank autumnal woodland, hearing owls
at night as one locks up the hens etc, will make no difference to the decision-making
which governs society and the individual. After the xxiv preliminary pages from Tim
ORiordan and Mick Collins, there is no obvious connexion between the problems
identied and the transformational change which Collins aims to describe. It asks a
lot of a butterys wing to anticipate cosmic movements for conservation through
adopting this kind of worldview.
As for unselshness, this book is about the self in a different sense. Love receives a
modish treatment (pp. 183185), and the self-development via Buddhism (pp. 168178) is
impressive; but despite a reference to Julian of Norwich (p. 176) her all shall be well
Collins does not relate one tradition to another; thus, agape as Christian teaching denes it
(1 Cor: 13, 113) is not recognizable in these pages. Collins, though having spent three
years with a Tibetan monastic community in Yorkshire, ignores self-immolation by
Buddhist monks during the Vietnam War.
Collins rst seven pages indicate the difculties. He names the important (Jung) as
well as others less notable in the same breath. He provides (p. 5) Swimmes image of a
raisin loaf in relation to the entire reality, to explain Hubbles idea of the cosmos. Julian of
Norwich offers a more vivid image. Collins mentions that he has had a mystical experience in the 1980s, and he refers to Van Lommels work (p. 6) on those who have been
resuscitated after a cardiac arrest, as indicating that they had encountered transpersonal
experiences.
The average British reader will not read this without scepticism. Are new myths
required when fundamental myths have been very well explained (or, sadly, explained
away?). People who ll in the British Census form with a declaration that they are believers in a ctional religion based on Star Wars are as amusing as those who think religion
the real stuff is abolished by contemporary experience. Some of those central to A
Strategy of Hope for a World in Crisis included the Dalai Lama and Prince Sadruddin
Aga Khan; and Bishop Hugh Monteore was one of the authors of A Blueprint for
Survival. Real religion, seeking to moderate human evolution and meet the global crisis,
is enough. One might say that we do not need Tolkein or J.K. Rowling when we have the
genuine classics of antiquity from which the central features may be adapted in the
twenty-rst century, but only with a resonance (cf. C.S. Lewis) of greater and more perfect
images. Mircea Eliades awareness of the lack of interest in rites of passage because of a
diminished interest in myth and imagination (p. 179) did not lead him into anthroposophy.
Instead, it emboldened Eliade to argue, like Bonhoeffer with his religionless Christianity,
for the tradition to be applied by authentic action [4].

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What then of Collins ideas? They are personal, sensitive and include the intimate
struggles of other individuals. But there is a need for a general frame of reference. Collins
is not conned by Jung; nor by Ren Gunon; nor is he denitely a Buddhist; nor a
Christian; nor even an adherent of Thomas Berry. Collins merges the accounts from this
dimension of culture with others, tentatively. For example, his reference to Bubers I-Thou
(p. 74). In the 1960s, this was much used by Western Christians. English-speaking ones
who have through modern translations lost thou from liturgical prayer may be puzzled by this mystical Jewish philosophers perception; while in France, those who know
what it is to tutoyer and to vousvoyer will not be impressed by Bubers argument for
socio-linguistic reasons. The change from thou in English liturgical prayer loses intimacy
and trust before what Collins (via Otto) calls the numinous (p. 53f), but the change
occurred with similar social logic as appears in the French momentary embarrassment over
the tu et vous (thou and you) modes; although one can pray using you with intensity,
and self-abandonment. French translations of Orthodox liturgy, however, retain thou;
knowing that dignied or literary French can be as in the original Greek, Russian etc.
useful to worship. Would it have been better for Collins to have grounded the book on
Otto and Western theology, or to mediate Eastern non-Christian or Eastern Christian views
through recognizable Western denitions? [5] Collins approaches, but does not apply a
comparative religious approach.
Some may nd the admission of a failure (p. 88) unnecessary; others may be puzzled
by it, or touched by the candour. Throughout, Collins asserts a belief in individual capacity
for change; e.g. having cited Jungs reference to man as Homo mysticus, Collins says It is
with such intention that our transpersonal potential can connect to our actions in the world:
I do, therefore I evolve (p. 114). The rst part of this sentence is vague; but the maxim
is challenging, though more self-conscious than Seymour.
Yet is this different from I think, therefore I am; and is that maxim more useful for
thinking ahead through the world problematic? And is doing, therefore evolving superior
to thinking, therefore being; but is that relation not essential to the human evolution now
occurring? Some might argue (e.g. Burnet [6]) that human evolution was taking a downwards trend.
Collins remarks (p. 136) on the quality of human engagement will cut no ice in any
government ofce anywhere. They are banal and general. If people treat the earth as
sacred, the question is by what criteria they do so; for sacredness may have contradictory
outcomes. The Hindu who sacrices goats for Kali, or the Christian who kills a goat for
the table may each regard the earth as sacred; but, inter al, the Christian is more likely to
be concerned with potable water and sanitation than the Hindu. Are human rights, founded
on Christian criteria, irrelevant to solving the world problematic?
It is difcult to imagine an article in the tabloids based on the views of Collins. For
example, Collins gives as evidence for synchronicity (p. 153) the story that for 20 min, an
osprey perched near to its observer in Australia at a time when a falconer, a good friend
of that observer, was dying or had just died in Britain. This story sits comfortably within
the theory of the Akashic eld. Few will have studied synchronicity, or the Akashic eld.
The fact that the tabloids (not to mention the broadsheets!) choose to exclude multi-layered
reality from their concerns is protable; it works. It appeals to the British public. They get
what they pay for; they like it. The British government does not seek to inuence the
media except in a short-run manner for party political gain. The idea of changing mentality
and modifying moral choice is alien to British politics. Mores the pity; but it is the case
with most governments. Russia and China are exceptions. Thus, any book on the idea of

