Trust in a social and digital world

Philosophy

http://social-epistemology.com ISSN: 2471-9560 Trust in a Social and Digital World 1 Mark Alfano, Australian Catholic University and Delft University of Technology, firstname.lastname@example.com; Colin Klein, Australian National University, email@example.com –––––––––––––––––– Alfano, Mark and Colin Klein. 2019. "Trust in a Social and Digital World." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 8 (10) 1-8. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-4tk. 1 This work was supported by a grant from the Australian Research Council (DP190101507). 1 8 (10): 1-8. 2019. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-4tk The average Australian spends almost 10 hours a week on social media; a majority report that checking Facebook is one of the first things they do in the morning (Sensis 2017). Recent revelations about fake news and extremist sentiments spread via social media are thus deeply troubling. Information on social media platforms tends to be amplified and spread by friends, family, and other people we trust. Even the most skeptical among us might therefore be drawn in by falsehoods from familiar voices. Some are more socially epistemically virtuous (or vicious) than others. Anecdotally, we all seem to know an uncle or grandfather who uses social media to amplify fake news, conspiracy theories, and other epistemically problematic viral content. This impression was born out by a recent study, which found that there are significant individual differences in the disposition to share fake news (Guess et al. 2019). In particular, the authors found that conservative and older social media users were significantly more likely to share fake news associated with the 2016 American presidential election. Remarkably, users over the age of 65 shared seven times as much fake news as younger users. This demonstrates that there are meaningful individual differences in people's social epistemic dispositions. In his contribution to this conversation, Marco Meyer shows that a simple psychometric scale can be used to predict acceptance of both fake news and conspiracy theories. The dissemination of fake news on Facebook and other platforms is a modern manifestation of a much older problem. We can only learn so much about the world on our own. For the rest, we must depend on others to supply true, reliable, and relevant information. Reliance on an epistemic network is not merely unavoidable; in the best cases, it is empowering, greatly increasing the scope of our knowledge. But while there are benefits to distributing one's cognitive load onto an epistemic network, doing so is fraught with dangers. Other agents sometimes have reason to mislead, and are themselves sometimes misled. In her contribution to this conversation, Emily Sullivan argues that, as messages propagate through networks, the communicative intention of the original speaker can be lost to such an extent that what started as one type of speech act (e.g., a joke) might be reasonably received as another (e.g., a piece of testimony). If this is on the right track, then our social networks have the potential to transform jokes into lies. Yet assessing the friendliness or hostility of the epistemic environment is neither an easy nor a straightforward task (Alfano and Skorburg 2017a; Isserow and Klein 2017). It requires establishing which epistemic virtues are needed by agents who navigate epistemic networks such as the Internet. It also requires developing a philosophical model of secure trust that takes such networks into account. Finally, it requires investigating the structure and information flows of contemporary online communities in order to show how the epistemic capacities of agents embedded in those networks might shape and be shaped by features of those networks. Given that the subfield of social epistemology is several decades old (Coady 1995), contemporary epistemologists ought to be well-placed to respond to these new challenges. M. Alfano, C. Klein 2 In this conversation at the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, we aim to kickstart a discussion of exactly these topics. The New Normal People rely on epistemic networks of peers, authorities, and strangers to convey the truth about a wide variety of topics to which they do not have direct access. The most prominent contemporary epistemic network is the Internet. Compared to traditional epistemic networks, the Internet has catalyzed both quantitative and qualitative shifts in the information ecology along multiple dimensions: Volume: we have access to more information. Velocity: we have access to information more quickly and fluently. Veracity: we have access to more accurate information. Variety: we have access to more diverse information sources. Voice: we have more power to make ourselves and others heard. In our quest to believe the truth and avoid error (James 1896/1979; Morton 2013), these are welcome developments. In the early days of the Internet, it seemed to some that we were on our way to an epistemic utopia in which we spend less time and effort on basic cognitive tasks, freeing up attention for complex and collaborative inquiry. In this utopia, the vices arising from cognitive miserliness (Fiske and Taylor 1984) would be rebaptized as the virtues of thrift. The result has been decidedly more mixed. The Internet has made available an unprecedented number of accurate sources. However, they must be sifted from the spammers, trolls, practical jokers, conspiracy theorists, counterintelligence sock-puppets, liars, and ordinary uninformed and misinformed citizens who also proliferate online. Furthermore, information now comes at us so quickly that we may neglect to exercise critical scrutiny. The promise of diverse information sources is easily and inadvertently quashed as we construct "filter bubbles" and "echo chambers" around ourselves (Pariser 2011; Lynch 2016; Sunstein 2017; Nguyen 2018; Sullivan et al. 2019) and choose experts who confirm our pre-existing biases (Goldman 2001). The influence of targeted political marketing by Cambridge Analytica on recent elections in the UK, the USA, and Kenya demonstrates the urgency of this problem (Bright 2017). Thus, while each of the shifts above may seem individually good, they interact in problematic ways. The increase in volume and variety of information brought about by the Internet makes it more difficult to find veridical sources, especially given increased velocity and voice. As a society, we are still struggling with these changes. These problems can be addressed by asking two related question: 1. Given the topology of the epistemic networks we find ourselves in, what sorts of epistemic dispositions ought we to have? 3 8 (10): 1-8. 2019. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-4tk 2. Given our actual epistemic dispositions, which network structures are more likely to produce epistemic goods? The answer to the first question might emphasize virtues such as skepticism or openmindedness. The answer to the second would categorize different types of network organization given our natural epistemic dispositions (Zollman 2013; Pallavicini et al. 2018), suggesting which sorts of communities might be at special risk. Contemporary Intellectual Virtues in Context While people are directly familiar with some of the world, they rely on the reports of others to mediate their relation to much of the rest of the world. Traditional accounts of intellectual virtues focus on the individual. Contemporary social epistemology tends to focus on dyadic relations between a single speaker and a single listener. Neither seems adequate to capturing the more complex interdependency facilitated by large public forums online. After all, if virtues are the dispositions we need given the environment we inhabit (Foot 2003), then when our environment changes significantly, so too will the virtues appropriate to it (Heersmink 2018). Likewise, if vices are dispositions we need to avoid given the environment we inhabit, then when our environment changes significantly, so too will the vices that undermine us. In their contribution to this conversation, J. Adam Carter and Daniella Meehan address a trio of vices related to distrust. Appropriate intellectual virtues may also depend on an agent's position within a network, as well as the topology of the network in which they find themselves (Alfano 2016; Alfano and Skorburg 2017b; Alfano and Robinson 2017). For example, it has long been known that epistemic networks are typically not uniform but rather form a 'small world' or 'rich club', in which information flows through hub individuals (Milgram 1967). Hubs enjoy a much greater degree of epistemic power than the average, where such power is understood as the ability to "influence what people think, believe, and know," as well as to "enable and disable others from exerting epistemic influence (Archer et al. forthcoming). People who occupy the hubs of epistemic networks have exactly