Although Don T. may have already made this clear, I use validation in the sense that we psychotherapists use it, i.e., understanding that another's point of view is a legitimate or bonifide expression of their feelings. Understanding does not imply agreement. Neither does it require that one condone. I define point of view as the interpretation an individual (or group) gives to what they see from one place or point. Both what is seen, as well as how what is seen is interpreted, is powerfully influenced by internal processes, filtered through cognitive distortions, social learning, emotional thinking based on past experiences, etc.

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The same human attributes that foster social cohesion also foster social conflict. (There is that dialectical paradox again.) There is a lot of neuroscience research now that provides evidence that these attributes or characteristics are, at the core of the human animal, innate. The same or similar characteristics are seen in many other social animals, especially other mammals that live in social groups.

One can judge human nature, individually or as social groups, until the cows come home. That does not, however, change human nature.   Only if one truly accepts the realities of human nature can one hope to be effective in fostering the strengths and mitigating against the nonfunctional aspects of those innate characteristics.

Folks, we humans are pack animals.   We are pack animals with a greater capacity for impulse control than most other pack animals. However, unless or until we accept that we are pack animals, the vast majority of our species will continue to impulsively and instinctively think emotionally and act out those instinctual and biological imperatives to propogate our own specific gene pool, even when those behaviors are no longer evolutionarily functional.    We humans tend to think the values and mores by which we judge others are inherent. They are not. Those values that are pretty universally common, that we human animals tend to apply fairly universally to at least everyone within our extended social group, and which a significant minority or perhaps small majority of humans extend to cover all other humans, are held because of their more or less universally (at least the universe of humanity) functionality to either the survival of the species or the survival of a particular gene pool.

Unless one is prepared to understand and accept the evolutionally value of what in this discussion has been termed "group-think", one can not effectively think about or effectively intervene to mitigate against the antithetical consequences of "group-think."