The World Doesn’t Need More Geniuses
A few weeks ago, thousands of graduates gathered at Harvard Yard for the 375th University-wide Commencement Exercises. I happened to be one of them. I was asked to speak on behalf of the newly minted class of bioethicists at Harvard Medical School, but it feels wrong not to share that message with the world outside the wrought-iron gates. I’ve dedicated most of my life to learning and understanding medical ethics, but the truth is: my moral compass is no better than that of the stranger sitting next to me on the T. Because even credentials in ethics do not make you a better person, nor do they make you immune to the exhausting, raw realities of being human.
We are living in a cultural moment that is deeply cynical about morality. A recent piece by two prominent bioethicists in The Hastings Center posed the exact question so many of us ask ourselves: In a world plagued by cruelty, exploitation, and systemic failures, does ethics even matter anymore? When we watch bad things happen to good people, and see wealth and power celebrated as the ultimate determinant of success or genius, looking out for others can easily seem like a weakness.
In healthcare, this has created a profound trust deficit. We see it when new parents refuse a standard, life-saving Vitamin K shot for their newborn simply because they don’t know who or what to believe anymore. I’ve watched my pediatrician friends cry as they try to combat medical misinformation online, only to realize their reach is a tiny fraction of the audience captured by a “momfluencer”—a sector of creators who portray stunning, picture-perfect online lifestyles, with some seamlessly gaining trust with their followers through promoting medical misinformation.
We see this same fracturing of truth in our broader culture. It happens when millions of people feel so dismissed by the experts that they stop trusting them entirely, turning instead to unverified internet forums for answers. It is a human impulse; I have also spent my own fair share of time digging for answers on Reddit threads, asking AI chatbots how to text people back, or turning to TikTok videos for advice. We resort to these spaces not out of ignorance, but out of desperation for community and a need for answers when the “official systems” fail to give us either.
What began as a desperate search for clarity is now a battle over identity and values, igniting a culture war filled with moral condemnation. Caring and respecting one another—a basic principle of humanity—has become a depleting resource; it’s as if we are rationing our empathy and retreating behind our screens because we fear that if we give too much of ourselves in this broken world, there won’t be anything left. This is cultural skepticism, and it isn’t how we should be living.
It overlooks an ancient truth: morality is not an abstract set of rules to be logically debated in elite universities. It is a lived, daily practice. Human history and evolutionary biology show us that we are fundamentally wired for cooperation, reciprocity, and empathy. Being decent to one another is not a luxury; it is how our species survives.
To fix this, we should look toward a hopeful concept popularized by the economist Albert Hirschman: “moral resources.” Unlike material resources, which we lose the more we spend, moral resources—like honesty, compassion, and civic duty—actually grow and replenish the more they are used. It is exactly like going to the gym: with each rep, our muscle fibers grow. By making ourselves go, we give ourselves the opportunity to build up our moral muscles.
When a doctor takes the time to sit with a terrified patient, or when we simply show up for a struggling friend, we are not draining a reservoir of character—we are exercising our humanity. Yet, when it’s the people closest to us, stage fright can sometimes paralyze us. We freeze in the wings, frantically rewriting our scripts, terrified of missing a cue or fumbling to find the perfect words. What if we tore up the script, stepped out from the wings, and just sat in the audience with eachother?
Because being human is not a weakness. It’s time for us to show up deliciously and desperately in human form. Because the world doesn’t need more geniuses right now—it needs more humans.
