Book Reviews
"An incredible book and one I believe that will change
lives through doing." -
Brainfood, howies®,
2008.
"Given there are only a hundred pages, this book packs a
fair punch. Not only does Alastair McIntosh present a
theoretical model of ‘the psychospiritual underpinnings
of community’ but the theory is supported by summaries
of research undertaken by colleagues into different
aspects of the spirituality of community regeneration. I
found the diagrams particularly useful.... This isn’t
just another academic argument presented clearly, these
are ideas that have a practical application and here are
some of the ways in which they have been applied. The
research is diverse and the theory comes alive in
application. A ‘meaty’ book, thought-provoking and
challenging." - Dearbhaile Bradley,
Permaculture Magazine, No. 62, 2010.
"A
gem of a book! These 100 pages are some of the best out
there. In my opinion, the best work from this author
since his seminal "Soil and Soul." Really, there is too
much in here to highlight, and all of it rich and
important. Anyone interested in how to rebuild community
should read this. Anyone teaching an environmental
science, ethics, or studies class would do well to
assign this to their students. I will definitely revisit
this over the coming years so I can be inspired by the
wisdom and clarity contained within." - Todd
Levasseur, Amazon.com, 16 Dec 2008.
"Rekindling community may not blatantly be about
conservation of Nature, but has latent messages that are
highly relevant. McIntosh speaks in the 1st. person,
exemplifying the need to build community out of direct
experience and personal relationship. His concern is
with our community with nature, with the divine, and
with one-another. Book and author take their cues from
Schumacher’s belief that the grand problems we face are
metaphysical, spiritual, ones, needing a response in
kind. McIntosh reviews some of the background to this,
succinctly linking quotations from western philosophy
with a commentary.... Towards the end, he lays out a
‘pivotal question’: “If everyone walked their lives as
you do, what kind of a world might we
have?” Not easy – but important." - Martin Spray,
ECOS: Journal of the British Association of Nature
Conservationists,
Dec 2008.
“Full of ideas … helpfully expressed visually in a
series of illustrations ideal for use in discussion
groups. It is this emphasis on wholeness which gives the
book relevance to a wide range of issues, from healing
at individual and societal levels to our care for the
environment…. What a refreshing and invigorating way to
look at community in all its manifestations.” –
Philip Bryers, The Friend, 28 Nov 2008.
"What makes Alastair's
work so important ... is that he brings together the
metaphysical and practical, the mystical and the
everyday. A short but significant book." - Dr David
Lorimer, Network Review - Journal of the Scientific and
Medical Network, Winter 2008.
From the
Introduction, Foreword and an Extract
From the Introduction
Between
2005 and 2008 I held a research grant through Scotland’s
Centre for Human Ecology (CHE) from WWF International in
Geneva. It was to support a team – mainly CHE fellows
and our students who study in partnership with the
Department of Geography and Sociology at Strathclyde
University – to research the spirituality of
rural and urban regeneration. We wanted to explore inner
aspects of strengthening the bond that connects people,
place and nature.
This
Schumacher Briefing presents our findings. It profiles
13 pieces of research, each written up by the WWF-CHE
scholar who carried it out. Around these I have woven a
narrative that shares my own evolving understanding of
the psychospiritual underpinnings of community. In so
doing, I define spirituality as that which gives life,
and specifically, life as love made manifest. That said,
no intellectual definition of the spiritual can ever be
wholly satisfying. Here we touch on the ineffable. For
while spirituality can enlighten the mind, cognition can
never reciprocally fathom the depths of Spirit.
For the
most part this is not a book that deals with the nuts
and bolts of community. Rather, it attempts to get to
the foundations – what it can mean to discover community
at the heart of humanity. My colleagues and I have left
a thousand questions unanswered; after all, we had only
a hundred pages. And we embody a spectrum of positions
that range from socialism to advanced capitalism. But
what unites these contributions is that they all seek
soul....
In Chapter 1, I describe how my own
understanding of community evolved when sent as a young man to Papua New Guinea
to engage with appropriate technology as influenced by Schumacher.
Chapter 2
explores Schumacher’s insight that the troubles of
our times are “metaphysical”, by which he meant, spiritual.
