THE TRIPLE FILTERS TEST AND THE EIGHTH DEADLY SIN In a pivotal moment in Doubt: A Parable, the beleaguered Father Flynn gives an impassioned sermon to his congregation about the irrevocable and farreaching harm that gossipmongering can do, making a good case for Gossip being the Eighth Deadly Sin.
“Umm…Not as such….I just wanted to share.”
Legend has it that Socrates, the Greek philosopher who lived from 470 – 399 BC, was once approached by an acquaintance, who said: “I’ve something to tell you about someone.”
This “Triple Filters Test” that Socrates employed to deal with Gossip might indeed be a parable for us today. Especially at a time when the Internet has become the toxic town square for this ancient sin that is Gossip, precious few of us are without that sin.
“Wait,” Socrates said, “whatever you want to tell me, have you witnessed it firsthand?” “Well…I actually heard it from someone else,” the man replied. “So, you don’t know if it’s totally true. Well, is it a good report you want to make about this person?” “Not really. That’s the reason I wanted—” Socrates interjected, “So, you want to tell me something bad about someone, but don’t know if it’s true…Finally, this information about this person, is it of any use to me?”
“Well,” Socrates concluded, “if there is any doubt that this information is entirely true, it is not a favourable report, and, it is of no real positive use please, I don’t want to know about it.”
Gossip is a slippery slope of Chinese whispers that begins with hearsay, rumour and assumption, and then can easily mutate into exaggeration, sensationalism, and outright lies. Doubt: A Parable is set in 1964, but it makes us consider matters which concern every one of us today in our age of “wokeness”, “trial by he said/ she said” and social media mob tribunals: crime and punishment, right and wrong, good vs evil, guilt, accountability, redemption, justice, atonement,
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forgiveness, and the dangerous role that gossip plays in every one of these issues. Often, gossip masquerades as “righting a wrong” – Socrates’ 2nd and 3rd Filter: the blind-sided belief that a wrong has been committed, and that this wrong has to somehow be “righted”. But while we believe that we all know good from bad, fact from fiction, it is all too easy to ignore one thing that threatens to topple our black-and-white pillars of morality and blur binary beliefs in light and dark: Doubt. Because if there is any shred of doubt that information about someone is factually true in its entirety - Socrates’ 1st Filter - then it should never even arrive at the next two Filters. But the dubious information has already gone viral, fuelled by self-righteous virtue signalling, earnest vigilantism, overzealous vendetta and vicarious vengeance. It can quickly escalate into what is conventionally known as a “smear campaign”, a “witch hunt”, “naming and shaming” – what we know in modern parlance as “cancel culture”, the bloodlust to “right a wrong” by having the wrongdoer’s life summarily and publicly cancelled.