Wednesday, 9.56pm
Sheffield, U.K.
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it. – Thomas Paine
We are going into a difficult few years.
War is raging on two continents. It may spread.
The tightening of power and control, with a nod towards dictatorship, is taking hold around the world, even in countries that have a history of freedom.
Freedom is not a birthright. It is never given. It has always been something to fight for.
Institutions protect freedoms. They are a bulwark against those that would take yours away.
So which freedoms do you value?
You can tell if you look at what you support. And I can tell you what I value by looking at where I give.
The first freedom, the one that I have supported the longest, is the freedom to have clean water.
Wateraid provides clean water and decent toilets for people.
You didn’t think that was an important part of freedom did you?
There’s a programme about the holocaust – I can’t remember the name – where there’s a scene where the Jewish prisoners are talking about how the camp they are living in has only one toilet.
That wasn’t a mistake, they note.
If there’s only one toilet, it’s because the engineers only decided to put a single one in.
The intention was to deliberately reduce the inmates to a lower condition, one where their most basic needs were unmet.
And that’s not right.
The next freedom I support is the freedom to learn, to have knowledge.
The Open Library and Wikipedia get my support here.
Everyone needs access to knowledge, to have the opportunity to learn and develop.
In a world where knowledge makes the difference between a good life and a trapped life, these resources matter.
After that we come to a world which few people know about but almost everyone is affected by.
Our world runs not on resources or capital but on information, which in turn relies on software.
Control the software people use and you have control over them.
And that’s why Free software is important.
Free as in Freedom, not Free as in beer.
I wouldn’t be able to do what I do now, have the career I have, the work I do, or even have you read these words if there wasn’t a quiet movement of determined people building and maintaining an ecosystem of Free Software at the Free Software Foundation.
The tools that they maintain give us the ability to publish, to write and create and reach others.
To communicate and compute and design and act.
These are the tools that protect freedoms.
I was taught civics growing up – lectured about the importance of multiple centres of power – parliament, the judiciary, the military, the civil service – and how these institutions worked to safeguard liberty.
Freedom is maintained by good institutions, not by high hopes and speeches.
And these days those institutions include organisations that protect your freedom to drink clean water, to read, to learn and to write, compute and publish without fear.
We need to support them.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 