Chapter 3
examines what being human can mean, and how the
Cycle of Belonging strengthens our interaction in community.
Chapter 4
focuses on the Rubric of Regeneration with rural
examples of how spirituality can draw people and land into becoming communities
of place.
Chapter 5
explores “economics as if people mattered”, using
fundamental human needs to examine both urban deprivation and corporate social
responsibility.
Foreword - by
Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, Director Corporate Relations, WWF International
I was really delighted when
Alastair asked me to write a few words for this Schumacher Briefing. In my youth
I was also inspired by Small is Beautiful, and to this day continue to be
uplifted by Fritz Schumacher’s vision of a world in which capital serves
humanity instead of humanity being enslaved by capital; a world in which people
and nature co-exist harmoniously.
Alastair is a thinker and writer in the same
tradition, a man of compassion and integrity whose spiritual ideals shine like a
beacon in the darkness of this materialistic age. And I believe that, like
Schumacher, Alastair is helping to describe and unfold a more holistic
worldview.
The old industrial-capitalist-reductionist
worldview is no longer adequate for our needs, and a new paradigm is emerging,
because in the words of the poet T. S. Eliot, we “. . . are no longer at ease in
the old dispensation.” In fact we are increasingly dis-eased by our
overconsumption and the consequent environmental and social decline that is
spreading rapidly around the world.
So, can we expect this new dispensation any time
soon? Yes, it is already beginning to take shape in our midst, but we must not
be complacent. We are at a crossroads, and we must take individual
responsibility to consciously nurture this new beginning.
It should be clear that although in one sense we
are only a part of the web of life, we are also co-weavers. Whatever action we
take shapes and reshapes the world we live in. The challenge is to ensure that
our actions are benign and of benefit to all.
If we take up this challenge, the new paradigm will
be an expression of a transformed way of being, based on compassion and
understanding, and founded on mutual respect. Respect for the Earth, respect
for each other and for different ways of seeing and being. It will be further
strengthened through collaboration, partnership, and a shared vision aimed at
building the ‘fullness of community’ that Alastair believes is “. . . the only
hope both for the dignity of the human condition and for our co-evolution with
Earth.”
The Earth will once again provide for the needs of
all, humans and nature, not just for the few who enrich themselves at the
expense of nature and the rest of humanity. We will celebrate natural diversity
and embrace a plurality of cultural and spiritual meanings.
Because we express our being, in and through
nature, the current state of the planet reflects the impoverishment of the human
psyche that has lost its sense of wonder and awe. It no longer sees the ‘Great
Spirit’ both concealed and revealed in the natural world.
From the standpoint of Schumacher’s Buddhist
Economics the ecological crisis we are experiencing today is a rather
predictable outcome of the kinds of deluded human behaviour the Buddha
described 2,500 years ago. Greed, hatred and ignorance, the three poisons the
Buddha spoke of, are now so widespread that we are quite literally poisoning the
seas, the air, the earth itself.
Thus, the imperative of the present era is to BE
rather than to DO. In order to DO BETTER we must BE MORE.
This is not a justification for passivity and inaction; rather it is a call
for the intensification of action, but at an interior level. It is a call for
interior transformation and growth. This is not referring to external, physical
‘Limits to Growth’ but rather to the potential for limitless, interior,
spiritual expansion.
To hasten this transformation and renewal we have
to focus less on the outer and more on the inner work. This is the paradox of
action. For ideas precede intelligent action. So, if our thinking is
Holistic, Healthy and Holy, then our resulting actions will bring about
positive change. It is surely more than just coincidence that holistic, healthy
and holy, all have a common etymology.
As Kabilsingh puts it: “Only when we understand the
true nature lying within can we live harmoniously with the rest of the natural
world.”
Through the transformation and growth of our inner
being and the liberation of the hidden Self, outer renewal will occur. As
Alastair puts it: “Self-realisation is not rocket science. It’s just about
getting real. Become yourself. Be yourself! Draw forth the same in others.”
