May 2012
66 posts
Reblog if you want your followers to ask you...
Before you talk about someone…
During the golden Abbasid period, one of the scholars in Baghdad, the capital of Muslim caliphate at that time, was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem. One day an acquaintance met the great scholar and said, “Do you know what I just heard about your friend?”
Scholar: “Hold on a minute,” the scholar replied. “Before telling me anything I’d like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Triple Filter Test.”
Acquaintance: “Triple filter?”
Scholar: “That’s right,” the scholar 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. 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?”
Acquaintance: “No,” the man said, “actually I just heard about it and…”
Scholar: “All right,” said the scholar. “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?”
Acquaintance: “No, on the contrary……”
Scholar: “So,” the scholar 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?”
Acquaintance: “No, not really.”
Scholar: “Well,” concluded the scholar, “if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?”
“O ye who believe! Let not some men among you laugh at others. It may be that the (latter) are better than the (former). Nor let some women laugh at others. It may be that the (latter are better than the (former). Nor defame nor be sarcastic to each other, nor call each other by (offensive) nicknames. Ill-seeming is a name connoting wickedness, (to be used of one) after he has believed. And those who do not desist are (indeed) doing wrong.” [Surah al-Hujurat 49.012]
“Violence is the ethos of our times. It is the spirituality of the modern world....”
– Walter Wink (via azspot)
When Obama endorsed same-sex marriage...
whenobamaendorsed:
… I was like:
“You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples....”
– Our President, ladies and gents. (via pantslessprogressive)
Robert Reich: A Question of Timing: What America... →
robertreich:
Who’s an economy for? Voters in France and Greece have made it clear it’s not for the bond traders.
Referring to his own electoral woes, Prime Minister David Cameron wrote Monday in an article in the conservative Daily Telegraph: “When people think about the economy they don’t see it…
2 tags
2 tags
April 2012
38 posts
A Changing Manifesto
My work is a set of questions concerning the systems that we all function within.
Increasingly, I have been finding it a bit difficult to sit still, behave, and just put my head down. This is now a fight.
I ask the questions I do in order to understand the precisely “why”.
I am always hungry for more knowledge, more understanding.
My life, and the events, the tragedy, the...
