R: Your Friends Should Share Your Values

This week, we will be debating about the merits and detriments of having a friend group which only thinks as we do. This debate is particularly salient for us as we welcome prefrosh considering Yale and as we ourselves go into the summer and enter new, temporary communities.

Once you enter the adult world (or the pre-adult world of college), you have the power for perhaps the first time in your life to intentionally decide who to associate with. At Yale, we eventually have the power to choose our roommates, friend groups, and extracurricular associations. If you wish to engage only with people who share the same values, background, worldview, and even major and career path as you, you may. But is that a good thing? Should one’s friends share one’s values?

One the one hand, as the famous saying goes, you are the product of the people you surround yourself with. If you want to become a particular kind of person, you should make sure the friends you spend time with embody the kind of person you want to become. They will keep you accountable to the goal you have in mind even when you falter in your commitment. As iron sharpens iron, so too will your friend group of like-minded individuals sharpen your own mind and understanding.

And yet, that kind of insular lifestyle sounds like the death knell for the marketplace of ideas. One cannot grow in experience with other viewpoints nor fully understand the wide world of belief without engaging deeply with people who hold opinions and worldviews which differ from one’s own. If we are truly to understand the opposition and change hearts and minds, we have to have friends – people we genuinely like and care for – who don’t think the way we do. It seems like the height of hypocrisy to claim we value everyone’s life yet refuse to befriend those who disagree with us.

In considering this issue, we must ask ourselves several questions. What does it mean to call someone a friend? What kind of relationships should we allow to shape us? What is the logical end of the idea that our friends, those people we choose to trust and associate with, should share our values? Is it permissible to have a romantic relationship or even marry someone who doesn’t share all of your values?