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human evolution in a time of crisis may need different underpinnings before it can change
society.
Collins does not integrate his material; e.g. his quoting Jung (p. 137) in 1964 on the
convergence between psychology and physics, or his reference to Rilke (p. 142) with no
other mystical poet being cited. Collins does not relate the problems in the world problematic to his principles. What is all this personal evolution supposed to be doing? Is it necessary to solving the problem of salinization, or post-harvest losses of food and feed grains?
Is there any relation between all this and the facts of HIV and Ebola virus, alternative
energies, pollution of land, sea and air, resource conicts (especially about water in the
Middle East) and climate change? Do solutions for the world problematic need the
approach of Collins?
There is no necessity for this maxim of Collins I do, therefore I evolve to invade
contemporary religious thought; nor for it to affect politics or economics; nor is there any
way to ignore the fact that in some signicant cases doing entails much which is suffering; e.g. the long lives of survivors of concentration camps, and the strenuous experiences
of conict and threat to survival of soldiers, sailors and airmen in the Second World War.
As Dubos said, Trend is not destiny [79]. There are anomalies; an individual can buck a
trend. Suffering with faith, hope and love can effect change; and can support individual
survival.
Surprisingly, there is no reference to Berdyaev [10] and Teilhard de Chardin [11]. Few
have shown as real a grasp of contemporary reality. I hope that anyone who reads this
book will go beyond it to return to themselves by a more direct path.
References
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]

Goldsmith, E., Allen, R., et al., 1972, A blueprint for survival. The Ecologist, 2(1).
www.populationmatters.org/2014/population-matters-news/uk-election-manifesto-issued.
Seymour, J., 1976, The Complete Book of Self-Sufciency. (London: Faber & Faber).
Eliade, M., 1968, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic
Reality. (London: Collins).
A Monk of the Eastern Church, 1945, Orthodox Spirituality: An Outline of the Orthodox Ascetical and
Mystical Tradition. (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge).
Burnet, Sir Macfarlane, 1978, Endurance of Life. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Dubos, R., 1976, A God Within: A Positive View of Mankinds Future. (London: ABACUS).
Waddington, C.H., 1977, Tools for Thought. (London: Jonathan Cape).
Waddington, C.H., 1978, The Man-made Future. (London: Croom Helm).
Berdyaev, N., 1949, The Divine and the Human. (London: Geoffrey Bles).
Teilhard de Chardin, P., 1964, Le Milieu Divin: An Essay on the Interior Life. (London: Fontana).

Michael Brett-Crowther, 2015

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207233.2014.997985