this sort of power, and thus need to think carefully about which messages to amplify to their audiences of thousands, millions, and even billions. In his contribution to this conversation, William Tuckwell explores this point in greater detail. The topology or geometry of networks is particularly important if one wants to intervene on problematic networks (Alfano 2017). For example, Alfano and Robinson (2017) argue that the disposition to gossip appropriately is a virtue in some social contexts. Even uncertain and unreliable gossip can be functional in an appropriately structured network (Mitchell et al. 2016). Likewise, Alfano (2013) argues for the importance of the courage to publicly announce what one knows in the face of silencing social and institutional pressure, thereby potentially triggering information cascades (Bicchieri 2006). The main idea underlying this work is that a virtuous communicator not only speaks, listens, repeats, and passes along what she's heard, but also monitors the structure of the network she's in, as well as the structure of the network others are in and think they're in. Such a communicator uses their knowledge M. Alfano, C. Klein 4 of network structure to make decisions about which lines of trusted communication to open up or employ, as well as which to shut down. At a much larger scale, Twitter, Facebook, and other tech giants continuously adjust the algorithms that construct users' newsfeeds from their social networks, suggest new connections, and block problematic users. These phenomena involve rewiring an epistemic network by adding or subtracting lines of trusted communication. A line of trusted communication can, for instance, be targeted by censoring toxic speech (Tirrell 2017), or by undermining the trust that enables problematic messages to spread. Problematic Epistemic Networks Epistemic networks can also become problematic in their own right when they play a core role in circulating problematic beliefs. Consider, for example, the spread of online conspiracy theories. . Exposure to and engagement with conspiracy theories can lead to a variety of negative outcomes, from decreasing the likelihood of vaccination (Jolley and Douglas 2014) to rejection of climate change data (Lewandowsky et al. 2013; van der Linden 2015) to political extremism (Hofstadter 1945; Van Prooijen et al. 2015). Much psychological work on conspiracy theories has focused on individual-level factors, often analogizing conspiracy endorsement to pathological conditions in which individuals form 'monological' belief systems (Goetzel 1994; Swami et al. 2011, 2014). Yet conspiracy endorsement has a complex social epistemology. Apparently contradictory beliefs can often be reconciled by appeal to higher-order epistemic principles (Wood and Douglas 2015; Nyhan et al. 2016). Further, conspiracy theorizing itself has a social function: it helps forge narratives of resistance and self-identification (Raab et al. 2013; Sapountzis et al. 2013; Cichocka et al. 2016). These effects are amplified by online forums in which conspiracy theories are freely traded and discussed (Wood and Douglas 2013; Bessi et al. 2015). Media coverage of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, for example, appears to be partly explained by exposure to anti-vaccination sentiment on Twitter (Dunn et al. 2017) and Facebook (Smith and Graham 2019); further, this effect appears to be driven as much by social connections as by the content of the tweets themselves (Zhou et al. 2015; Sullivan et al. 2019). Large forums such as Reddit.com have active conspiracy communities that bring together people of diverse intellectual interests and drive discussion around common narratives (Klein et al. 2018, ms. ). These online forums often involve considerable disagreement and debate, and yet-at least for some subpopulations of posters-entrenched opinion as well. Though we have spoken of the Internet as a single social network, the preceding also emphasizes the heterogeneity of online networks at a finer grain of analysis. Online communities such as Stormfront and 4chan are notoriously, and perhaps irredeemably, toxic. Some of these differences may be driven by design decisions: sites that promote highvolume, anonymous or pseudonymous commentary should be expected to differ in their epistemic dynamics from those that promote slower dialogue and reliable reputation- 5 8 (10): 1-8. 2019. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-4tk tracking. There are also variations within sites themselves. Reddit contains both notoriously toxic communities (Chandrasekharan et al. 2017) and surprisingly well-ordered, epistemically virtuous groups (Tan et al. 2016). Conclusion Epistemic networks are older than humans themselves (Sterelny 2012). Yet the recent advent of online social networks has changed our epistemic landscape in both qualitative and quantitative ways. We have argued that the requirements on virtuous epistemic agents must necessarily take into account the altered scale and topology of new epistemic networks. Conversely, new networks bring with them both new opportunities and risks for top-down, policy-level decision-makers. Understanding the full extent of these changes will require moving beyond dyadic analyses and considering the full range of network effects on social knowledge. This process has already begun, and the richness and variety of online sources gives the social epistemologist plenty to examine, explore, and explain. References Alfano, Mark. 2017. "The Topology of Communities of Trust." Russian Sociological Review 15 (4): 30-56. Alfano, Mark. 2016. "Friendship and the Structure of Trust." In From Personality to Virtue: Essays in the Psychology and Ethics of Character edited by Alberto Masala and Jonathan Webber, 186-206. Oxford University Press. Alfano, Mark. 2013. Character as Moral Fiction. 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Information, Communication & Society 22 (9): 1310-27. Sterelny, Kim. 2012. The Evolved Apprentice. Cambridge: MIT Press. Sullivan, Emily, Max Sondag, Ignaz Rutter, Wouter Meulemans, Scott Cunningham, Delft Bettina Speckmann, and Mark Alfano. 2019. "Can Real Social Epistemic Networks Deliver the Wisdom of Crowds? In Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Volume 3 edited by Tania Lombrozo, Joshua Knobe, and Shaun Nichols. Oxford University Press. Sunstein, Cass. 2017. #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media. Princeton University Press. Swami, Viren, Rebecca Coles, Stefan Stieger, Jakob Pietschnig, Adrian Furnham, Sherry Rehim, Martin Voracek, Rebecca Coles, Stefan Stieger, Jakob Pietschnig, Adrian Furnham, Sherry Rehim, and Martin Voracek. 2011. "Conspiracist Ideation in Britain and Austria: Evidence of a Monological Belief System and Associations Between Individual Psychological Differences and Real-World and Fictitious Conspiracy Theories." 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From childrenâs literature to sustainability science, and young scientists for a more sustainable Earth

Philosophy

This essay evolved from my keynote address for the plenary session of the ASEAN Conference for Young Scientists 2019 organized by the ASEAN Secretariat, Vietnam Ministry of Science and Technologyâwhose main theme is sustainability scienceâorganized at Hanoi-based Phenikaa University. It has also benefited from my advisory work for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Journal of Sustainability Education Vol. 24, December 2020 ISSN: 2151-7452 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Quan-Hoang Vuong (Ph.D., Université Libre de Bruxelles) is Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Social Research, Phenikaa University in Hanoi, Vietnam. He is chairman of the Vietnam chapter of the European Association of Science Editors and serves in the NAFOSTED Scientific Council on Basic Research (Economics Section, 2019-2021). Dr. Vuong has published more than 150 academic articles and book chapters in more than 50 refereed journals and books by such publishers as Elsevier, Inderscience, Nature Publishing Group, Springer, Praeger, Wiley, World Scientific, etc. From children's literature to sustainability science, and young scientists for a more sustainable Earth Quan-Hoang Vuong Centre for Interdisciplinary Social Research, Phenikaa University, Yen Nghia, Ha Dong District, Hanoi 100803, Vietnam Contact: email@example.com http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0790-1576 Abstract As the future of human development increasingly hinges on the need for sustainable education, this essay re-examines the imminent threats to humankind and the relevance of achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to the engagement with sustainability science among today's young scientists. It also discusses some socio-political and economic challenges to achieving sustainability and argues that developing sustainability science is difficult but not impossible. The hope lies in our current efforts to