1.1 Introductory

The purpose of this writing lies in proposing the new, or new connections of theories, to the problems around the topic of expression and its governance. In a civilised society where a large number of people live together, it is more likely to have wider range of issues which need to be dealt with. One of them is related to expression, and the importance of coping with it has been increasing. Expression is one of the fundamental human activities that not only lasts through different media and different ages but it also needs to be properly recognised by ourselves.

Expression is one of the fundamentals for people in society, and a core part in our civilisation. In relation with the concept of freedom which people value, the topic of expression is often talked. Freedom of expression frequently comes to the table of discussion, often having tension among several groups of people. While thinking of the importance in securing the freedom of expression, I came to recognise that there’s necessity to propose an idea to this topic by focusing on context. This finding that made me aware of the importance of context led to not only thinking of freedom of expression but also be conscious that the concept of context is indispensable for other domains as well. What work focuses on includes the inner part of oneself to alleviate tension among different groups of people in a society. Besides the argument on policies implemented in a society such as regulation of harmful speech, this work tries to progress the debate around freedom of expression by highlighting the importance of cultivation within oneself.

This work takes look at what expression is in relation to its context as such that expression is linked with the past that we have gone through, this linkage could ultimately lead to the argument that free will doesn’t exist (as things are in relation to the past). In addition, it is written, not limited to looking at the perspectives often come to the discussion on this topic such as whether hate speech should be banned, but expanding its sphere to the topics of context which is rules and how people built up the world, culture, history of language, information theory, and the inner part of oneself such as sentiment. Without taking into consideration these domains, the discussion on freedom of expression rests too limited and cannot expect the further progress. Freedom of expression is a political topic, and reflecting on it from a variety of perspectives finally converges on the topic.

As regards the contents, this work addresses the question: what is the principle, or the solution, that should be promoted to govern freedom of expression in a society where there are different groups of peoples with different backgrounds? The term govern is used in a sense that this writing emphasises the governance of a community and takes the stand that governance of freedom doesn’t have to be based on not merely laws but also norms, cultures, and others if any which have effect on peoples’ activities.

People’s activity has certain effects on others in the community. In many cases where a society or a community is phrased in this work, it is used to mean it in multiple levels. From the smaller to the larger to give a few examples, it covers a multiple scales of community such as a community within a nation-state as multiple communities exist within the nation-state, a nation-state as a community, international community as a community, and others. In others, there are cases that refer to a particular size of community, however it should be better to be noted that many refer to different levels of a community simultaneously in one description which readers would enjoy contemplating on communities whose scale is different. This is because one phrase of a community is applicable to not only one size of a community but also other different sizes as well.

In addition, with regards to the meanings embedded in the question above that different peoples of different backgrounds live in a community, although there is dispute between globalism and nationalism, the benefits the civilisations got from the progresses such as the transferability of persons, goods, and information from one place to another has made possible the interactions of different persons, different cultures. This is a progress in terms of technology which brought about the benefits to the world. Also, the progress in terms of the rights of citizens is that the importance of human rights are what societies came to care for. Securing the sphere of freedom for all persons which is one of the essentials, however, there problems also arise given that the exercise of a protected right means taking a certain action towards society in which persons of different backgrounds and interests live. The world became more complex and is interrelated, in which an action of person has an effect to the society. In this worldview, this writing aims at analysing the nature of freedom, what expression means in society, analysing how it works (in association with freedom of expression). Its purpose is to find a way to have less conflicts among different persons living in the same society while taking into account the importance of preserving freedom, and what can be thought of as a principle to guide. Even though the focus is put in the domain of freedom of expression in this writing, it supposes the further extension towards other domains of freedom. It demonstrates the potentials of this topic’s development towards other domains of freedom as well as the relationship of freedom and persons’ actions in a society.

