What I would like to emphasise is that the difference of context or background among different groups of people causes the confrontation in a society. When it comes to the debates around the topic of freedom of expression, I do believe that the context of expression is what should be paid attention to more. In order to progress the debates in this domain, I make my argument on the context of expression. That is because what people perceive from an expression differs, if they have different backgrounds. In other words, if context differs, even if the expression is the same, what people perceive from the expression could differ. Besides, even if both persons claim the same argument, if what each experienced in their life is different, it could be different. This is a complex aspect of expression, but it is worth being taken into account provided that this aspect of expression causes tension among different groups of people in a society.
In a society of large population, there is a variety of people with different background. Of the limited time one has spent, they are not likely to imagine all the patterns of situation which persons in the same community face. Even the number of people crossing boundary of nation-states is enormous. In that situation, regarding the interpretation of an object, it could vary by each person. The community of larger scale is difficult to maintain compared with the smaller one as in the larger community it is more likely that what each person believes could differ and they often organise their own group that they share the same purpose, and others organise their own groups that the purposes are different.
Those groups could in some extreme cases are going to be a divide in a national scale. One of the particularly important differences among people is what happiness means to each member of the community. Some would seek the wealth of capital that maximises their happiness with abundant materials in their life, others would not feel happiness from that type of wealth and they rather feel happy when they spend their time in calmer way such as being surrounded by nature. In addition, when community is larger, there are different groups of people with different background emerges, these are represented by educational, geographical background. The latter geographical background means that the difference of geography has different culture in one’s background. Some culture is tied with the geographical factors such as abundance of nature or what has happened in a particular place and how it affected in the region over time and how the effect remains today. Where one was raised and spent his life so far, and that is sort of time and place matter affects the context in which one lives. Plus, the different living standards, that is different living conditions, such as the income would little by little differentiate the interests of people living in the same nation-state. There are different units as a globe, a continent, a nation-state, a province, etc. It depends on to what extent they would like to govern the region, but if it gets larger the more difficult to implement a kind of law which has legal and illegal distinction given the differences in each scale of community.
It would be much easier to refrain from having conflicts if the community is small and homogenous as it is with the people seeking the similar interests. However as the world is globalised in a sense that development of transportation system and information became available to huge number of people living on the earth and securing the freedom to choose the way they want to live, at least some in the world moves to the direction that the flow of persons into other communities and diversity in a community needs to be tolerated rather than enclosing the communities.
In the complex world where a vast number of persons look at the same expression, it is viewed by those who have different contexts. When controversy occurs, the different contexts have been claimed by different peoples. Even if different context among people may cause conflict, the difference doesn’t justify the restriction on freedom. It is because in ultimate sense every individual has different context of their own, and nobody is able to express if that restriction is put in place.
Around dispute on freedom of expression, it often seems that there’s group of people who feels uncomfortable by the expressions of another group. The latter group claims that they have their right or freedom to express it. These disputes are often seen in the topic of belief. There’s a different degree of importance in one’s life that some may have deeply been rooted in person’s identity and others are less related. If an emperor of a country is who has been receiving beliefs from the public over the decades, it is more likely to cause anger when some expression hurts the feelings of the public.
Even if the publisher claims the freedom of expression on the one hand, the perception or opinion of another is different, and it often seems that each side has the different context. Fundamentally, the contexts of persons are different depending on them as each has different experience in their life linked with when and how one has spent their life so far. It has inevitably to do with the physical world in which one has lived. The geographic and timely factors are tied to oneself. This is what is related to the idea of the reality, people are in the different positions, that is why different views arise.
Paving the context is seen in art and museum. The curation of art in a museum is an important element in the exhibition as it is how the works are presented towards the audience. It is how they provide the context to the audience.
On sensitive issues such as the ones related to their history, the same opinion uttered by a person of one nationality is perceived differently if that is uttered by another person of different nationality.
L'histoire de mes pensées 