build productive and creative scientific communities through nurturing youth engagement with science via multiple channels such as children's literature and science communication. Keywords: sustainability science; youth engagement; scientific mindset; ecological inequalities; climate change cliché. From children's literature to sustainability science, and young scientists for a more sustainable Earth Journal of Sustainability Education http://www.susted.org/ From children's literature to sustainability science, and young scientists for a more sustainable Earth Quan-Hoang Vuong 1. Introduction In a children's book titled "Trong Rừng Dẻ Gai"1 (lit. "In the Hazelnut Forest") written in 1974 by the late Vietnamese writer Nguyen Thi Ngoc Tu (1942-2013), the mystifying forests and natural splendor of the northern province of Quang Ninh were brought to life. Despite having been written during the Resistance War against America and about an evacuation destination for many northern Vietnamese at the time, the book opens up a world where people of different ethnic minorities mingled, where the mountains and forests of the country's northeastern region raged on, and where many threatened species in the Red List of International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) such as tiger and pheasants roamed about (T. N. T. Nguyen, 1974). This is just one in the treasure trove of children's books published in the 1960s70s about the grandeur of Vietnamese nature, which includes "Đảo Hoang" (lit. "Deserted Island") by To Hoai (published in 1969), and "Thú Rừng Tây Nguyên" (lit. "Wild species of Central Highlands forests") by Thien Luong (in 1975), etc. Even the Vietnamese children who were born into big cities like Hanoi during that era had grown up with a certain sense of pride about its urban green space as well as the historic Old Quarter, where unique signs of cultural transmission and evolution remain today (Q.-H. Vuong, Bui, et al., 2019). Figure 1. The cover of the book "Trong Rừng Dẻ Gai" written in 1974 by the late Vietnamese writer Nguyen Thi Ngoc Tu (1942-2013). 1 The scientific name of the tree is Fagus sylvatica, and in general, it is often called the European beech or common beech, a deciduous tree belonging to the beech family Fagaceae. Quan-Hoang Vuong Vol. 24, December 2020 ISSN: 2151-7452 Children's literature reveals more than what it appears to tell. It is an important-if not indispensable-window through which a generation would come to see different facets of life and human nature. I am fortunate or unfortunate enough to be one of those generations. Growing up in the mid-1970s, when the B52 bombing had become the past, my memories are a reflection of the images of a Hanoi where the Franco-Chinese houses (Q.-H. Vuong, Bui, et al., 2019) hid among the lush greenery of big old trees. Over the past decades, due to rapid urbanization and industrialization, many of the images portrayed in these books-the lustrous forests, the dancing animals, the pristine mountains, and waters-have gradually withered. Recently, I have observed birds increasingly depend on human wastewater to quench their thirst. In Figure 2, a sparrow desperately sought drinking water from an air conditioner wastewater pipe. These days-old chicks really could not fly well yet, so they hopped in little steps around the pipe. How did they know to go to the pipe? Their parents taught them. A few months ago, I observed their parents drinking from this same pipe. Coming to the pipe to relieve their thirst was dangerous for these young wild birds because many children try to catch them, and drinkers consider roasted sparrows a delicacy. Also, to reach the water pipe, the birds had to avoid many obstacles, including motorbikes. Figure 2: A young sparrow drinks from an air conditioner's wastewater in Hanoi (taken by the author in August 2018). It is also a pessimistic reminder that Hanoi's annual rainfall is 1,600mm/year, which means there should be enough water for all animals living in the region (Associated Press, 2018; General Statistics Office, 2018), yet what we see is a stark demonstration of the growing "ecological inequalities." Deforestation and illegal logging first emerged as a major problem in Vietnam during the 1980s-90s (FAO, 2001). The mismanagement of forests has continued to plague mountainous regions in poverty (McElwee, 2016; Meyfroidt & Lambin, 2008). The beauty of Vietnamese nature, as a generation once knew, is now in danger, and the age-old stories that are worth passing on have become little more than ancient artifacts-to be reminisced of rather than to be experienced again. This picture of Vietnam stands in contrast to that of an economic miracle the country is often hailed for. Vietnam has successfully shed its war-torn past and food insecurity as one of the From children's literature to sustainability science, and young scientists for a more sustainable Earth Journal of Sustainability Education http://www.susted.org/ world's poorest to becoming a lower middle-income country. Yet, there are costly prices paid for the rapid economic development, and its nature and natural resources are those casualties. As the future of human development increasingly hinges on the need for sustainable education and science, this essay zooms out at the imminent threats to humankind and the relevance of achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to science-technology research among today's young scientists. It also discusses some socio-political and economic aspects of sustainability and concludes with a proposal for developing sustainable science. 2. Planet habitability, SDGs, and sustainability science research "...that tripod of theoretical cataclysms that have been felt to force disturbances deep down in the foundations of the "exact sciences." The three discoveries appear to deliver us into an unfamiliar world, one so at odds with our previous assumptions and intuitions that, nearly a century on, we are still struggling to make out where, exactly, we have landed [...] Godel's incompleteness theorems. Einstein's relativity theories. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle." –– Goldstein (2006) in Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel. As philosopher Rebecca Goldstein has rightly observed, it is true that with advances in science, the world is propelled into a time where things are speedier and more uncertain than any period in human history. It has been a little over ten years since the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched its Kepler Mission in March 2009 with the purpose of finding potentially habitable planets orbiting other stars like our Sun (NASA, 2017). The mission, which discovered 2,662 exoplanets during its nine-year service, many of which could be habitable (NASA, 2018), rekindled our hope for evidence of life beyond Earth as well as awakened our collective imagination by turning some of the most far-fetched and abstract notions into identifiable remote destinations (Batalha, 2018). Concrete evidence of an Earth-like planet has not surfaced despite hundreds of millions of dollars being spent, leaving Earth as the only habitable planet to date. Perhaps, the hope for a habitable planet or the dream to colonize Mars comes from the depressing reality that we are currently living. In Collapse, Jared Diamond (Diamond, 2005) suggested that two main causes for the fall of past civilizations are the destructive tendency towards our own kind and the environment. Every day, the media covers death from terrorist attacks, gun violence, traffic accident, or even death from overwork. Meanwhile, human-made fire, plastic, and waste continue to destroy nature and wildlife; the climate has been producing more extreme weather patterns and severe natural disasters. The responses could not become more diametrically opposed: to find it hard not to think about the end (Franzen, 2019) or to be jaded to a point where climate change becomes a cliché. Given that we do not have a viable option of human habitability beyond Earth and that life on Earth is under serious threats, there is an urgent need to abide by a course of action to achieve the 17 SDGs (Figure 3). It is clear that the development of science and technology is the underlying critical factor to meeting these goals, from eliminating poverty (SDG1), hunger (SDG2), ensuring good health and well-being (SDG3), building infrastructure (SDG9), and Quan-Hoang Vuong Vol. 24, December 2020 ISSN: 2151-7452 bringing about clean water-sanitation (SDG6) and clean energy (SDG7), to name a few. Additionally, SDG4, which outlines the need for inclusive and equitable quality education for all, would lay the ground for science education and research in children and teachers at a global level. The UNESCO 2019 Forum on Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship, which was hosted by Vietnam in July 2019, provides a venue to reflect on the policies and steps toward achieving the SDGs (MDPI, 2019). Figure 3. A summary of the 17 SDGs, adopted by all UN Member States in 2015 (Source: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs) Much of this is indubitably obvious. The lofty goals presented and discussed numerous times by the media and academia have become nothing more but cliché talking points, making the public over-saturated with topics that ought to be taken seriously in their own rights. Perhaps the more worrying turn is how even policymakers in the world's leading nation, the United States, have turned to attack the scientific community and question the value of scientific research (Tollefson, 2018; Q.