Melba Padilla Maggay, Ph.D.

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1 Melba Padilla Maggay, Ph.D.

2 Introduction If you repeat a lie often enough, sooner or later, people believe it. - Josef Goebbels

3 Introduction The power of subliminal fake news and the challenge of wind-changing

4 Some observations MELBA PADILLA MAGGAY, PH.D.

5 On facts and artifacts: Today s technologicallymediated social environment:

6 On facts and artifacts: What we know is constructed for us by media, those anonymous authorities in newsrooms, or trolls behind computer terminals

7 On facts and artifacts: We live in shadows (in Ellul s sense), in contrast to what C.S. Lewis calls our primal history

8 On facts and artifacts: Technology shapes us: the medium is the message

9 On facts and artifacts: Mcluhan: literacy leads to linearity, or sequential thinking

10 On facts and artifacts: Innis: orality privileges keepers of memory

11 On facts and artifacts: 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

12 On facts and artifacts: cf. Daniel Katz: While the physical barriers to communication are rapidly disappearing, the psychological obstacles remain.

13 On facts and artifacts: 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

14 On facts and artifacts: A fact is a value; we are sensitized to what we already believe as true

15 On facts and artifacts: Objectivity is at best intersubjectivity, shareable and repeatable within a community of meaning

16 On facts and artifacts: 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

17 On facts and artifacts: We all socially construct what we perceive as facts

18 On facts and artifacts: On selective perception: a function of the limits of what we are capable of seeing

19 The Seven Blind Men & the Elephant

20 On facts and artifacts: What you see is what you get, or why we only see what we are trained to see:

21 On facts and artifacts: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: language is not only an instrument for expressing ideas, but shapes those ideas

22 On facts and artifacts: William James: We have no eyes but for those aspects of things that have been labeled for us.

23 On facts and artifacts: e.g., Filipinos have no indigenous word for privacy ; Eskimos have 30+ word variants for snow

24 On facts and artifacts: Suzanne Langer: The limits of my language are the limits of my world.

26 Some constructions from biblical perspectives Empiricism and distortions in the social sciences:

27 S.I. Hayakawa s Ladder of Abstraction the higher the level of generality, the more abstract and universal but unusable for a specific context God Jesus Saviour Lord of the Spirits Power over aswang the lower the level of generality, the more concrete and particular to a specific context

28 Some constructions from biblical 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

29 Some constructions from biblical 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

30 Some constructions from biblical perspectives C.S. Lewis version of the fear of the Lord :

31 Some constructions from biblical perspectives cf. the Psalmist:

32 Some constructions from biblical perspectives Our cultural mandate: Naming the powers: who, or what, is the thing that shapes your mind and intellectual environment?

33 Some constructions from biblical perspectives Cf. Walter Wink institutions develop a logic of their own, which become the spirit of a place or organizational culture

34 Some constructions from biblical perspectives Ellul: society gets determined by technology, which not only assumes autonomy but rises to Faustian power

35 Some constructions from biblical perspectives Discern when

36 Some constructions from biblical perspectives Destroy strongholds of the mind and open windows to a new world:

37 Some constructions from biblical perspectives Be hermeneutically suspicious, how and why we read what we read

38 Some constructions from biblical 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)

39 Some constructions from biblical perspectives Discern the deep and surface structures that need to be addressed

40 Iceberg Theory of Culture MELBA PADILLA MAGGAY, PH.D.

41 The Hermeneutical Cycle MELBA PADILLA MAGGAY, PH.D.

42 Some constructions from biblical 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

43 Some constructions from biblical 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.

44 Some constructions from biblical perspectives Practice a prophetic imagination: 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.

45 Some constructions from biblical perspectives Practice a prophetic imagination:...jesus way of teaching parables invited his community of listeners beyond visible realities of Roman law and restrictive Jewish law,

46 Some constructions from biblical perspectives Practice a prophetic imagination:.[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

in order to formulate and communicate meaning, and our capacity to use symbols reaches far beyond the basic. This is not, however, primarily a book

in order to formulate and communicate meaning, and our capacity to use symbols reaches far beyond the basic. This is not, however, primarily a book Preface What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty