Blog@GraceJunction

I came across this story and it truly was insightful.

One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher Socrates and said, ‘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 answer a few questions that will work as filters.’

‘Filters?’

‘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 about my friend going to be useful to me?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Well,’ concluded Socrates, ‘if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?’

I really wished that more people approached relationships and conversations like that and many a issues would never happen at all!

Not very long back, some of us friends got together to play ‘Chinese Whispers’ and it just brought back to light, what a lot of people talking about the same thing, can finally make of the original statement. We had a hilarious time trying to figure out where and how it went wrong. But then life is not a game of ‘Chinese Whispers’. With careless talking, presumptions, conclusions, and a lot of kidding (coarse jesting), sometimes, we kill a person much before he is dead. Some prefer to call it ‘Character Assasination’.

The papers today announced that the Central Bureau of Investigation in India now claims that Arushi’s dad maybe innocent afterall. For over a month, the media theorised, analysed, scritunised and publicised the various possibilities of how and why her dad would have slit her throat in cold blood and later on killed the servant in the house too (or was it earlier). They wrote on the collusion and cold heartedness of the mother too and about what India has become. Strangely, a media lamenting as if to say it knows not how and why and when India became like this!! As if it was just innocently and sincerely, just reporting, period.

Wish the media used the Socrates’ Rating system. Truly and really an approach worth inculcating and cultivating. No wonder he is called the ‘Father of Philosophy’. I wish people everywhere resort to it too! Simple right?

Well, the Greeks didn’t think so. They poisoned him and killed him. So it’s not that simple after all! There is perhaps something about virtue, truth, and goodness that people don’t like!

Would it have been any different now? With every man to himself and doing what he thinks is best, saying what he thinks is cool, what would be Socrates’ fate if he spoke now as he did then? Influenced by Socrates, Plato fathered democracy, which has offlate become the bane for philosophies and principles like that of Socrates’.

What will it take for us to become civilized? Socrates approach could be one of the tools, but I seriously think mankind would need much more than that. I mean, much more than just a good principle or method.

The answer is surely out there. “Seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened unto you”. Sounds familiar?

Tags: Chinese Whisper, Father of Philosophy, Gossip, Socrates

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 12:39 am and is filed under Articles, Geo, Relationships, Society, Trends, Troubles & Problems, Youth Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.