From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, Autumn 2008

Freedom is central to democracy. That fact doesn't change, but the amount and type of freedom that we have does. And it feels as if it has changed dramatically in the past few years. With the Universal Declaration of Human Rights approaching its 60th birthday, Intelligent Life asked 11 eminent people from different walks of life to look back over their adult lifetime and name the freedom we have gained and lost that means the most to them. They were free to take freedom in any sense, political or cultural, social or technological. What mattered was that it mattered to them.

THE SCIENTIST: RICHARD DAWKINS

FREEDOM GAINED:

Your computer mouse gives you the freedom of the world, from library to art gallery, from museum to learned journal, from online bookshop to travel timetable. Admittedly, the internet also spreads rubbish, from the trivial to the sinister. But we are free to ignore it. The net educational worth of instant worldwide information must be positive. The internet has no truck with national boundaries, and can thumb its nose at dictators and tyrannies, at priests and mullahs and all who would restrict knowledge and critical thinking.

Computer power doubles every 18 months, and its cost is declining at a similarly dramatic rate. This gives hope for worldwide enlightenment, even in those parts of the world that are still in thrall to nationalism, to tribalism, and to the vile superstitions of misogynistic desert tribesmen whose preachings arbitrarily became fossilised in influential "holy" books. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the English physicist who, almost single-handed, invented the world wide web, has justly been awarded the Fellowship of the Royal Society and the Order of Merit. I hope for a time when he will be seen to deserve the Nobel peace prize too.

FREEDOM LOST:

We are beset by rulebooks toted by lawyers and petty bureaucrats, who worship the letter of the law and have lost the spirit of compassionate discretion. Most familiar in the infamous and despised "Health and Safety", it goes further and deeper. Time after time, we encounter horror stories of petty--and not so petty--injustices, which could so easily have been sorted out if only officials were granted the discretion to take decisions based on the spirit of goodwill and fairness, rather than on books of rules drawn up by lawyers trained to an exaggerated degree of suspicion. We hand responsibility over to the rulebook instead of shouldering it ourselves.

Doctors and nurses, teachers and professors, policemen and social workers spend their days filling in forms, which take them away from their valuable jobs. They are cowed, intimidated, lawyer-driven to cover their backs. Employers are terrified of being sued for "constructive dismissal". Teachers are terrified of showing affection or even compassion for their pupils. Travellers are terrified of making jokes to immigration officials. Rulebooks rule, and human kindness, discretion and fair play are running scared.

Up next: the freedoms mourned and relished by Shami Chakrabarti, director of the British pressure group Liberty and a former barrister.

Picture credit: Matti Á./flickr

Co-ordinated by Horatia Lawson