Centering the Ineffable

A Team Human conversation with Carne Ross

I have been a fan of Carne Ross, disillusioned diplomat turned anarchist organizer, since I was introduced to his work during Occupy Wall Street. He’s the guy who gave secret evidence to a British inquiry into the Iraq war, then quit and founded a democracy and political movement advisory called Independent Diplomat. His book, The Leaderless Revolution, explains the fundamental forces driving everything from Occupy Wall Street to Extinction Rebellion, and is essential reading for anyone in the bottom-up change making world.

So when I got an email from Carne a few weeks ago, asking if I’d speak with him about a new public banking project he’s working on, of course I accepted. Here’s a transcript of the very beginning of that discussion — a way of sharing some of the underlying assumptions of the work, and what we really mean by “anarchism.”

To hear the whole thing, just click on this link.

Carne Ross:
I was a British diplomat. I worked for the Foreign Service. I served in various capacities, including speechwriter for the Foreign Secretary. Latterly, I was in the UK delegation to the UN covering the Middle East, and in particular Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, which is why I’m no longer a British diplomat: because I resigned after giving secret evidence to the first official inquiry into the Iraq war.

And my evidence said, as we all know now that the government lied, ignored available alternatives to war, etcetera, et cetera. But yeah, I was in the heart of the system and have now abandoned that system and come to believe something very other than that system.

Douglas Rushkoff:
You and some other people in that system were in the system with good intentions.

Ross:
Yeah, I guess so, apart from my own careerist ambitions. I think most people in government are in there to do what they think is good, but I think they often end up subverted. Their good intentions are used for ill, because that’s the nature of government — particularly in the capitalistic system. I think those two things, government and capitalism, reinforce each other to produce bad outcomes.