The reason of choosing the topic of freedom of speech and expression is my recognition that this topic will continue to attract the attention of people including the future generations presumably without disappearing completely the topic from our civilisation. People express their ideas and opinions in their daily life. It is one of their rights regarded as a fundamental human right. However, while many people came to be aware of its importance, the world continues to have controversies around this topic. The continuance of the emergence of problems related to freedom of speech and expression is partly because of the change in the conditions of our life.

We have updated our environmental conditions by implementing new technology in the past. It made possible that people of different context encounter more frequently in the real and online world. For example, the transportation system spread over the globe enabled us to move to a different location in a short period of time. This made easier for people to migrate to a different country, study abroad for a short term as well as a long term, and visit a different country as a tourist. It is a positive result of development of transportation system in the sense that people are able to move more conveniently, but in the same time it changed the condition of the world that visiting a different country have never been that easy for people in the past.

Also, due to the evolution of information technology, people of different backgrounds are able to speech online without having shared context on topics. Even, some groups of people strengthen their views and others also move on their own way. The circumstances around expression have been increasing its complexity. Not just the problem of polarised views, but also there’s been a situation that at least some social media platforms have been trying to regulate hate speech online. As time passes, the world changes, we have problems that we need to deal with.

At the beginning of 21st century, the world is globalised ever before, people of different backgrounds are more likely to see each other in-person and online. These changes of the conditions of the world due to the updates of societal circumstances require us to think about our world and continue to redefine our world by dealing with the complex issues in the domain of expression.

3.6.2 Reality

With regard to the aspect described in the previous part, in relation to correctability, the standpoint that one looks at the human history at one point of history and another standpoint which is several decades later which is that one looks at the human history with several decades added are different in what elements of history should be emphasised. In individual case, one can recognise the past doing differently. For example, at the age of 18 years old, recognising and interpreting what one does and re-recognising and re-interpreting it at the age of 28 years old could be different as the perspective and objective of one’s life could differ, even if looking at the same action, it can be reasoned different way.

The importance of philosophy, or thinking rests in the condition that at least time and place are limited from humans’ standpoint. That limitation is strong, even if AI or that sort of technology enabled the wider possibility of the world, what humans can listen to and watch are limited. In order to go beyond this limitation imposed on humans, they try to rely on technology, but as far as humans need to make decisions on their societies by meta-recognition, humans require philosophy as philosophy is to recognise the important perspectives to the human beings. Also, by this condition, each person has their own preferences and intimacy towards certain kinds. And each has their uniqueness as they cannot be born and raised in the complete sameness.

It is difficult for human beings to always face the reality. That is why they need to believe in things, which means that they need something they can rely on. The future is unpredictable, and believing in things is in some sense is different from continuously facing the reality. Thinking is related to an inner sphere to which one can try to keep the secure paths to survive the world. That is to say, they make attempts to cope with the harsh reality, in other words it often predeals with difficulties. Without that process of thinking, always accepting realities cannot be endured by the human beings. One example is that people create rules to be put in practice in their community. Its objective is often to make it possible that people of different interests or background can live together. Rule is to limiting the unlimited paths into the more or less limited paths of the future reality. Limiting the possibility of what one wants not to happen. The kinds of things people believe in their life are explained with examples below. For instance, the products that enterprises sell often have some warning or disclaimer on their products to avoid the miscommunication with or potential complaints from their customers. Secondly, traffic light is often installed in intersection which is to avoid car crush, human beings has taken consideration in the past so that they can avoid the crush. However, it is not guaranteed that it doesn’t happen, in reality even if intersection has installed it, it sadly happens with probably decreased possibility. Another case is the train and its timetable. If it doesn’t have timetable, people do not know when it is going to come, the reality of that uncertainty is not what people can endure, that is because they do create the timetable to believe in when it comes, but in the reality it is not guaranteed that train comes on time with its timetable as it delays or stops due to unexpected events. Adding to the above, in a similar way, it could be applied to marriage and eternal love. It has supportive functioning to people’s life.