-H. Vuong, 2018; Q. H. Vuong, 2020b). In 2017, the administration under US President Donald Trump effectively withdrew from the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation and later disbanded a government advisory committee for climate science (Tollefson, 2017). In one of the latest developments that are counter to the scientific spirit, on November 11, 2019, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration had drafted a proposal under which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would require scientists to disclose all of their raw data, including confidential medical records, for EPA to validate an academic study's conclusions (Friedman, 2019). The draft bill threatens to reverse the admissibility of many landmark studies – such as one that proves a link between mercury from power plants and brain impairment (Trasande, Landrigan, & Schechter, 2005) or a correlation between paint dust exposure and children's behavior disorders (Liu et al., 2014) – because personal data were used and could not be disclosed. These challenges in socio-political and economic terms present considerable barriers to achieving sustainability, not just in science but also for humanity. 3. Light of hope Not all hopes have been lost, fortunately. There continue to be numerous contributions to building and sustaining a better life on Earth by policymakers, scientists, activists, and individuals across continents. If on one side of the planet where the United States no longer champions climate science and sustainability as critical issues, then on the other side, a city in Japan, Kitakyushu, is known for adopting environment-friendly industrial policies since 1967 (Low, 2013). One of our latest studies on this case examines the impacts of green growth policies on air pollutant reduction and industrial growth in Kitakyushu city, in the belief that there are From children's literature to sustainability science, and young scientists for a more sustainable Earth Journal of Sustainability Education http://www.susted.org/ valuable lessons for developing and developed economies alike (Q.-H. Vuong, Ho, Nguyen, & Nguyen, 2019). Furthermore, our lab's collaboration with IUCN has resulted in ongoing research about Vietnamese business and their engagement with environmental preservation and protection. By scanning the news on environment and business from Vietnamese news outlets, preliminary findings suggested a high level of business involvement from manufacturing, logistic, agriculture, and environment industry in environmental-damaging scandals. Besides our own works, other Vietnamese scholars have also explored the relationship between the environment and society. Pioneering works are from senior scholars such as Vo Tong Xuan (Dapice & Xuan, 2012; Pingali & Xuan, 1992; Xuan, 1995), or Tran Duc Vien (Rambo & Tran, 2001; Tran, 2003, 2011), who have researched the social aspects of agriculture and human impact on sustainability. Some of the aforementioned examples highlight the need to be patient, to maintain scientific integrity and trust in the scientific enterprise, and to reframe our approaches to the multifaceted issues of sustainability. There is indeed light to be seen at the end of every scientific inquiry, however improper it may appear. On November 11, 2019, the media reported that a deer-like animal-the silver-backed chevrotain Tragulus versicolor (Figure 4)-has been found again in the wild in Vietnam for the first time in 30 years (M.-T. Ho, 2019; A. Nguyen et al., 2019; Nogrady, 2019). The rediscovery was all the more remarkable because, just when the research team, comprised of many experts at IUCN, had thought finding this species would be unlikely due to the lack of documentation or recent detection, they received help from the local people near Nha Trang forests (Nogrady, 2019). With camera traps in the forests, they were able to capture the image of a once lost species, giving many of us Vietnamese for the first time photographic evidence of a cheo cheo, a creature so endearingly drawn on the cover of the 1975 classic book "Thú Rừng Tây Nguyên" (lit. "Wild species of Central Highlands forests") (Figure 5). The finding not only confirms the beauty of scientific discovery and collaboration but also ignites hopes for biodiversity conservation today. Quan-Hoang Vuong Vol. 24, December 2020 ISSN: 2151-7452 Figure 4. A photo of a Cheo cheo lưng bạc (silver-backed chevrotain Tragulus versicolor) that was recently re-discovered in Vietnam (Source: SIE/GWC/Leibniz-IZW/NCNP on Nature at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03467-7) Figure 5. The cover of the book "Thú Rừng Tây Nguyên" (lit. "Wild Species of the Central Highlands Forests") published by Kim Dong Publishing House in 1975. Going beyond the academic realm, there are also hopes from the business community. Here are some notable initiatives toward sustainable science and the environment from Vietnam. First, IUCN Vietnam has launched a number of initiatives to support the strategic development of the Vietnam Business for Environment (VB4E) (IUCN, 2019). VB4E aims to engage Vietnamese businesses in the process of pursuing sustainable development, which will protect us from the seemingly inevitable fate that Jared Dimond discussed (Diamond, 2005). Our team members are honored to support IUCN in finding a suitable approach for VB4E. Second, Phenikaa University, Hanoi, and its Phenikaa Innovation Foundation are constantly advocating for a scientific environment that inspires innovation and "responsible creativity." The term "responsible creativity" was coined by Chairman Dang Le Nguyen Vu of Trung Nguyen Coffee, a leading Vietnamese business in the coffee industry, in his proposal to the ASEAN Secretariat and United Nations Academic Impact in 2012 (Nancy K. Napier, 2012; Nancy K Napier & Vuong, 2013). 4. Youth engagement with scientific research "We small guys sleep on narrow beds Our small dreams crush our little fates." From children's literature to sustainability science, and young scientists for a more sustainable Earth Journal of Sustainability Education http://www.susted.org/ –– Che Lan Vien (1960), translated by Nancy K Napier and Vuong (2013). A sustainable future cannot be without the input of the youth. The world has recently heard the voices of climate activists such as Greta Thunberg or Jamie Margolin (Marris, 2019). And in every corner of the world, there are young people who determine to leverage their scientific mindset into building sustainable businesses. There are young scientists who aspire to master the methods and tools of modern science to solve the world's problems. Indeed, in the constant battle to find solutions to local and global problems, the inputs of young, competent, creative, and idealistic minds are absolutely a resource the world cannot do without. Young philosophers and researchers such as William MacAskill, Benjamin Todd, and Toby Ord have successfully pushed forward the prime agendas of the effective-altruism movement by founding and running multiple foundations that direct global resources toward a charity that has saved the most lives or help people to choose a career that will maximize their altruistic impacts in the world, or conduct basic research on the questions of global priorities (MacAskill, 2018; MacAskill, Mogensen, & Ord, 2018). Effectively, these young scholars' works have revolutionized how people think about philanthropy, charity, and career choice. In other words, I would argue, they have nudged people toward a more sustainable way of conceptualizing these traditional activities. Meanwhile, myopic conceptions of sustainability can cause real damages to the world. For example, one of the influential misconceptions of the concept, especially in business circles, is that sustainable business equals long-term profit. This view has directly translated into the way some businesses had dealt with environmental resources; the cases of Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) or A Cuong Mineral Group (ACM) are the prime examples (Hodal & Kelly, 2013; Linh, 2015; Q.-H. Vuong et al., 2020). There are many reasons for their financial struggles, but mindless deforestation and illegal waste dumping are certainly among the contributing factors. In fact, our recent works have pointed out an urgent need to engage business in solving environmental issues, enhancing biodiversity, and fostering social responsibilities for protecting nature (M.