Last night I searched up what “Khosla Ventures”¹ is and stumbled upon their website. Surprisingly, the front, middle, header 1 text didn’t catch my attention. It was the quote, “We prefer brutal honesty to hypocritical politeness.” but I didn’t really think of it as much until this morning.

Also, just now I didn’t think of hypocritical politeness at all, I replaced it with “projective honesty”. For a quick overview of hypocritical politeness, it’s when you portray yourself as polite with words but at the same time enact negative actions and emotions. It’s mostly about being passive aggressive. In my opinion, in terms of honesty, it’s about being too scared to say the truth even though you’re aggressive about it.

Brutal Honesty #

With that aside, I got caught up in the nuance between brutal honesty and projective honesty. It was a good morning exercise for my brain.

Being brutally honest is like throwing a pie at someone’s face and leaving it at that. This type of honesty comes from truthful observation, whether if its certain from the persons actions or how you feel from observing them. For example, “You get very avoidant when someone challenges your worldview,” or “Your work quality has been lacking recently.” Nothing else is said, just that, it allows the pied-person to react and be heard.

Projective Honesty #

I searched up “projective honesty” before writing this and it’s not even a phrase, so I’m glad to add my unique point of view to the internet as a work-in-progress, previously projectively honest person.

Projective honesty is a whole different thing although it has “honesty” attached to the phrase. I guess with a pie example, it’s like seeing someone get a pie thrown in their face and before the the pied-person gets to speak, you run up to them and speak for them because you’ve been pied before.

Being projectively honest, you’re assuming what the other is going through and project your own experience to their situation. For me, whenever I see someone who’s been on the same path as me and whose actions are quite similar, I can’t help but to put myself back in my own old-shoes and walk with them on their own path.

When I speak for them, it feels like I’m defending them by using my own experience, while at the same time choking them by putting pies in their mouth. That’s not my intent, I’m trying to convey that, “I previously have been pied before, now look at me! I’m fine!”

I’ve been called out by saying I have a “Hero Complex”. I’m not sure if that’s it, but I’m open to it I guess. To defend myself, my projective honesty comes from a place similar to, “If I can do it, so can you,” rather than “I will save you!”

Anyways, I realized that I hate being projectively honesty. It makes me feel anxious because I’m filling up the pied’s uncertainty with my own certainty. Plus, I don’t account for the nuance or the millions of factors that led them to be pied. At best, I’m operating on a 1% chance of being right. It goes against my own philosophy of dealing with uncertainty. Which is, to keep uncertainty uncertain and refuse to answer it instantaneously. Ultimately, it’s the least productive thing to do because it gets nothing done.

Next time I’m just gonna be brutally honest, “Yeah they’re chungus,” and leave it at that. I’ll leave the pie on their face and let them speak. I have my own chungus life to worry about.