You could care less about offending your parents and would be fine if they stop interacting with you? Sounds like you never got past the rebellious teen phase.

You could care less about offending your parents and would be fine if they stop interacting with you? Sounds like you never got past the rebellious teen phase. I often don't see eye to eye with my parents (especially when religion takes part in many of their arguments), but there's nothing wrong taking the extra effort to avoid seriously offending the people you care about. Though maybe you had horrible parents and that's your justification for not putting them in the same category as wife and kids. As for guys like Linus, his straight up brutally, abusively honest take on things has probably been good for the linux kernel, but I wouldn't say it should apply to your day-to-day life (interactions with family, extended-family, neighbors, etc).