An Extract (from Chapter 2: Metaphysical Disease)
Many Logs to
Make a Blaze
Once when my son Adam was about 10 years old,
we went together to a music festival on the remote Scoraig peninsula in the
north-west Scottish highlands. Folks from the lowland cities were camped out
all over the grassy meadow overlooking Loch Broom. As I walked about, a
youth in his mid-teens came running over. His demeanour was typical of a
young man from a disadvantaged urban background. “Is that your son?” he
asked me, pointing to Adam who, I could see, was sitting with the youth’s
friends around a fire. “Man . . . he’s amazing!”
All that had happened was
that Adam had encountered the lads vainly trying to get their campfire
going. They’d been holding a cigarette lighter to a single huge log hoping
it would eventually ignite! He’d simply shown them how to split it and make
some kindling. That way the fire could start small and develop a heart for
itself. By stacking larger sticks around in a pyramid, a chimney
effect is created that sucks air in and through from underneath. The fire
thereby breathes. Bigger sticks catch on from the heat kindled in smaller
ones. It takes many logs to make a blaze.
It’s the same with the kindling of community. Here, too, the name of the
game is creating a heart within a hearth fuelled by many shapes and sizes.
These warm and fire one another up. And once again, the right structure is
needed at the centre to let fresh air in so that all can breathe. There’s
one difference between a community and a cult: a community has
semi-permeable boundaries that allows for the in and the out of the breath,
but in a cult people are trapped, sucked dry and suffocate.
Too many very dry logs will blaze up, burn what’s all around about, and burn out
in the fire of their own ungrounded enthusiasm that exceeds ability to deliver
in a sustained manner. Equally, an unseasoned log placed in the heart of things
when still too green and wet is a damper, and can even put the whole fire out.
Our metaphor could be extended endlessly. The essence is that community is about
creating synergies out of diverse parts. Just as a skilled fire-keeper has a
feel for the qualities of different kinds of wood at different stages of
seasoning, so we too must cultivate our understanding of what human beings are
if we are to become keepers of community. That is why becoming grounded means
having one foot in the physical realities of this world and the other in the
dynamics of people.
On the one hand we need to understand physics – the properties of matter – as
with our practical example of fire-making. That’s the realm of things like land,
buildings, and knowing the nitty-gritty practicalities of how things work or
grow. On the other hand, we must reach behind such outer hardware and get to the
software that is the inner nature of being human. Such is the continuum between
the physical and what philosophers call the metaphysical.
The etymology or word-origin of this Greek term is
meta, meaning beyond, behind or transformed, and physika, meaning
the nature of physical things or matter.
Metaphysics is therefore concerned with what underlies the outer surface
of the material world. It means reaching behind the ordinary, using both concept
and metaphor to move beyond normal ways of seeing and being, so to discover
inner layers of truth that will transform
our perception and experience of reality. In the work of community-building, it
means reaching behind seeing a human being merely in economic terms – as an
entity needing to be fed, clothed and housed – and connecting up such
vital practicalities with what it takes to bring a person alive from within. For
that life within is the heart of the fire of life. Without it, branches thrown
on top will never kindle.
Schumacher talks about metaphysics at least a dozen
times in Small is Beautiful. We therefore cannot engage adequately with
his ideas unless we get metaphysically turned on. This is how he diagnosed the
human condition (6:99):
The task of our generation, I have no doubt, is one of
metaphysical reconstruction. It is not as if we had to invent anything new;
at the same time, it is not good enough
merely to revert to the old formulations. . . . The deepest
problems of our age . . . cannot be solved by organisation,
administration, or the expenditure of money, even though the
importance of all these is not denied.
We are suffering from a metaphysical disease, and the cure must therefore
be metaphysical.
Why, then, do we not hear more about metaphysics?
Why is it not at the heart of every curriculum and constitution? The answer
is that it has been deliberately marginalised by materialistic philosophers. It
doesn’t fit the secular and mechanistic ideology that strips the sacred from
both people and nature.
.... An interest
in reality thereby places before us the two bottom-line questions of all
philosophy. One is ontological, and the other epistemological. ‘What are we?’
and ‘How do we know?’ Such is the territory we must now tread in deepening the
question, ‘What is community?’
