Freedoms of Behavior and Feelings

I was casually/causally thinking about concerns of distrust or disrespect.  I think our Founding Fathers intended for us to have subjective (personal) freedoms of perception and expression.  The First Amendment right to freedom of speech is part of what I think was the effort to encourage open-mindedness and exchange of ideas.  The concept of one's "capital" of mind, the five senses (see February 1, 2011 on this blog), is paramount to the challenges of freedom and pursuit of happiness.  Looking, hearing, smelling, tasting is free to all.  Feeling as touching has some legal parameters: touching with consent and age appropriateness.  Feeling emotions, producing hormones, responding to stimulus, this part of being is under question recently, it is the domain of point of view, education and experience.

It seems as if there is a desire to see respect in the eyes of others, even unknown others.  These feelings may have to do with the respect level of the self, for the self.  But is there even enough information available in the short moments of passage through the town, nation, World to convey such profoundness as respect? 

I was pondering facial expressions to convey information and I noticed in myself and others a quality to examine:  the narrowing/squinting to occlude light and widening/bulging to increase light coming into the eye.  This seems to be a reaction when looking at light or dark complexions and subtleties of features, it should not be a sign of manners, dis/trust, nor respect-level.  I think it is merely a service of looking, rather than feeling nor even yet assessing.

Interpretation of language, especially between languages is another concern.  What something means or appears to mean in a translation must be mitigated with emotion toward the intent of the original thinker/author.  I think "radicalization" of feelings based on language and laws, might be set on misunderstanding of the truth striving towards peace and harmony.  Also, when we find errors in thinking, based on fear or lack of information we must strive to prevail, retranslating as we may, toward peace and harmony.  The word that seems most dramatic to me is "America", to me it is my home of freedom, I believe it has been translated as "the unknown place" fraught with distrust and anxiety.  It is a word about explorers.  I wrote about this in this blog in my first entry on December 30, 2009 at the end of Nitrogen and Independence.

Ultimately, as we get to know each other may we remember to treat each other as each wishes to be treated and try to translate each other anticipating the best of each other, even while accepting personal freedoms and differences of behavior and feelings.  On this note, I feel compelled to acknowledge that I do not believe in the false hope of equality, I think it is a joyless guarantee of failure.  Equity, on the other hand utilizes the passage of time and the variability of (personal accounts of) value and desire.