-H. Nguyen & Vuong, 2020; Q.-H. Vuong, Ho et al., 2019; Q.-H. Vuong et al., 2020; Q. H. Vuong, La, Vuong, & Ho, 2020). To do this, we need a new cultural value that puts healing nature at its core, such as a semiconducting principle that emphasizes a net environmental value in calculating a business's net profit (Q. H. Vuong, 2020a). The example of the young philosophers above epitomizes the spirit of academic entrepreneurship (Glassman et al., 2003): being able to create and seize opportunities within an academic setting given limited available resources. This is an important area, often overlooked by both the media, the academia, and perhaps the young scientists as well. The father of quantum computation, physicist David Deutsch has famously pointed out that people often confuse sustainability with a branch of resource management science, while the true essence of being sustainable is being able to solve problems regardless of available resources, which requires the ability to innovate, and culture of criticism (Deutsch, 2011). In a recent article on the sustainability of research networks, the authors, following Deutsch (2011), suggest sustaining scientific communities, which are productive and innovative, is the way forward in the constant battle in building a sustainable future (M. T. Ho, Nguyen, Vuong, & Vuong, 2017). Building Quan-Hoang Vuong Vol. 24, December 2020 ISSN: 2151-7452 such scientific communities requires nurturing youth engagement with science and the scientific mindset. When young people are properly equipped with a scientific mindset, with the right entrepreneurial attitude, there is no shortage of problems they can confront to move the world into a more sustainable future. Since 2018, based on the national project of collecting and analyzing data on the scientific productivity of Vietnamese social scientists (Q.-H. Vuong et al., 2018), we have created a scientific communication platform (https://sc.sshpa.com), the first of its kind in Vietnam, where we summarized and introduced publications of Vietnamese scholars worldwide in the Vietnamese language. The hope is that this community can help engage and nurture young minds with big, daring dreams for science and a sustainable future. Nowadays, doing science means one cannot avoid sustainability. Acknowledgment This essay evolved from my keynote address for the plenary session of the ASEAN Conference for Young Scientists 2019 organized by the ASEAN Secretariat, Vietnam Ministry of Science and Technology-whose main theme is sustainability science-organized at Hanoibased Phenikaa University. It has also benefited from my advisory work for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). I want to thank my research team members, namely Nguyen T. Hong Kong, Ho Manh Tung, La Viet Phuong, Nguyen Minh Hoang, Ho Manh Toan, and Vuong Thu Trang. 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MacAskill, W., Mogensen, A., & Ord, T. (2018). Giving Isn't Demanding. In P. Woodruff (Ed.), The Ethics of Giving: Philosophers' Perspectives on Philanthropy (pp. 178). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marris, E. (2019). Why young climate activists have captured the world's attention. Nature, 573, 471-472. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-02696-0 McElwee, P. (2016). Forests are Gold: Trees, people, and environmental rule in Vietnam. Seattle: University of Washington Press. MDPI. (2019). Special Issue "Academic contributions to the UNESCO 2019 forum on education for sustainable development and global citizenship". Retrieved from https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/UNESCO_2019 Meyfroidt, P., & Lambin, E. F. (2008). Forest transition in Vietnam and its environmental impacts. Global Change Biology, 14(6), 1319-1336. doi:10.1111/j.13652486.2008.01575.x Napier, N. K. (2012). What's small, tasty and may change the world? Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/creativity-without-borders/201205/whatssmall-tasty-and-may-change-the-world?amp Napier, N. K., & Vuong, Q. H. (2013). What we see, why we worry, why we hope: Vietnam going forward. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University CCI Press. NASA. (2017). Liftoff of the Kepler spacecraft. Kepler and K2. Retrieved from https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/launch/index.html Quan-Hoang Vuong Vol. 24, December 2020 ISSN: 2151-7452 NASA. (2018). NASA Retires Kepler Space Telescope, Passes Planet-Hunting Torch. Retrieved from https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-retires-kepler-space-telescope-passesplanet-hunting-torch Nguyen, A., Tran, V. B., Hoang, D. M., Nguyen, T. A. M., Nguyen, D. T., Tran, V. T., . . . Tilker, A. (2019). Camera-trap evidence that the silver-backed chevrotain Tragulus versicolor remains in the wild in Vietnam. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 3(12), 1650-1654. doi:10.1038/s41559-019-1027-7 Nguyen, M.-H., & Vuong, Q. H. (2020). Evaluation of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets: The international collaboration trilemma in interdisciplinary research. OSF Preprints. doi:10.31219/osf.io/84j76 Nguyen, T. N. T. (1974). Trong rừng dẻ gai [In the hazelnut forest]: Kim Dong. Nogrady, B. (2019). Elusive deer-like animal 're-discovered' in Vietnam. Nature News. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03467-7 Pingali, P. L., & Xuan, V.-T. (1992). Vietnam: Decollectivization and Rice Productivity Growth. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 40(4), 697-718. doi:10.1086/451973 Rambo, A. T., & Tran, D. V. (2001). Social Organization and the Management of Natural Resources A Case Study of Tat Hamlet, a Da Bac Tay Ethnic Minority Settlement in Vietnam's Northwestern Mountains. 東 南 ア ジ ア 研 究 , 39(3), 299-324. doi:10.20495/tak.39.3_299 Tollefson, J. (2017). US government disbands climate-science advisory committee. Nature News. 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The Dance of Truth

Philosophy

We want God to make sense, to be reasonable, to act according to how we think God should act. This kind of thinking, though, is not far from where we live today. If I give money to the church, then God will  bless me financially. If I have my âquiet timeâ in scripture, then God will bless my day. If I raise my children right, then surely they will turn out right. In themselves these actions are good and right; however, we have to ask ourselves, âDo our motives emerge from the desire to give a place to the mystery of faith, or, rather, to conquer mystery?â

No. 12 • Fall 1998 • Twelve Dollars Melville: Imagine someone who, finally, takes up the sword or the harpoon to begin a combat with God himself. Hawthorne: One must not believe- Melville: In who?- Hawthorne: In God. Melville: On the contrary, for then what would be the merit? Hawthorne: Or the madness. Melville: Or the madness if you like. No I think on the contrary of someone who saw God as clearly as the nose in the middle of a face, as the saying goes, as clearly as the white whale above the water, and who, precisely, seeing him in all his glory, knowing him in all his mysteries, knowing how far the delirium of his force may go, but not forgetting-ever-the wounds inflicted on him by this God, nevertheless launches himself at him and throws the harpoon. I believe you are writing a fine book, said Hawthorne, after a silence. . . W E S S A Y S A N D S T U D I E S THE DANCE OF TRUTH Postmodernism and the Evangelical By Don Hudson e want God to make sense, to be reasonable, to act according to how we think God should act. This kind of thinking, though, is not far from where we live today. If I give money to the church, then God will bless me financially. If I have my "quiet time" in scripture, then God will bless my day. If I raise my children right, then surely they will turn out right. In themselves these actions are good and right; however, we have to ask ourselves, "Do our motives emerge from the desire to give a place to the mystery of faith, or, rather, to conquer mystery?" I am troubled by a movement very common in Christian circles today called "Raising Kids God's Way." Even the title smacks of modernist arrogance -that the method I use to raise my children would be God's way. It is tragic enough that the authors of this training method use scripture in egregious ways, encourage dubious medical practices, and promote the deadening of passion and imagination in our children. But more sadly, they are teaching the quintessential promise of modernism: If I do A, then God will do B. Terrified, bewildered parents want a guarantee. I know this passion for a guarantee by personal experience. I want something in my life that will guarantee me that if I do this, then God is obligated to do such-and-so. Thank God, though, for our five year olds whose unrestrained passions remind us that God is whimsical and untamed. Thank God for our "foolish " teenagers who drive the foolishness out of our