As for the relationship between reality and trust, if one washes one’s hands to clean in the situation that it is not because one’s hands became visibly unclean but for the sake of sanitation, the hand before and after being washed doesn’t look different. At home, for example, the person doesn’t usually use their mechanical device to check the difference of before and after. What makes difference in being convinced if one has washed their hands or not is their trust towards the world.

Conspiracy arises when mistrust towards the world is accumulated. People cannot look back exactly and precisely what happened in each moment of everywhere around the world. Since it is not possible for persons to know everything happening in the world, their scepticism towards the world dangers the community itself. If they don’t have trust towards the world, trust in a community is a matter of degree, their scepticism grows.

Being completely neutral doesn’t exist, this is because one cannot put an object in the same place of another. If one removes the one put on a table for example and try to put an object on the same place with the removed one, the order of placing affects the neutrality. In addition, placing those two in the nearly same place doesn’t work as it is seen as upper or lower, or right or left, from the perspective of viewer. What is recognised as neutral in a topic a few agents involve, the neutrality is different from the perspective of the outer agent.

To recognise and to give a name on an object loses its neutrality. This is particularly applied to the name of a place. One calls a place by what name is political as the place is called differently by country A and country B(1).

Rightness is consisted of a wider variety of perspectives that always question whether it is right or not while sometimes it corrects itself. President or representatives don’t necessarily make right judgement, additionally saying, just because many, for example citizens, have the same opinion that doesn’t guarantee it is right. In other words, majority rule is not ensured to be right on the one hand, and decision in oligarchy is also not on the other hand.

Rightness can be maintained by always being questioned. When beaten by other arguments, that wasn’t right enough to be maintained. This argument for rightness is closer to the concept of falsifiability. Hiroki Azuma, by referring to Karl Popper’s falsifiability, described that unless a theory proposed in the domain of natural sciences is not proved its falseness by a case, it maintains its theoretical consistency, however it continues to have it opened to the future possibility that it could be demonstrated as false theory by other coming cases that undermine the consistency of the current theory(2).

Whether the community goes to a right direction is partly involved in the leader, given the structure of community where president, prime minister, or any other position is put in place of higher position which has to do with decision-making of community.

This reality can be connected with risks in our life. The newer transportation means such as car enabled persons to move from one place to another conveniently. In the meantime, the invention contains the risk of traffic accident(3).

(1) There are at least several cases of this naming issue in the real geopolitical situations, but a writing by which I came to consciously recognise the perspective was the one written by Hiroki Azuma. 東, 浩紀. 2020. 悪の愚かさについて２、あるいは原発事故と中動態の記憶. in 東, 浩紀(ed.). ゲンロン11. 2020. 東京: ゲンロン. Specifically it is written in p.027.

(2) 東, 浩紀., 2023. 訂正可能性の哲学. 東京: ゲンロン. pp.29-31. He describes the Popper’s falsifiability in the footnote.

(3) 大山, 顕., 2020. 新写真論: スマホと顔. 東京: ゲンロン. p.28.

3.5 Truth

What has been believed true would remain in society whereas it would disappear from the line of being true once the idea is defeated by another. As far as it can demonstrate its rightfulness to others, it would remain as true. There are times in which what has been believed is reversed by another such as heliocentrism. Objects in the world are constantly subject to the risk of its survival. One may come up with the better idea against the conventional one which is in practice, once one’s new idea is spread among the community, it is subject to the competition of ideas. In which, the winning maintains the true than the older one. It is repetition of this cycle in which the older may come up to the society again by the next generation, but would be effective until when it becomes defeated by another by which it may not appear again as true in the world. This potential reappearance of concepts is believed to be applied frequently to humanities when a certain set of conditions comes up to the world which the ancient ideas could be believed to work with the mixture of the present conditions, and to be less applied to natural sciences as the new discovery would prevail against the consistency of the previous truth in that domain. A set of conditions could be technological aspect that new technology enables people to implement what could not have been in the real world or it could be correction of the definition of a concept whose elements were, precisely saying, not totally the same as used before. This correction is close to, or I would say that it is, the correctability(1). By these processes, human beings continue to revalue the concepts which survive through different ages.

