The Cult of Validation
How we lost the ability to handle truth
At some point over the past 15 years, we lost the ability to just say things how they are. It’s like people got way too sensitive about feedback, and suddenly honesty became this offensive thing. There’s been this huge shift where being straightforward is seen as rude, and honestly, it’s getting ridiculous.
It feels like it all started with the rise of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, which, yes, are important to a point. But somewhere along the way, we completely lost the plot. Instead of fostering genuine inclusion and respect, it turned into this environment where being honest became synonymous with being offensive. It’s like we became so obsessed with making everyone feel comfortable that we started sacrificing the truth just to avoid hurting feelings.
This DEI culture was supposed to encourage open dialogue and respect, but it unintentionally created this fear of saying anything remotely critical or uncomfortable. If your feedback doesn’t validate what someone wants to hear, suddenly you’re labeled as mean or harsh. We’ve gone from promoting equality to promoting fragility, and that’s not progress.
Now we’re at a point where people are scared to give real feedback because they don’t want to come off as “disrespectful” or “insensitive”. We’ve conditioned ourselves to believe that directness equals rudeness, and that mindset has bled into every part of our lives, from schools to workplaces to how we interact with each other on a daily basis.
We’ve created a culture where being nice is more important than being real, and it’s making people delusional. We’re raising a generation that can’t handle criticism because they’ve been taught that any kind of pushback is an attack. It’s like we’re scared to challenge anyone because we don’t want to hurt their feelings, even if it means letting them walk around with some seriously flawed ideas or behaviors.
It starts in schools. Teachers are hesitant to grade harshly or call out poor performance because they don’t want to discourage students. But guess what? Life is full of tough lessons, and shielding people from them does more harm than good. Instead of preparing young people to face challenges and learn from failure, we’re coddling them into thinking that anything less than praise is an attack. Then when they get out into the real world, they’re blindsided by how unkind reality can actually be.
And then it spills into the workplace. Managers are constantly tiptoeing around performance reviews, afraid to give direct feedback that might be interpreted as hurtful. Instead of saying, "Hey, you didn’t hit your targets because your strategy was flawed," they end up sugarcoating it with phrases like, "There’s room for improvement," or "You did your best." The problem is that vague, feel-good comments don’t help anyone get better, they just keep people stuck in mediocrity. Real improvement requires honest conversations.
It’s not just managers either. Regular employees are afraid to say what they really think because they know that in most cases, being honest could cost them their job. We've created a culture where disagreeing with leadership or challenging the status quo is seen as insubordination or even grounds for termination. This fear-based environment doesn’t foster innovation or growth, it just reinforces compliance and complacency. This needs to change, because we’re suffocating genuine progress by forcing people to stay silent to save their careers.
Astronaut Dr. Charles Camarda wrote about this exact problem in his book Missions Out of Control. He talks about how toxic work cultures at NASA made it impossible for people to speak up about critical issues, even when lives were on the line. When the environment makes people more worried about losing their jobs than doing the right thing, it’s not just bad for business, it’s downright dangerous. Dr. Camarda highlights how stifling honest conversations led to catastrophic failures, and that same mindset is creeping into every industry today.
It’s not just the employees who are afraid to speak up, companies themselves are becoming delusional because they’re living in this echo chamber where no one tells them the truth. And if the company isn’t letting employees speak out, then at least they should be listening to their customers. But no, instead, we’ve created a culture where companies do whatever they want, convinced they know best, completely disconnected from reality. They make these wild, tone-deaf decisions that clearly don’t resonate with their audience, and then they sit there shocked when they don’t hit the numbers they were expecting.
How many times have we seen companies go off the rails because no one was willing to speak up and say, "This is a bad idea"? And how often do we see companies doubling down on failing strategies because they’re too stubborn to listen to feedback, whether it’s from employees or customers? The truth is, companies that refuse to face reality are digging their own graves. You can’t ignore your audience and expect to thrive. You can’t silence honest voices and expect to innovate.
The truth is, people need to hear the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. Growth doesn’t happen when everyone’s just validating each other’s feelings and never calling out what’s actually wrong. We can’t keep living like this, pretending that honesty is the problem.
Constructive feedback doesn’t have to be cruel. But it also shouldn’t be watered down to the point where it’s meaningless. It’s draining to watch people dance around the truth just to make sure no one feels bad. If we actually want to improve, whether it’s at work, in relationships, or just as individuals, we need to toughen up and accept that sometimes, the truth hurts. And that’s okay.
We need to stop confusing straightforwardness with rudeness. You can be honest without being an asshole, but at the end of the day, if the truth makes someone uncomfortable, that’s not your problem, it’s theirs.