© Melba Padilla Maggay, Ph.D.faithandscience.hku.hk/media/20180203_redtech3/... · On facts and...

© Melba Padilla Maggay, Ph.D.

Introduction

“If you repeat a

lie often enough,

sooner or later,

people believe

it.” - Josef Goebbels

© MELBA PADILLA MAGGAY, PH.D.

Introduction

The power of

subliminal fake

news and the

challenge of

‘wind-changing’


Some observations


On facts and artifacts:

•Today’s technologically-

mediated social environment:



What we know is

constructed for us by

media, those anonymous

authorities in newsrooms,

or trolls behind computer

terminals



We live in ‘shadows’ (in Ellul’s

sense), in contrast to what

C.S. Lewis calls our ‘primal

history’



Technology shapes us: ‘the

medium is the message’



Mcluhan: literacy leads to

linearity, or sequential thinking



Innis: orality privileges

keepers of memory



There is a sense in which media

as tool can enlarge the range of

what is humanly possible

(Mcluhan’s ‘extensions of man’),

as well as frame the limits of our

universe of discourse



cf. Daniel Katz: “While the

physical barriers to

communication are rapidly

disappearing, the psychological

obstacles remain.”



•Preconceptions and stereotypes do not necessarily break down before facts: lack of congruence is explained away as ‘exceptions to the rule’, and when too dissonant, seeks validating information from sources considered as authorities



•A ‘fact’ is a

value; we are

sensitized to

what we already

believe as true



‘Objectivity’ is at best ‘inter-

subjectivity’, shareable and

repeatable within a community

of meaning



e.g., the universe is a personal

reality: that the US is 10,000

miles away is less important than

that a family member or friend

lives there, or the ‘bias’ of

personal interest



We all ‘socially construct’ what

we perceive as facts



•On selective perception: a

function of the limits of what

we are capable of seeing


The Seven Blind Men & the Elephant



‘What you see is what you

get’, or why we only see what

we are trained to see:



The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis:

language is not only an

instrument for expressing

ideas, but shapes those ideas



William James: “We have no

eyes but for those aspects of

things that have been labeled

for us.”



e.g., Filipinos have no

indigenous word for ‘privacy’;

Eskimos have 30+ word

variants for ‘snow’



Suzanne Langer: “The limits of

my language are the limits of

my world.”



Some constructions from biblical

perspectives

•Empiricism and distortions in

the social sciences:


S.I. Hayakawa’s ‘Ladder of Abstraction’

Power over aswang

Lord of the Spirits

Saviour

Jesus

God the higher the

level of

generality, the

more abstract

and universal

but unusable for

a specific

context

the lower the

level of generality,

the more

concrete and

particular to

a specific context



perspectives

Emil Brunner’s ‘Law of the Closeness of

Relation’:

The nearer a ‘fact’ or a system is to the natural

world, the ‘harder’ it is as a science; the closer it

has to do with matters of the ‘heart’, or that

place that serves as integrating point, at which

the human being is drawn together as a unity,

the greater the likelihood of distortion



perspectives

Our epistemic decline: “Although

they knew God, they did not honor

him as God,” leads to worship of the

creature, darkening of the mind into

futility



perspectives

C.S. Lewis’

version of ‘the

fear of the

Lord’:



perspectives

cf. the Psalmist:



perspectives

•Our cultural mandate:

Naming the powers: who, or

what, is the thing that shapes

your mind and intellectual

environment?



perspectives

Cf. Walter Wink – institutions

develop a logic of their own, which

become the ‘spirit’ of a place or

organizational culture



perspectives

Ellul: society gets determined by

technology, which not only assumes

autonomy but rises to Faustian

power



perspectives

Discern when…



perspectives

Destroy ‘strongholds of the mind’

and open windows to a new world:



perspectives

Be ‘hermeneutically suspicious,’ how

and why we read what we read



perspectives

How do we read the ‘spirit of the

times’ – what the Germans call

‘Zeitgeist’ – and discern the work of

the ‘prince of the power of the air’?

(Ephesians 2:2)



perspectives

Discern the deep and surface

structures that need to be

addressed


Iceberg Theory of Culture


The Hermeneutical Cycle



perspectives

We do not just consume, critique or

imitate culture, but create culture,

an alternative thought environment,

a new ‘social imaginary’

cf. Philippians 4.8



perspectives

Practice a prophetic imagination:

“…[it is] the most subversive, redemptive act

that a leader of a faith community can undertake

in the midst of exiles. This work of poetic

alternative in the long run is more crucial than

one-on-one pastoral care or the careful

implementation of institutional goals….



perspectives


“That is because the work of poetic imagination

holds the potential of unleashing a community of

power and action that finally will not be

contained by any imperial restrictions and

definitions of reality….



perspectives


“...Jesus’ way of teaching parables invited his

community of listeners beyond visible realities of

Roman law and restrictive Jewish law,”



perspectives


“….[it was] out of tradition, specific, open-ended,

an alternative society of the ‘kingdom of God.’

He had no blueprints nor programs, “but turns

people loose from the givens of the day [so they

can] live toward new social possibilities…”

- Walter Brueggemann,

Hopeful Imagination, Prophetic Voices in Exile


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© Melba Padilla Maggay, Ph.D.faithandscience.hku.hk/media/20180203_redtech3/... · On facts and...

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