In relation to truth, this writing would like to look at the ability to think. It is recognised that “Since Plato, and probably since Socrates, thinking was understood as the inner dialogue in which one speaks with himself (eme emautō, to recall the idiom current in Plato’s dialogues)”(2). The ability to think is thought that “It has, after all, been that ability to think which, when translated to physical terms, has enabled us to transcend our physical limitations and which has seemed to set us above our fellow creatures in achievement”(3).

The true requires thinking as “Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think”(4). Thinking maintains “active state” in the inner and “Its outward inactivity is clearly separated from the passivity, the complete stillness, in which truth is finally revealed to man”(5). Truth has resilience and becomes robust through the thinking in oneself and society.

The true arguments would be likely to prevail. Even if they are not recognised by some people, they are foundations of further development unless those ideas are defeated by others. The right argument would overcome others even if others many times try to be against it(6). That is why discussion among citizens can enhance the outcome. Discussion can convince people before it is implemented and it can inform citizens of its policy beforehand. It can avoid somewhat the probability of social unrest, even if not completely. Democratic discourse can vitalise the society as a whole if the discourse works. Even after the generation changes, that can help the community not lose their vitality.

If a specific person plays the really large role, it is more likely to face trouble in the period of succession(7). Incorporating the democratic process of deliberation is one way to share the knowledge among the people. Discussion makes the community solid, that can be a factor which can connect people and even if they disagree in certain topics, in other topics they may have somewhat of agreement in opinions. In a situation that they are completely different opinions, as far as their fundamental values such as their benefits are shared it works. Discussion is a way to get a community deeper into thoughts, and it is not limited to the time in which it occurred. It has extensive character of making a habit for people to search more think more for a topic they will encounter next time. Even if not strongly rooted as a habit for people, slightly the experience affects people and have community more intelligent. That can let one know what didn’t come up with one’s mind. Democracy is inefficient and it takes time to come to consensus, however it also has the benefit of trying to create the culture by which one gets accustomed to thinking. This voluntary process of thinking in oneself is a fundamental condition in democratic politics. The culture creates the ecosystem in which people of the next generation can get the advantage of it. Since persons are mortal, the advancement of their ecosystem is the one that give benefits to the next generations.

The problem at around the beginning of 21st century lies in the persons’ tendency to take less time in thinking, and takes the form of language as what it means. To the argument of saying that it is not what he meant, one would show the evidence of the sentence that the person has written before. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean what one takes literally, the intended meaning often differs from what that literally means.

One can show himself to another as a different way from what one thinks in his mind. As persons are able not to explicitly show what they truly had thought at the time of publicly disclosing, the emphasis on what’s not visible matters. This could be applied to the cases that the person in power of a country call for the public for their support in a way that is more likely to convince the public although they may not truly believe in what they say. The public requires the judgement by themselves on what politicians say towards them. It is also a matter of what one says is related to one’s position in society. If a politician needs to get support from the public to win next election, the mindset of hoping to get more votes incentivise their speech more or less towards their purpose. Also, people in a public gathering would behave in a different way from the ordinary self. They do not behave as they are with their friends in a place where they need to socialise with others they meet for the first time. In case of socialising, people are to show their good aspects of themselves in many cases to the ones they talk with. It is not only those obvious examples, but applies to those who appear on TV shows, their way of talking has a sort of similar ways that makes their speech easier to be communicated to their audience.

(1) Correctability is explained in the book titled Philosophy of Correctability by Hiroki Azuma. As of 1 October 2023, available in Japanese as follows: 東, 浩紀., 2023. 訂正可能性の哲学. 東京: ゲンロン.

(2) Arendt, H., 2018. The Human Condition. Second Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 291.

(3) Penrose, R., 2016. The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 3.