hesitant, fearful hearts. If you want a good picture of postmodernism, then think of the five year old who disrupts the best laid plans of the family or the teenager who begins to question a parent's faith. This is why the postmodern moment is so terrifying to us. It is a reminder that we are out of control, and a place where we are invited to trust a God who is beyond our comprehension. We want guarantees, and conveniently for Christians, we can "invent" a God who gives such a guarantee. In other words, Christians can use the methods and the thinking of modernism to project an image of a God who removes questions and doubts. Modernism, then, becomes a way of thinking which attempts to tame and reduce God to logical categories so that our worlds will be predictable. It is the quest for the absolute presence of God-we can use our minds, our reason, to prove the existence of God. Modernism at its extreme is the belief that the human mind can comprehend reality whether it be something as lofty as God or as mundane as weather patterns. Referring back to Melville's quote at the beginning of this essay, just as Captain Ahab madly hunted the great, mysterious white whale, modernism has been the furious pursuit of God in order to conquer the ultimate mystery. If we can say that modernism is the delirious launch and thrust of the harpoon at the God who has been sighted, that frenzied quest to pierce and capture the incomprehensible God, then perhaps we can say that postmodernism is the appalling, haunting moment when the harpoon misses the target, we have launched ourselves into the howling maelstrom, and the sighted God has disappeared into the deep blue sea. Thus, we no longer live in a culture which promotes this naïve assumption of modernism: that we can actually comprehend God. Most likely, modernist arrogance reached its height, the top of Babel, in the thought of Hegel, the German philosopher. Incredibly, Hegel actually believed that his philosophy had finally solved the mystery of the trinity. Listen to the words of Gadamer, a more contemporary German philosopher: "Hegelian philosophy claimed above all to have comprehended the truth of the Christian message in conceptual form. This included even the deepest mystery of Christian doctrine, the mystery of the trinity." Hegel could actually believe in his idealistic, but naïve, philosophy because he was a child of the nineteenth century. Little could he have known what lay in store for the twentieth century. Little did he know that his positive philosophy would be a major force that would lead to the Holocaust. As we approach the twenty-first century, our postmodern culture asks a very different question than our modernist ancestors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: We are asking, "Where is God?" You promised that God would be there. Auschwitz. Hiroshima. My Lai. You said we could prove God's existence. Mao Tse-tung. Pinochet. Pol Pot. You said that God made sense. The Cultural Revolution in China. The Red Terror in Ukraine. Stalin's bloody purges in Russia. You said that God has spoken in history. Prague 1968. Chiapas 1996. Laramie 1998. You said that we were getting better and better, that "even God could not sink this ship!" The finality of the German gas chamber. The isolation of the American prison cell. The horror of the Chilean torture chamber. "Where is God?" Indeed. "Man of sorrows, disappearing into the crowd." But there is another disappearance here at the end of modernism, one just as insidious as these physical manifestations mentioned in the previous paragraph. This other disappearance is the loss of meaning. We are deluged with data. Never in the history of humanity have there been more words, more images, more sensory data than in our time. Everywhere we turn, we are assaulted by images without substance, advertisements without ethics, and words without meaning. How does the church speak about the tragedy of the twentieth century? How does the church speak to this postmodern world? We are at the end of the modernist experiment, and we have forfeited , we are missing, truth and goodness. Only beauty remains, but beauty appears to be dislocated and homeless, because, to borrow from Gertrude Stein, "there is no there there" anymore. How do we reconcile beauty and Auschwitz; how do we reconcile beauty and vacuous Madison Avenue? We have launched out into the deep and cast our harpoon, but we have missed, we are missing God. We miss God: we have missed in our attempt to grasp the incomprehensible , and thus we are missing, we are yearning and are pining for God. If modernism was the confident demand for the presence of God, the building of Babel, then postmodernism can be the passion to sift through the ruins of the twentieth century, the rubble of Babel, in a search for the absent God. It is no secret that our culture is experiencing a profound sense of alienation. We are alienated from ourselves, from others and from God. This is what I mean by the absence of God-not that God has abandoned us, but that we are estranged from God and others. Simply put, the question is this. How, then, does one talk about this search for the absence of God? How do we represent the Deus absconditus, the hidden God, who in Flannery O'Connor's terms is the ragged figure who runs from tree to tree in our minds? How do we represent the God who got away? What place does modernist thought give to the person of God much less the hiddenness of God? We must ask and attempt to answer the question: how does the absence of God play out in our theology and in our culture? Enter postmodernism. Postmodern thought comes upon the scene to remind us that faith is the dance of presence and absence, grace and tragedy, assurance and doubt. Perhaps the postmodern moment is the most effective way to reveal the hidden God. In this issue we want to argue that postmodern thought critiques the arrogance of modernism, and in so doing, offers the church one of its greatest opportunities to present the gospel. In other words, postmodern thought does have something to offer the church. Unfortunately though, there is a quite a bit of confusion going on in evangelical circles around the word "postmodern." If the "new age movement" was the heresy that bedeviled the evangelical church in the eighties, then postmodernism is supposedly that new heresy creeping into the church as we move into the twenty-first century. Within the last two years I have heard and read many of the standard evangelical responses to postmodernism, and quite frankly, I have been shocked not only by the strident, reactionary tone but, more so, the obvious superficial misreadings and misunderstandings of what postmodernism is all about. When most evangelicals speak of postmodernism they use all-encompassing words such as "relativistic," "nihilistic," or the "death of truth" (as if truth could really die). But we must examine this issue carefully. More times than not, we do not expend the energy to carefully, thoughtfully understand and explore views with which we disagree, i.e. postmodernism. As a result, whether implicitly or explicitly, we end up rejecting opposing views out of cozy ignorance rather than costly study. More tragically though, the theology of the church can inadvertently reflect worldly thinking rather than solid, scriptural thinking. Evangelical seminaries emphasize rationalist, analytical methodology over relationship; the Religious Right pushes morality rather than holiness; the church is in the business of recruiting more soldiers to defend the truth rather than sending believers out into the world to love and care for those who cannot care for themselves; mission organizations send out missionaries to save the pagans with the implicit message that the ones who are being saved must be delivered not only from their sins but their culture; some parachurch organizations present the gospel to others in a way that seeks to convince unbelievers of the truth of Christ rather than inviting them to a significant relationship with Christ. Quite frankly I am concerned that certain pockets of evangelical Christianity have uncritically cast their lots with modernist thinking . I recall the first time I attended a class in what many evangelicals would call a liberal seminary. This particular seminary was reputed to be an "open" institution, but I was astounded by the arrogance and intolerance of both the instructors and a number of the students. What terrified me the most, though, was the shock I felt when I began to realize that I was back in a "fundamentalist" institution. At different times in the class, I thought I had come upon a more dangerous fundamentalism-the tyranny of seeing through the eyes of tolerance. Same hermeneutic as fundamentalism , just different theology. Years previously I had left a fundamentalist institution for the purpose of finding teaching that would not place God in a box, an institution whose sole purpose was not to build fences around the untamed God. One of the basic