In ancient Greece, Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high
esteem. One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said,
"Socrates, do you know what I just heard about your friend?"
"Hold on a minute," Socrates replied. "Before telling me anything I'd
like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."
"Triple filter?"
"That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my
friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you're
going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure
that what you are about to tell me is true?"
"No," the man said, "actually I just heard about it and..."
"All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or
not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what
you are about to tell me about my friend something good?"
"No, on the contrary..."
"So," Socrates continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him,
but you're not certain it's true. You may still pass the test though,
because there's one filter left: the filter of Usefulness. Is what you
want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?"
"No, not really."
This pretty well sums up this thread and many of the recent threads. Is it
possible to have positive and useful discussions on this list? Has this list
de-graded to the point where the theme of every thread is going to be
negative?
Socrates concluded, "if what you want to tell me is neither true
nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?"
MAL N7MAL
BULLHEAD CITY, AZ
www.citlink.net/~suzyq/N7mal.htm
www.geocities.com/n7mal
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