Part memoir, part political argument, There We Are Human Again declares that a much richer way of living is possible, and within our grasp today, together - to be truly human, at last.
The world is sliding towards one kind of anarchy: incessant conflict, environmental collapse, and a disturbing sense of insoluble crisis and hopelessness. But there is another kind of "anarchy" entirely - not chaos, but organizing ourselves, cooperating without domination or coercion, and therefore living - and loving - together in peace.
In this book, former British diplomat Carne Ross tells the story of how he went from negotiating conflict and terrorism at the UN and resigning in disgust over the Iraq war, to working with liberation and democracy movements around the world, and in the process discovering anarchism as an inspiring yet surprisingly plausible politics.
His journey spans disillusionment, despair and psychological collapse, and finally the discovery of a new way of looking at life - and love - and with it a personal reconstruction and revival of hope.
There We Are Human Again argues that control by the state - claimed as necessary and inevitable - in fact foments humiliation and conflict rather than cooperation and fulfilment. Humans can live much better without dominating one another, instead centering relationships and mutual aid, and celebrating love - not profit or power - as the organizing principle and very point of society, and of life itself.
Carne Ross was once a British diplomat and is now a writer, diplomatic strategist and anarchist.
As a diplomat, Carne served in Germany, Norway, Afghanistan, Kosovo, the UK Mission to the UN in New York and as speechwriter to two foreign secretaries (the second one fired him). He worked on terrorism, the global environment, Israel/Palestine, the Middle East and, at the UN, the containment and inspections of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, as well as, in total, five (or maybe six) wars.
In 2004, he resigned from the Foreign Office after giving secret evidence to the first official inquiry into the Iraq War. His testimony detailed how Blair's government lied about the alleged threat from Iraq and ignored available alternatives to war. For telling these truths, he was threatened with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act and publicly attacked by senior government ministers. The eventual publication of Carne's testimony in 2007 helped bring about the full public inquiry in the war, the 'Chilcot Inquiry', to which Carne also gave evidence about his earlier work on Iraq, this time in public.
After his resignation, Carne founded the world's first non-profit diplomatic advisory group. Independent Diplomat works with democratic countries, political groups and liberation movements across the world, including Kosovo, Yemen, Syria, Ukraine, Myanmar, Western Sahara, Sudan, Mali and many others. ID helped the Marshall Islands form the High Ambition Coalition which was responsible for the most important elements of the 2016 Paris climate agreement, including the goal of 1.5C. Independent Diplomat innovated the practice of bringing the actual protagonists in the conflicts on the UN Security Council's agenda to meet Security Council diplomats in person.
Today, Carne continues his work as a diplomatic adviser and strategist, including for the self-governing autonomous region of northeast Syria - Rojava. He writes and comments about world events, political change and anarchism on substack, YouTube, social media and various traditional media outlets, including the BBC and Al Jazeera as well as the Financial Times and New York Times.
He is also working to establish a global network of 'communalist' democracy, a real-life actualization of his profound belief in self-government and individual autonomy, of life freed from the coercive yet oft-unquestioned control of the state and liberated from deadening capitalist culture: a philosophy - anarchism - that enables us to transcend the crises and hopelessness that beset the modern world.