problems with the postmodern debate is this: more times than not, some evangelicals are viewing postmodernism from within a modernist worldview. Postmodernism begins, though, by questioning the entire modernist enterprise while at the same time bringing forth new ways of thinking and inviting new voices to the discussion of faith. It is important to understand that my intent is not to throw out the advances of modernism and turn wholeheartedly toward postmodernism. In the end, both are human philosophies which emphasize certain aspects of truth while at the same time harboring serious errors. I would be the first to agree that postmodernism must be critiqued, but we have much to learn from the postmodern spectacle. As we begin, let me venture forth my very simple definition as long as we understand that my definition is not all-encompassing: postmodernism is a reversal in rationalist thinking which opens the door to mystery. The Postmodern Spectacle It would be impossible to even begin to present a comprehensive view of postmodernism, so allow me to mention a few integral elements to postmodern thinking. I will discuss four categories: the postmodern moment is a turn, a downturn, a re-turn, and a ride in the rumble seat. In the first place, postmodernism is a turn in language. The Italian author Umberto Eco, claims that postmodernism is "a way of operating " or simply, an entirely different way of thinking about language and reading. Essentially, postmodern thought would argue that God cannot be encircled, surrounded, or encompassed with language. As humans this side of Paradise, we can never know God perfectly; thus we never have an unadulterated, privileged view of God. Luther said a long time ago that there is a problem with the interpreter-we are blind to truth (John 9:41: "If you were blind, you would not have sin; but since you say, 'We see,' your sin remains."). Yes, the postmodernist would say, but there is also a problem with language. Language communicates, but language also confuses and thus invites interpretation at every reading. Language is mysterious and calls for a profound humility on the part of the reader. Modernism, and I must add, evangelical seminaries, have taught that the right methodology will correct wrong readings of the Bible. But most postmodern thinkers would argue that the strong arm of methodology merely sets up the reader to exit the text just as he or she entered the text. In other words, methodology does not critique the interpreter-the reader's prejudices and arrogance. As the German philosopher, Schleiermacher, said a century ago: "You can have all the right tools and right beliefs and still miss the meaning of the text." Postmodern thinkers would merely say that the process of reading is not as innocent or as unbiased as modernist thinkers have contended. Let me turn to one place in the Bible that has been consistently misread with modernist prejudices. Judges has been and continues to be a very difficult text in the Bible. There is one place in particular that frustrates the reader. Judges 1:8 states that Jerusalem was destroyed by the tribe of Judah and Judges 1:21 tells us that Jerusalem was not destroyed by the Benjamites but in fact, "the Jebusites have lived in Jerusalem among the Benjamites to this day." What are we to do with these contradictory statements? Must we agree with the modernist historical critic that what we have here is an editorial discrepancy of the first order? Evangelicals, in defense of the text, have joined the interpretive fray but have done so with a similar modernist, historical methodology in the attempt to explain away the problem. Modernism (evangelical or liberal) states that contradictions like this cannot exist in the Bible or in a "good" story. In doing so, both interpretive schools, under the influence of modernist presuppositions, have missed the meaning that this troubling gap is signifying. A postmodern reading would ask instead, "Why is the text presenting two contradictory views within the same chapter?" "What message does this gap signify and how does this same thing happen somewhere else within the Bible?" Modernism, whether liberal or evangelical, asks the question, "How can I resolve this discrepancy?" In other words, the text is illogical or seemingly inaccurate so I must somehow make the text work. If I'm evangelical, I assume that God would only use that which is logical to reveal truth. Thus I would turn to history or archeology in my attempt to resolve this discrepancy . Furthermore, as an evangelical, I assume that God writes stories that are linear and logical. Postmodernist thought, however, asks this question to the evangelical: "What if the way I read the Bible is more modernist than biblical?" Postmodernism would say that there's a fox in the hen house and that fox could be the evangelical's uncritical modern way of thinking. Perhaps God reveals himself in mysterious ways that I could never imagine. When I read the Bible, I need to think how God would write the story more than how I think God should write the story. Furthermore, postmodernism asks the question: "Are there other places in art and literature where the same thing is happening?" In other words, maybe the same thing appears in other stories and art forms outside of the Bible. These other places can inform my understanding of the scriptures. It may be that the narrator of Judges desired to present two disparate views simultaneously much the same way that Picasso painted. Picasso, in order to present a new view of reality, used Braque's concept of simultaneity to reveal multiple meanings within the one text. Thus, his painting, Woman Seated, displays the profile of a woman and a frontal view of a woman. The two overlapping images of the women in reality represent one and the same woman. Picasso wanted to portray multiple perspectives of this woman so that we as the readers/viewers may see a fuller picture of this woman. Thus, in the book of Judges, the success of Judah in 1:8 and the defeat of Benjamin in 1:21 reflects a profound tension in the rest of the book: Judah will be successful; Benjamin will be passed over. In 1 Samuel there is this same tension : David from the tribe of Judah will rule Israel; Saul from the tribe of Benjamin will not. Here in the same chapter are two perspectives of Jerusalem that provide a fuller picture of God's work in Israel. Reading, then, should be the radical expansion of the interpreter's horizon, not the modernist limiting of the horizon. What postmod- ernism calls for is a new way of thinking about biblical theology, a postmodern biblical theology that emerges from the shift in language that this new turn in language brings. Modernism encourages us to come to the text as a blank slate. Postmodern biblical theology encourages the interpreter to bring his or her life (world) to the text because the interpreter brings a wealth of culture that will aid our understanding of the Bible. Every voice is important as the church reads the Bible. Postmodernism invites us to listen to the voice of the other, the ones we have historically exiled because of our selfish prejudices-women, African-Americans, Asians, the poor. . . . Are we not truly the relativists and the nihilists when we refuse someone else's readings, when we refuse to listen to the voice of the other? Postmodern reading occurs in the community of others not just in the confines of my safe, narrow world. Wittgenstein has warned us that the limits of our language will be the limits of our own worlds. Secondly, postmodern thinking is a downturn, an overturning of the way we see, a radical disruption of the way we think. This is the mission statement of a postmodern biblical theology: "Thus says the LORD, 'My ways are not your ways'." As humans, we are finite in our thinking, and there is no possible way that we can have a "total" view of reality. I will never forget a lecture by one of my favorite professors, Dick Averbeck. He was teaching a class of seminary students and began to list his rules for reading the Bible. "Number one," he began. With pen in hand I was eagerly waiting to hear the first principle of interpretation. "I am wrong," he said. We all sat there in class staring blankly at him. I was thinking to myself, "OK, get on with it, let us hear the first principle." He repeated his statement, "I am wrong." Then he proceeded to remind us of our human limitations and our propensity to sin so, of course, when I come to the Bible, "I am wrong." Dick went on to explain that we are also right because we are redeemed and have the Spirit working within, but I have never quite recovered from Rule #1. He was inviting us to live in the tension of being right and wrong in the same moment. What, though, places us on this path of humility? I would argue partly that tragedy, disruption, and the discovery that I have been blind are the first steps to relationship with God. The postmodern moment can usher in a critique or crisis to the modernist promise that correct