The Moral Imperative of Effort

It used to annoy me when people would say, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” It’s a platitude: laughably open-ended, fatally up to interpretation.

But after a year at Harvard, I’ve become the biggest preacher of this short-and-sweet slogan. Why? Here, it’s actually feasible.

Take a good look around the room you’re in right now. That’s an astronaut sitting to your right, a Broadway dancer to your left, and a world-renowned professor in front of you teaching inside a building named after a former president.

As of 2010, only 6.7 percent of adults worldwide carry a college education. And amid that select few, here we find ourselves bombarded with opportunities to truly make the world a better place. This is not some generic “stop-and-smell-the-roses” rant, although it wouldn’t hurt to set a time limit on Sidechat. This is an urgent plea for all Harvard students to buckle down and truly commit themselves to making their mark on the world.

Hear me out. We’re so ridiculously privileged to be in this situation. I’ve just turned nineteen, and I’m learning comparative politics with the decorated Government professor Steven Levitsky, asking questions to the former Secretary of State at the IOP, and interning at an international peacekeeping nonprofit over the summer. And I’m not bragging in the slightest; my blocking group includes interfaith activists and aspiring bioengineers, environmental policy experts and talented film critics, all quadruple-booked at every time slot in the day.

When my friends from back home ask me what’s so special about this place, I stress how Harvard’s resources fall in our laps.

If there’s one thing I’ve taken away from a Harvard Commencement speech, it’s this: we are the future. We are blessed to make up the slim, slim minority of students on this planet, capable of leveraging Harvard’s insights and connections to more easily impact the world around us. As such, it’s morally wrong for us to let such an incredibly rare opportunity go to waste.

Our motives are irrelevant as long as we put effort into everything we do. It’s an idea that stretches back to Aristotle: eudaimonia – human flourishing – is achieved by fulfilling one’s potential and contributing to the broader society.

If every student talented in STEM devoted themselves to a life of altruism, cancer could be cured. If every student with a propensity for the arts truly committed themselves, the world would be far more beautiful. It’s permissible to sit in our dorm room watching sports all day or attend our fair share of parties, but given the off-the-charts opportunity cost, it’s morally dubious.

Don’t hide your light under a bushel. Join clubs prioritizing impactful, big-picture solutions. Cherish every opportunity at this institution.

Of course, it’s imperative not just to do what we’re good at – but also to do what we love. It’s unreasonable to assume productivity otherwise. Nonetheless, as Socrates or Hegel would point out, we have roles to fill in our broader society. Indeed, we each chose to spend four-plus years at a place where we’re obligated to solve the big-picture problems of our time.

Let’s stretch our definition of what we love so it aligns more with a larger moral imperative. After all, it’s a privilege to navigate intellectually stimulating courses and flourishing extracurriculars that can broaden our scope of possible paradigm-shifting ideas. It’s a privilege to freely explore our surroundings before locating that optimal overlap between duty and devotion.

And perhaps there’s no objective morality – some advocate for effective altruism; others for moral ambition. Personally, I’d argue that there exists some objective goods: given our exceptional surroundings, we have an obligation to achieve long-term goals capable of preventing pain and crisis, whether by facilitating long-term peace or by discovering innovative carbon-capture technology. It’s not my place to impose a career path on my peers, but I maintain my insistence that all Harvard students act with intent.

It can feel daunting to be the change we wish to see in the world, but that’s what we signed up for. Let’s lock in.

Cyrus P. Sarfaty ’29, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Hurlbut Hall.