People like a bottom line. So do I.
Anyone worn out by the verbiage floating about and saying nothing is drawn to whoever promises to cut to the point, or who uses the code words practical and applicable.
Psychology itself has had to defend against fields that frequently dress themselves in practical clothing, and it is so difficult to fend off the popular demand for simple recipes that break your complex life problems down into a simple applicable series of steps. Which is, to remove any doubt, a fiction.
So enough complaining. I came this morning to look at bluntness with open eyes and say what in my view is good about it and what is bad.
One. What is good about it: the connection to action.
I shout until my throat is hoarse that our psyche exists only when it acts. On that level, the blunt approach is entirely justified.
The thoughts that formulate themselves in our heads are abstract and theoretical. Other people cannot see them, cannot respond to them, and cannot be affected by them. A person who has understood something profoundly and done nothing with it has, from the world's point of view, understood nothing.
Two. What is bad about it: the assumption that simple means true.
Bluntness is a style of delivery. It has no relationship whatever to accuracy, and the two get conflated constantly — a confident short sentence reads as more reliable than a careful long one, regardless of which is correct.
Which is exploited relentlessly, and not only by charlatans. Most of us do it in arguments at home, because the punchy formulation wins the exchange and the accurate one requires the other person to keep listening.
The useful discipline is to keep the bias towards action and drop the bias towards brevity. Do the thing. Take as many words as the thing actually needs.