​So What Do You Believe?

I assumed that the questioning would stop with my application essay. This is it, I remember thinking to myself, as I wrapped up frantically spell-checking my supplement for the third time. I’ve told Harvard everything it ever needs to know about me.

How wrong I was.

I think the realization hit sometime during my first section for my government course. I flipped through my notes, desperately searching for something halfway intelligent-sounding to contribute to a discussion on whether the dominance of established economic powers precludes the growth of developing nations. Never mind that this was one of the most enduring and hotly-debated enigmas of 21st-century international relations. I was expected to have an answer, and I was expected to have it then and there.

Or perhaps the realization hit during my first few lunches at the dining hall. After navigating the schizophrenia of the noon Annenberg rush, I would invariably find myself seated in some table full of exceptionally well-groomed fellow freshmen who were excitedly charting out the course of their entire Harvard careers down to the month.

The realization was that Harvard is something of an unending interrogation. Our experience on campus is, in many ways, defined by a single question: "What do you believe?" It is an inescapable question, one that is asked and re-asked in a seemingly endless number of ways. It’s asked to us in class, at the student activities fair, and amidst the post-presidential debate chatter in a common room.

I am thankful that I am constantly asked this question. That was, after all, why I chose to come to Harvard: to try to challenge my view of who I was and what I believed. However, as I sat in that government section or around an Annenberg table, watching my peers eloquently offer jargon-riddled defenses of American economic dominance and detailed breakdowns of their career plans, I learned that simply asking the question wasn’t enough. Like with all things at Harvard, you have to know the answer.

When it comes to our beliefs, it often seems that the worst imaginable opinion is not an unpopular one but rather having none at all. Any indecision or wavering is chalked up to ignorance or intellectual cowardice. To me, this was a source of terror. As Ted Gup once put it in an NPR essay, I had a tendency “to stand in the no-man's land between opposing arguments, yearning to be won over by one side or the other, but finding instead degrees of merit in both.” But at Harvard, it seemed I had no choice: I had to pretend that I knew where I fell on every single issue, big or small.

Of course, this is hardly limited to life at Harvard. Ours is an era of hashtag debates and Snapchat politics, tantrums, and Trump campaigns. It’s an age where our very sense of individuality rests upon our ability to concisely and emphatically express our identity and beliefs, to constantly advertise what separates us from the horrifying faceless mass that is “everyone else.” In an age where having an opinion defines the way we live, we equate wavering with stupidity or spinelessness.

There is certainly nothing wrong with having a firm, well-grounded opinion. It is also necessary, however, to recognize the importance of weighing conflicting opinions, the value in struggling to find a firm answer. To assume that lack of an opinion implies laziness or thoughtlessness is to ignore the fact that many of the most important dilemmas we face today are far more complex than they may initially appear.

It may seem self-defeating to write an opinion piece in defense of not having an opinion, but at a time when political polarization is at a historic peak and cultural rifts seem more apparent than ever, the courage to see the nuanced, messy middle ground is just as needed as the courage to take a firm ideological stance.

While at Harvard, the appearance of self-assuredness in our beliefs can at times feel all important. Ultimately, however, an obsession with finding definite answers on every issue may lead to stagnation as opposed to discovery. Perhaps what we need more than ever is the courage to not have an answer.

Joon Lee ‘20, a Crimson editorial comper, lives in Canaday Hall