[damascus]

'Brutal honesty' and 'not sugar coating the truth' are both lines used by emotionally immature people protecting their own values and ideals. Anything that needs to be said while being "brutally honest" can also be said honestly with compassion and empathy, but that takes a lot more self-awareness and emotional skill than just emotionally vomiting on someone else and calling it 'brutal honesty'.

[roenxi]

Sure. But if you demand that only people with more self-awareness and emotional skill tell difficult truth then it gets really hard to figure out what is going on.

People with low social intelligence should be encouraged to be honest too. Honesty is not a virtue just for those gifted with high emotional intelligence. We all benefit if people play win-win games instead of social poker. Someone has to lose at that game.