Speaking
Events & Images for Media Use
Contributory Background
Research (PhD Thesis download link)
Although most of the work described in this Briefing comes from
years of community engagement by myself and the WWF-CHE Scholars who
I worked with, some important theoretical aspects evolved in the
context of my submitting a dozen of my previously published works,
most importantly Soil
and Soul,
for the degree of PhD by Published works
at the Academy of Irish Cultural Heritages (AICH), Faculty of
Arts, University of Ulster. As a Visiting Fellow of AICH this
entailed writing a "short" (it grew in the making) thesis linking
material published over the previous decade and showing how it
collectively constituted a PhD. It was something I undertook
because, these days, not having a PhD has sadly become an impediment
to participating fully in academic life. However, in the course of
pulling it all together my supervisors challenged and assisted me
into exploring more deeply what I meant by such expressions as
"spirituality" and in particular, its relationship to
"essentialism". It became for me a very valuable exercise in its own
right - a taking of stock of where I'd got to and a consolidation of
that ground. I am especially grateful to my supervisors at the AICH,
Professor Ullrich Kockel (President of the International Society for
Ethnology and Folklore) and Professor John Gillespie (Head of
Research in the University of Ulster's Faculty of Arts).
The thesis was examined and passed without revisions on 28 June 2008
by Professor Máiréad Nic Craith (Director of AICH) and
Professor Michael Cronin (City University Dublin, author of Translation
and Globalisation).
The PhD text can be downloaded at this link:
Some
Contributions of Liberation Theology to Community Empowerment in
Scottish Land Reform 1991 - 2003 (4 MB PDF file). See below to
make use of downloads of images that I commissioned for use both in
the PhD and in Rekindling Community. The Irish launch of
Rekindling Community
(and also, of Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the
Human Coindition) will be held at AICH at the Magee Campus of
the University of Ulster in London/Derry at 4pm on Mon 3 November
2008.
Book Images for Your Use
While undertaking research at the University of Ulster (see above)
and writing Rekindling
Community,
I commissioned a series of illustrations to use in both. Some of
these are based on the work of other people such as Jung, Camara and
Wink. Others are entirely original. But all might be of use to
readers of my work and for this reason, I am rending the artwork "Copyleft",
meaning that it may be used by anyone for any life-giving purpose,
with or without acknowledgement as befits the situation (though
acknowledgment is advisable in academic situations and courteous in
most others), and with
freedom to modify as might be useful to your purpose. These can be
downloaded from the links to the 4 versions that follow. Some of the Powerpoint
slights are animated to unfold in stages on mouseclick, but I recommend that, unless you've got very
high speed internet,
you check out the low resolution version first. It will
appear blotchy as some of the shadow effects are compromised, but it
will give you a flavour of what's on offer. These
are big files and so I've set them to open in a new window and, as
such, if you
have pop-ups blocked on your browser you may have to hold down
control as you click to open the links. Your browser should tell you
if this (or an equivalent operation) is necessary.
-
1.
Colour PDF (3MB)
-
2.
Black and White PDF (2MB)
-
3.
Low Resolution Animated Powerpoint (2 MB)
-
4.
High Resolution Animated Powerpoint (16MB)
Other images used in Rekindling
Community
are my photographs, except where indicated in the captions or the p.
4 credits. The poster "How to Build Community" (and many other
wonderful works of art like it) can be purchased from the Syracuse
Cultural Workers
here.
Live Web Links from Endnotes, and Erratum
For readers' convenience I have listed below
endnotes that have life web links (valid as of 8 October 2008). Many
of these pertain to rare third party resources that I have posted
for my own students' use on my own website.
Below these I have also provided an erratum.
Live Endnote Links
2.
See
www.wwf.org.uk/core/ge_0000004945.asp
and Tom Crompton’s Weathercocks and Signposts report, 2008,
at
www.valuingnature.org.
4.
See Alastair McIntosh, ‘Wokabaut Somils in Sustainable
Forestry: New Hebrides to Old’, The Tree Planters Guide to the
Galaxy, Reforesting Scotland, Edinburgh, No. 4, 1991, pp.5-7,
online at
www.alastairmcintosh.com/articles/1991_wokabout.htm.
5.
I have posted an extract from Bernard Narokobi’s
Melanesian Way at
www.alastairmcintosh.com/general/resources.htm - see specifically
http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/general/resources/1983-Bernard-Narokobi-Melanesian-Way.pdf
6.
