The problem is proportionalism. People are very poor at understanding the concept.
If I deny my kid took the last piece of birthday cake, it’s very different, than if I deny my kid is out beating up other kids.
The act, denial is the same, but the way it’s implemented, on whom and the results are entirely different.
Anything that people say can be made useless by picking a sufficiently silly, irrelevant, broad, or narrow definition for a word, it’s not really a useful exercise to point it out. If his degree of slacking leads random people that aren’t involved in his life to disapprove of him, that’s not actually a problem that he’s ignoring, it’s just other people not minding their own business. If his degree of slacking leads to his wife leaving him and he doesn’t want her to go, then he has an actual problem. The core issue is whether the person, as a competent adult, has an issue with the way their life is going that is tied to the choice.
And it needs to be based off of actual facts, not speculation by people with no clue what’s going on - how do these people actually know that he could just crank out a PhD and run a research department? There are a LOT of un/under-employed PhDs out there, and running a research department takes a pretty specialized skill set. “You could possibly do this other job that I don’t know crap about, you might hate, you might never even get, and you would have to take large financial risks to try for” does not qualify as a real problem.
Note that ‘denial’ in the addiction context, or in the two examples I gave, are not situations that are arguably a problem. It’s hard to argue that an alcoholic who loses their job and marriage and ends up close to multiple major organ failures has no problem. Or that a woman who complains about being alone, how her relationships always end suddenly, and how she’s never had stable living arrangements or solid finances is doing perfectly well. But in both cases they deny that they have condition/behavior that is the cause of the problem or that it causes the problem.
You know, I’ve never been sold on those “Radical Honesty” types. A little denial can save a lot of relationships–“I won’t mention your fat ass if you don’t harp on my crappy job.” Unless you actually feel both of those problems are solvable, I recommend you pick your battles carefully.
I disagree very much that our culture has a strong bias against untruth. If we were hard-core realists, we wouldn’t be so religious or put as much stock as we do on the American dream. We wouldn’t revere authority as much as we do or beat people over the head with moralistic “shoulds”. “Fake it till you make it” wouldn’t be a commonly used expression. Scientists wouldn’t have such a hard time convincing us that we’re all kinds of fucked. We thrive on denial.
But I agree with you that self-denial isn’t always bad. I am slightly envious of the very religiously devout because they always have faith that things will work out somehow. I also think a little self-delusion is necessary for mental health. They have actually found that depressed people give a more realistic appraisal of themselves than non-depressed people. I’ve been depressed before. I’d rather be clueless.
Denial is only good when the situation is truly hopeless and there’s nothing left to do but hide under the bed. But most situations just aren’t that dire. If you can’t recognize there’s a problem, it’s impossible to do anything about it.
Except that’s not denial at all - not harping on a problem isn’t the same thing as denying that the problem exists. Deciding ‘that’s a problem, but it’s not a battle I want to fight’ is explicitly admitting that the problem exists, not denying it entirely. There’s a lot of ground in between ‘completely, unflinching honesty to the point of nitpicking minor flaws’ and ‘denial’.