doctrine alone will lead to salvation. I would be the first to say that correct doctrine is essential to the Christian life, but I would also remind us that correct doctrine (thinking) begins not with the assurance that I am right, but with the humility that I am wrong, or perhaps better put, there are many things in life and faith that remain a mystery to me. The German poet Rilke told the young poet to "love the questions." Time and again, I have seen Christians use logic, or the rule of noncontradiction, or "evidences" in the attempt to prove the truth of Christianity. The postmodernist would say that all these "proofs" are merely subjective projections of the way I believ e the world should work. Further, the postmodernist would point out that my supposed "objective" interpretation is, in the end, just another example of circular reasoning. I see what I want to see. I create God in my own image. Most importantly though, the postmodernist would say that this modernist way of thinking puts an end to mystery by bringing closure to the questions-ending the story. In the end, the extreme of modernism teaches me to hate and take flight from my questions. Once again, our Lord said it best. "If we think we see, then we are blind. If we know that we are blind, then we see." There is an infinite paradox here in these words. True sight does not begin in sight. True sight, the sighting of truth, begins with the acknowledgment that I am blind. Therefore, this crisis of vision should not end in nihilism, but instead, lead to the yearning for more, a revelation of the presence of God. Out of the absence of God emerges the yearning for the appearance of God. Disruption should lead to change. Tragedy is a doorway to redemption, and judgment is a prelude to salvation. My questions, rather than resulting in idleness and despair, should lead me to an intense relationship with God and passionate care for others . These words recall Jeremiah's central purpose of his prophetic calling, "to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant" (Jer. 1:10). The day-to-day work of postmodernism is to overthrow the arrogance and narcissism of the self. This newfound humility will compel me to not only search for truth but also to seek the face of God. Our postmodern generation easily recognizes the tragedy and emptiness of the twentieth century. But if the American evangelical church remains squarely within a modernist theology, essentially turning a blind eye to tragedy because we offer glib answers to deep and disturbing questions, then for the first time in the history of the church we might find ourselves entirely irrelevant. Thirdly, postmodernism is a re-turn to the past. Postmodernist thinking does not throw off the past but returns to the past for the purpose of finding meaning for today. This is what Umberto Eco says in the postscript to his brilliant postmodern novel, The Name of the Rose: "But the moment comes when the avant-garde (the modern) can go no further. . . .The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently." This is one of the great ironies of modernism, that at its most extreme, it ushers us down the exhausting path of subjectivism and nihilism because its critique of the past throws out the past. Simply put, we must abandon the past (tradition) to live well in the present . As we have seen, postmodernism welcomes other viewpoints to approach the interpretive table even when those views and texts hail from the past. The past is not to be thrown off as something which has no meaning for today, but rather, something that is evoked and reinterpreted for the purpose of discovering meaning in the present. This means, then, that tradition is not to be thrown off, nor is it to be accepted slavishly without careful thought and criticism . Finally, a ride in the rumble seat. Postmodernism is play and the postmodern moment invites us to play with the text and to dance with God. Postmodernism is "irony, metalinguistic play, enunciation squared. Thus, with the modern, anyone who does not understand the game can only reject it, but with the postmodern, it is possible not to understand the game and yet take it seriously." Umberto Eco's words here are full of insight. In the end, the modernist enterprise is a failure to laugh-the refusal to play. Has the modernist agenda taken away our ability to play with the text and to take great pleasure in our readings? Have we as evangelicals surreptitiously rejected the game because we cannot admit that at the end of the day we, like the moderns, really don't understand the game? In our obsession for truth we have lost the delightful quest for meaning. Postmodernism recognizes that mystery is not the death of truth but the playground where truth can swing. Again, listen to Eco's words, "Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth." It was our Lord who said it best: "Truth shall set you free." Free to read with questions and imagination. Free to reach out to others in love and compassion rather than attempting to prove that we are right. Evangelicals are defending truth more than they are dancing with truth. We already believe in truth. Then let truth compel us to God and then propel us into the world. We cannot comprehend God. Then let us dance with God. We do not understand the other. Then let us dance with the other because our truth has set us free. I think Norman Maclean's father said it best: "You can love completely without complete understanding. That I have known and preached." Truth in Motion In conclusion, allow me to call us back to the Old Testament. The people of the ancient Near East (including Israel) wanted a king who would banish all the chaos of the world. They wanted a modernist king. But, in the Old Testament, God had a different idea. The godly king will not be one who rules by worldly wisdom or sheer strength, but the king who cares for the widows, orphans, and aliens by the pouring out of his broken, crushed body (a foreshadowing of Christ). In Judges 9 the good king is the vine, the olive, and the fig. The bad king is the thorn bush. The good king will give life by being crushed (grape, olive) or broken open (the fig). The bad king will refuse to be broken and thus rule by terror and bloody violence. In the Old Testament, the "power" of the king or the queen was not to be used to expand the boundaries of his or her own kingdom, but instead, as a force to guard the boundaries of others. What if the evangelical church reflected this postmodern king of the Old Testament? It is encouraging to see that a few churches are seeking racial reconciliation and therefore recognizing the value of hearing "other" voices from other cultures such as African-American, Asian, Hispanic, etc. Some in the church are beginning to take women seriously, to let them speak, and the results are quite refreshing . For the first time in the history of the church, because women are gaining a voice, we have a chance to see the full image of God (male and female) work out salvation. Postmodernist thinking critiques the modernist tendency of limiting the voice of God to one voice and instead calls us to listen to the ensemble of many voices. Modernist thinking attempts to remove difference; it uses the thorn to oppress others into obedience. Postmodernist thought emphasizes difference by recognizing that many perspectives give us a better view of God even though this cacophony of voices decreases my power and infuses my community with unruly chaos. Many of our evangelical churches and seminaries today are experiencing the crisis of irrelevance and at the same time our postmodern culture is forcing us to rethink the educational model of the last century . In the past, seminary has focused on training the mind to think well, and in so doing learn to read the Bible well. The overarching goal in seminaries has been one of intellectual assent and comprehension . In other words, if you can demonstrate the right knowledge (proper doctrine), then you are ready to enter the field of ministry. But there is an alternative. Seminaries that embrace some aspects of postmodern thought encourage both knowledge and relationship, for they understand that truth without relationship is irrelevance, and irrelevance is the most insidious error of all. We are beginning to see a few new seminaries that understand the importance of training the mind and the soul. If modernism at its extreme can result in the triumph of reason over ignorance at best, but at worst the triumph of reason over mystery and faith, then postmodernism can be the invitation to mystery alongside reason and thus the fresh opportunity for faith. Carl Raschke in his masterful book, Fire and Roses, states that postmodernism can literally be the end of the book that is "saying the unsaid, reaching toward the unreachable, naming the unnamed name. . ." In that appalling, haunting moment of God's absence comes the longing for the presence of God without the illusion that we will ever comprehend the glory of the Lord.