A Culture of Criticism

The hardest lesson I’ve learned during my time at Harvard is that happiness and success are not zero-sum games.

I hadn’t really ever thought of that until earlier this year. Giving a tour amidst the calm energy of Tercentenary Theatre in September, I was asked if Harvard was competitive. I said it was not. I remembered overhearing on one college visit that students would rip out the pages of library coursepacks so that other students couldn’t use them before exams. I’d never experienced anything like that at Harvard. On the contrary, a certain sympathy saturates the drudgery of Lamont during reading period.

I didn’t reconsider my generalization until a lazy dinner late that night with a few buddies from freshman year. Somebody mentioned that a friend of ours had just been offered a job at a prestigious bank in New York that he had wanted for some time. He was well qualified, hard-working, friendly, and competent. We all agreed that the position would be good for him. And then somebody added with an uncomfortable sneer—the kind that tips the balance from humor to spite—that the position would suit him well since he had no moral scruples whatsoever.

The remark didn’t strike me as particularly odd. I’d grown accustomed to similar digs over the past three years in a network of caustic and insightful peers. But when framed in the context of competitiveness, the comment seemed a bit more upsetting. Maybe the academic rivalry was not overwhelming at Harvard, but didn’t the stress of personal competition fill every day and every interaction? Who was working where? Who was going someplace exotic for J-term? Whose social life seemed more fulfilling? Who seemed happy?

The high level of interpersonal competition at Harvard might seem obvious, and discussing it, trite. But something about this quest for individuality here fascinates me, the innate desire to find something in oneself that validates existence amidst genius. For some, it’s the raw intellectual horsepower. For others, it’s the ability to navigate complex social hierarchies, to read men instinctively. For yet others, it’s the ability to cling to morals when others toss theirs aside. Maybe it’s just having the right combination of all the above. To justify one’s presence at the most selective college in the country, everybody needs something—something to set them apart from the crowd.

This yearning to be an individual is certainly not unusual, but the social and intellectual conditions at Harvard intensify it. We’re exposed to some of the smartest, some of the most talented, some of the wealthiest (but perhaps not some of the best-looking) young people in the country. Somehow in the struggle to cope with all the talent and prestige, with the sliding scale of relative happiness in constant flux, we criticize. We cling to the thing about ourselves we find distinctive. We fear so passionately that somebody might have everything—brains, looks, social connections, a sense of humor—that we tear down and pick apart. Nobody should have a beach house in Antigua and a summa thesis. Nobody should be a Class Marshal and a Rhodes Scholar. The person who got that job at Morgan Stanley is a “moron.” Our friend working for his senator is an “alcoholic.”

Since it is the overwhelming nature of people, bright people in particular, to criticize, to find fault, and to justify, this column might seem naïve. Indeed, the cultural consensus at Harvard is not easily remedied. It seeps so completely into our thoughts that most written records of campus activities build their reputation on negativity, on attacking events or individuals, on finding points of weaknesses and whittling them into biting criticism. Is the snarkiness, the culture of condemnation so engrained in campus life and our nature that there’s nothing to be done?

Perhaps there is nothing concrete, no policy point or direct action item. But for me, when I acknowledged how competitive things actually are, my outlook shifted. Realizing the motivation of the snideness helped remove it from my psychology. My long-term success was not threatened by that of a peer, even if it seemed otherwise as I stared him down outside of the McKinsey interview. Somebody else’s failure in class would not somehow enhance my experience.

So the next time somebody asks me on a tour if Harvard is competitive, I suppose I’ll say that it is. I’ll say that the convergence of so much talent in such a small space creates a natural friction. But that tension forces oneself to reconcile one’s strengths in comparison to those of others, to realize that finding the imperfections of our peers does not correct our own insecurities. Harvard’s greatest lesson to me, taught through elections and exams, through papers and punches, is that the competition to be distinct—to be happy—ends with no predetermined number of winners.

Benjamin P. Schwartz ’10 is a history and literature concentrator in Winthrop House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.