(4) Mill, J. S., 2006. On Liberty and The Subjection of Women. London: Penguin. p. 41.

(5) Arendt, H., 2018. The Human Condition. Second Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 291.

(6) Mill, J. S., 2006. On Liberty and The Subjection of Women. London: Penguin. p. 26.

(7) Buterin, V., 2022. DAOs are not corporations: where decentralization in autonomous organizations matters. [Online] Available at: https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/09/20/daos.html [Accessed 5 November 2022].

3.6.1 Reality

The power of the past is strong as the current people care about that, on the other hand the power of the present is also strong as it has the power of correctability. People are bound by their past experiences, it seems they continue to be motivated by the outer, those choices are also drawn by the previous. Primitive choices date back to their childhood or when they were born, their environments are bound by what their parents choose. Even if we use word choose here, it is more likely that we had to choose that way in many cases given the conditions at each case. The generation of originality is of difficulty.

Reality becomes a bit retrospective in human cognition. Even if one is sure about what happened in the past, it isn’t complete because that is why people do forget or something they think they did wasn’t what they actually did. This forgetting worths being focused on. Forgetfulness work, often not complete forgetfulness, but the state of somewhat forgotten. In the mixed state of remembering and forgetting, one remembers the thing to some extent, but not completely remembering, that can slightly change what has been, that is to say revise, and propose the renewed.

Our civilisations progressed with this power of forgetting with the time passed from one age to another. Even looking at how history has been woven, people continually has been putting their emphasis on what are historically important for human beings. They put value on certain period of time, ideas, objects. Without naming or making sentences such as rules that one can refer to, it is going to be less influential and eventually could be lost by the time it went by, in relation to the power of forgetness. Rules that people recognised important have been written for record.

Being remembered completely doesn’t occur when knowledge is transferred from one to another. That is when one uses symbols to tell what’s in one’s mind and another person comes to receive it. Even misinterpretation of what has been told is what can generate the new, derived from the original.

By emphasising forgetting in this writing, particularly above and below, some may misunderstand that it is not problematic to (pretend to) forget things that are inconsistent to their arguments, but it is likely for others to find and propose the inconsistency to them and the arguments cannot maintain the truthfulness.

5.1 Civilisation

One influential thought is that advancement doesn’t necessarily let human beings feel happiness, rather it would make people feel unhappy because of the new wants development creates and the gap between those who got them and not(1). Primarily, it’s been said that one has desire for material possessions which doesn’t have a point where it ends(2). Wealth doesn’t necessarily lead to the happiness of people.

Besides the progress of civilisation and happiness of people, how much gap of wealth human beings can tolerate? Comparing people in former eras and in modern era, civilization developed and people seek more wealth in the capitalism of 21st century, but it doesn’t necessarily let people feel happiness in their life.

If some are rich and others feel envious, those who feel envious towards certain people may feel less happiness in their life. How people are to find the happiness in their life matters. If people understand what makes him feel happy, for example refrain from excessive eating and know the enough amount of food needed per day and control, one would feel happy than requiring vast amount of food.

In the capitalism of the beginning of 21st century, it seek further profits. In order to maintain the high standards of life, people need to work harder causes stress. Requiring everyone to labour harder to maintain their living standard is a bit hard for them. The capitalism governs the wider aspects of society with the dominant use of statistics. The statistical penetrated into wider aspects resulted in the integration of societal rules with capitalism. It is not to completely deny the situation, but the problem is that most people are governed by the capitalist rule and not aware of others which may make happiness among them.

Highly civilized society has people’s intention in a lot of parts, that is partly why stress is more embedded in society. There is less uncultivated sphere in the world of 21st century. It may be better to keep the sphere in practice that one takes the sphere temporary and removes their ownership, and others use them in another time. The digitalisation is to look at the tiny details in the world without removing their eyes.