Catalogue and permissions:
www.syracuseculturalworkers.com.
7.
The Margaret Thatcher Foundation disputes the order of the
wording, and its wider context is not without wisdom. See
www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106689.
38.
See my article on Cold War psychohistory at
www.alastairmcintosh.com/articles/2003-cold-war.htm
45.
See
www.landreformact.com.
Also John Bryden and John Geisler, ‘Community-based land reform:
Lessons from Scotland’, Land Use Policy, Elsevier Ltd, Issue
24, 2007, pp.24-34.(See also my personal index of land reform
publications at
http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/contents-5-landreform.htm.
51.
Hélder Câmara, Spiral of Violence, Sheed and Ward, London, 1971:
online at
www.alastairmcintosh.com/general/spiral-of-violence.htm.
54.
Iain Crichton Smith, Towards the Human: Selected Essays, Macdonald
Publishers, Loanhead, 1986, pp.56-7: online at
www.alastairmcintosh.com/general/resources.htm
- see specifically
http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/general/resources/1982-Iain-Crichton-Smith-Real-People-Real-Place.pdf.
56.
T for T’s new website is expected to be
www.trainingfortransformation.net
(should be operational late in 2008, meanwhile see
http://www.sangonet.org.za/portal/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4078&Itemid=385).
See also
www.VereneNicolas.org.
57.
Manfred Max-Neef, ‘Development and human needs’ in Paul Ekins and Manfred
Max-Neef (eds.), Real Life Economics, Routledge, London, 1992,
pp.197-213, online at
www.alastairmcintosh.com/general/resources.htm
- see specifically
http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/general/resources/2007-Manfred-Max-Neef-Fundamental-Human-Needs.pdf.
Erratum to First Edition (October 2008)
It's just the way the cookie
crumbles that there's always a few gremlins that creep
into my books caused, for example, by things I've played
around with after the publisher's proofreading! Most are
trivial typos and they are listed here for correction in
any subsequent reprinting. Only the one about endnote 21
is consequential. The minor ones are shown here in the
hope that if there's any more not on this list,
sharp-eyed readers might be good enough to inform me via
mail@alastairmcintosh.com and we can fix them in any subsequent
reprinting. Note that the first time you use this email address
you'll get a bounceback asking that you confirm your
authenticity with my
spam check system. I also love getting feedback from readers, and I
try always to send a reply, albeit usually a brief one
out of necessity and sometimes not immediately due to
the usual busyness.
-
P. 5, delete "Captions to
the colour plates ... 7" in the Contents.
-
P. 13, para 6: "Ulrich
Kockel" should be "Ullrich Kockel" - with a double "l". (Sorry Ulli - always
warned you I was a fake academic!)
-
P. 23, para 3: I suspect "it
is tempting to curl up and hide who, and form who, we really are" should
read, "and from whom" ... but I often get muddled on who and whom so maybe
some higher authority can advise!
-
P. 33, para 3: "creating a
heart around a hearth fuelled..." should read, "within a hearth" (I have
changed this in the extract given above).
-
P. 46, para 3. Note 21 is
wrong. Substitute as follows, if spare space on the page permits:
"Ferrier's Institutes, p. 554, alludes to this with the words, "My
philosophy is Scottish to the very core." However, the source of the version
that I have quoted is Davie, Democratic Intellect, pp. 305-6,
where he cites Ferrier's Scottish Philosophy, the Old and the New, p.
12. Davie quotes this at length, and relates it back to that lone sentence
in the Institutes, making reference to, "that remarkable outburst of
his about his relation to his country which has puzzled the historians of
philosophy, and which his literary executors found too embarrassing to
publish except for the first eight words." I think that such censorship says
much about the relationship between metaphysics and Oxbridge's subsequent
positivism!"
-
P. 54, para 2, "our knowing
and being depend" should be "depends".
-
P. 86, para 2: "isle of
Lewis", Isle should be capitalised.
-
P. 104, note 19, remove
extraneous space after "Institutes".
-
Photo credit for penultimate
plate - should be Bernie Whyte, not Barnie (sorry man!)
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