Mastering the art of collaboration –and intellectual collaboration specifically– requires taking many lessons. One of those is on how to give comments and feedback to others. With a long trajectory throughout human history, joint work on a specific output –be it a paper, a sketch, a project plan, or a different format– has been facilitated in recent decades by the emergence of information technology tools removing a large degree of friction, including, for example, the frustration of different collaborators working asynchronously on outdated version of a document. What is new, perhaps, is our growing ambition to perfect contexts, frameworks, and systems to try to be constructive to others in facets beyond a professional setting.
What are the issues at stake? For one, that technological progress has also introduced new sources of friction on how we collaborate and interact with others along the way. These include, for example, an added layer difficulty in the management of tone in exploding volumes of digital interactions. In addition to that challenge, we must also navigate the often-perceived tensions between being honest and avoiding unnecessary harm. It is tempting to place truthfulness and tact at conflicting ends of a single scale. But is that the right way to think about it, though?
There has been an uptick in the public vindication of radical honesty over the last couple of decades. This ethos advocates for the practice of always being completely honest and refraining from telling lies. Any lies. Even white ones. Thinkers like Brad Blanton or Sam Harris have fought that moralistic corner, warning readers of the glaring and not-so-obvious perils of going down the dangerous lying slippery slope. In fact, some go further in demanding that no detail is spared when coming clean, including a full description of everything the now radically honest person felt. The suggested benefits to be derived from strict compliance are help in healing the past, the reduction of stress, a revitalization of oneself, and avoidance of an unjust treatment of others. All summed up in the personal contribution to crafting an altogether better world.
Tempting as it may sound, I do not side with radical honesty’s message. As with any purity-based moral framework, I think we must dissociate the preaching to the self from the preaching to others. I have nothing against the former, as that would be fundamentally illiberal –no self-contained way of life can be declared in itself a priori superior to others–, but many objections to the latter –as advice should always be subjected to open criticism–. I find the doctrine chips away at a fundamental human attribute. That of acting as a not-see-through container. In a world demanding more and more frequent collaboration and interaction, I see clear virtue in striking a balance between an unbearable repression of feelings and asking others to turn themselves into crystal-made entities where nothing can be privately stored, including frustration at contributions and input just about every time short of what we hoped for or desired.
