In ancient Greece, (469 – 399 BC), Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem.

One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, “Do you know what I just heard about your friend, Diogenes?”

“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. 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. That’s why I call it the triple filter test. 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.”

“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?”

This is why Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high regard. It also explains why Socrates never found out that Diogenes was banging his wife.

It’s interesting how everyone’s forgotten that St. Patrick’s Day was a celebration of the official debut of Christianity in Ireland, whereas in a America, it’s a day to get blind drunk on green beer while wearing as much green-colored clothing as possible…

It’s like sign in my store used to say: “Every customer brings joy to our store: Some as they enter, and others as they leave.”

The entire “What Color Is It?” experiment was a sad social commentary which did nothing but prove that people on the Internet will argue about what’s right in front of them, and that many of them lack basic reasoning skills and, along with that, the ability to understand other people’s points of views. Contrary to all verbal diarrhea by so-called “intelligent” people, the experiment had little to do with higher or lower functioning eyesight or brain function. In fact, the biggest variance in differences depended solely on the contrast levels of the LCD and LED screens that people initially saw the image on.

I can name several thousand people in my general vicinity who would certainly benefit from taking the advice in this book…