In his Friendship in an Age of Economics blog post in the New York Times’s philosophy series, The Stone, Todd May discusses the non-economic character of friendship, which he calls friendship’s “deepest and most fragile characteristic.” Unlike consumer or entrepreneurial relationships, he argues, friendships follow a rhythm that is more subtle than the pleasure followed by emptiness that is experienced in momentary consumer relationships or the investment followed by profit that is experienced in entrepreneurial relationships. He argues that true friendship, in contrast to economic relationships, is not a matter of diversion or of return, but of meaning; it rests on shared experience in the past and on our relationship to a particular person in our lives. May suggests that this sort of particular relationship renders friends vulnerable to each other, opening vistas that a world ruled by the dollar keeps closed. Friendship is special for not being a matter of success or failure, but rather of meaning.

May’s worry is apt and especially important for a younger generation that has naturally emerged at the forefront of this Age of Economics. At Stanford, it would be wrong to suggest that friendships are uniformly, or even centrally, scientifically broken down by students into contractual exchanges for mutual benefit. We tend to acquire deep friendships during our years at Stanford, especially with roommates or people in our dorms, and these friendships are deep precisely because we do not understand them in purely economic terms. But May’s worry is still worth considering, especially among a student body that is increasingly pragmatic, that is so often focused on future potential and the entrepreneurial relationships that will help get us wherever we want to go. Students do often think of forging relationships with each other for the purpose of social networking and enhancing career prospects; many, when making friends, keep in mind that it will help them come ASSU elections or when they want to pull people on board to promote their clubs and causes. I know many people who join Greek life in part because they want a social network that will help them professionally down the road.

Thinking about our futures in practical ways is not necessarily a bad thing, but May is right to worry that the precious qualities of our closest relationships, those that are anything but economic in nature, are increasingly being jeopardized by our market mentality. Take this as yet another reason a culture of reflection is so important at a place like Stanford—without reflecting on what is so special about non-economic relationships, we risk, in our quest for advancement, leaving behind the point of it all.