What appeared in 18th century is the “population”(3). As for the concept of population and its statistics, it is worth looking at the history of census in the US. In order to assemble data in US census, Herman Hollerith had ideas in “devising a punch card system for surveyors to use”(4). It “consisted of a set of punch cards and associated readers that used spring-mounted needles to pass through the holes in each card, creating an electrical loop that advanced the reader’s tally for a particular hole location”(5). His business strategy of renting the machines instead of selling made success in their businesses with their clients, and this origin leads to the International Business Machines (IBM)(6).

Think of community of a nation-state, one can look at strong tie and weak tie in governance, the former is more likely to ignore the balancing of gain and loss among them. The tie could be strengthened and weakened by trust as such that the government works improperly in using their revenue from tax, it is harder for the citizenry to have trust in them and vice versa. When the country becomes dense in their population, society becomes complex as it is going to further be in the cross roads of different interests of different people. The decision making and use of publicly received tax revenue could become hard for citizens to imagine.

Not directly connecting the individuals with the state, but the intermediary is necessary. It is a matter of how an intermediary can connect the opinions of their persons with another if required and with the nation-state. The idea of opinion leader could be the one whose books the ones fanatically follow as fans, loosely saying. The resilience of a nation is how much layers it maintains between the nation and individuals. Government whose budget is limited is not able to provide what citizens need completely, they should focus on how communities can be robust by having subcommunities in it.

Individualness comes from where one is born, spent their life, their language, age. No one can be born in the totally same condition with others. That makes a difference, diversity. Nationalism comes from the intimate feeling towards where one is born, spent one’s time in, as nation-state has constraints on their movement beyond border. Even if not constraint of nation-state, physically one is not able to put himself in different places simultaneously. In a social class they are born, some feel comfortable compared with the other classes, how one behaves is different. People cannot be born in the totally same condition. In that sense, the equality of being the totally same is not possible, what should be cared is equality of fairness.

Democracy emphasises the participatory aspect of the public. Some people recognise that citizens should participate more in the political sphere. In voting, in fact many people leave their decisions to others and things are going without their participation of voting. Citizens’ having their right to vote is a necessary right in democracy, but the fact that it is given to citizens doesn’t guarantee the higher percentage of turnout in election.

In representative democracy, people vote for candidate, whose personality matters a lot though there are of course people care more about and vote for candidate based on their policies. Even if they vote for policies, whether it is going to be implemented or not is a doubtful aspect of politics. The aspect of party-politics is too strong that too much time is spent on which party is attracting people, for example, in media. Not the content of policies but political groups are focused. Voting has the impression of voting to a representative, not the issues directly although a representative’s policies are the important factors in deciding their choice. What we should care is the content of politics, such as what kind of policies are going to be implemented.

Governing the world by one stream of thoughts is to eliminate the choices available in people’s end. Not necessarily we have to encourage capitalism all over the world, but suitable economic systems should be implemented depending on regions. That could be expressed as plurality which can be applied to evaluation, standards put in practice in societies.

The domain of business is a big one in capitalist economy. In 2020s, employees typically work 8 hours per day, 40 hours per week, additionally they often need to work extended hours as overtime. It occupies the large part of citizens’ life based on the time that it requires. Not only life of citizens, the influence of businesses has large influence in society. Businesses are not totally separated from other societal aspects. Society often requires businesses to comply with certain regulations, and more generally saying the changing environments of societies.

(1) Fukuyama, F., 2006. The end of history and the last man. First Free Press trade paperback edition 2006 ed. New York: Free Press. pp. 83-84.

(2) Fukuyama, F., 2006. The end of history and the last man. First Free Press trade paperback edition 2006 ed. New York: Free Press. p. 159

(3) Foucault, M., 1976. Histoire de la sexualité I: La volonté de savoir. Paris: Gallimard. pp. 35-.

(4) Zittrain, J., 2008. The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. p.11.

(5) Zittrain, J., 2008. The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. p.11.

(6) Zittrain, J., 2008. The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. pp.11-12.