Six Degrees Of Separation, Five Links And A Chain

Hungarian Playwrite, Frigyes Karinthy

A few months ago I received a call from my parents to see if Toronto had been impacted by hurricane Sandy and how this was affecting my daily commute. Then, they went on to say how closely they were following the situation in New York and expressed their heart-felt sympathy for what people in North-East US were going through and how they wished for everyone to be able to go back to their homes and families. As we continued our conversation we talked about anything ranging from the lady who got hit in Toronto by a flying board sign to the civil war in Syria. During the conversation it never felt I was talking to someone living in Tehran. New York and Damascus felt just around the corner, with familiar streets, images and sounds.

In 1929, the Hungarian playwright, Frigyes Karinthy, proposed the theory of Six Degrees of Separation in a short paper called “Chains”, whereby anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of five intermediaries. Looking at the daily news I can’t help but think that our link to human kind is much closer than the five links Karinthy talks about. We have gone beyond acquaintances to connect to a Mongolian farmer. The reporter and the cameraman have become our world consciousness, if they only knew it.

Karinthy observes in his essay “Planet earth has never been so tiny as it is now. It shrunk…due to quickening pulse of both physical and verbal communication”. So tiny! Isn’t that interesting? Seven billion people on earth moving randomly, their inherent potentialities undiscovered; disconnected though language, culture and race, seemingly carrying a chaotic and arrhythmic momentum, all converging their focus on pain and sufferings of distant lands and alien nations. One planet so small as to manifest the characteristics of a quantum particle, so tiny, that its force of attraction manifests as if it were a sub-atomic entity. This “son of man”, so dispersed and disenchanted, the wayfarer of an as yet undiscovered order, reacting viscerally to journey back to its point of origin in order to discover it essential unity, complete and strong.

We have a “small world problem”(1) where the chaos of our independence clouds the pattern of our interdependence. We are linked through our fear, love, humanity, likeness and diversity. We zoom in ever so closely to see but the recurring pattern of human heart manifesting nothing but its own fractal image on a global scale. Why, the question is, such a small world refuses to recognize its singularity?

It is interesting that we live in such a contradictory condition. On the one hand, our individualism, self-centric and self-serving attitude looking to maximize our pleasure and comfort, and on the other, our regard and concern for those who suffer: we want are diamonds to be mined humanely, our coffee to be free trade and are concerned about child labour when buying a shirt made in the developing world. We love our freedom and comfort but this nagging, ever present conscience prompts us to act or at least think. This emerging global conscience is the chain that is beginning to bind us together. A concert to end poverty won’t end it since it can never address the underlying problems that have got us here, but it is a proof of our desire to act, of our hope for the betterment of the world around us and of our thoughts being guided by a “world embracing”(2) view. We may have not truly become a global village, I think we are some distance from getting there, but we have managed to at least consider and define ourselves not only as citizens of a country but also of a turbulent and crisis ridden world. We ask our politicians to act during crisis in other parts of the world and show our displeasure when our institutions fail to recognize the acts of injustice. The cynic amongst us removes himself from the civil society while the activist uses acts of civic empowerment and civil disobedience to correct it. No matter how, we seem to have become either passive or active links in the chain that links us all together.

As we navigate between the old world and the emerging global civilization we should think of ourselves as the modern day pilgrims of a spiritual Mayflower sailing towards a new age. The journey may be hard, but our resolve is strong; the ocean of hardship may be turbulent, but the desire to see the new world gives us a perspective that makes the voyage worthwhile. The question now is no longer “whether” but “when”. The ideal no longer a work of science fiction but an unfolding story broadcast daily through our news networks, albeit in bits and pieces.

We have managed to take the first step. We are beginning to recognize the truth that always was: the essential unity of our humanity beyond seemingly irreconcilable differences. Everyone is a potential friend or relative, six degrees removed. Now we know.

Footnotes:

        1- The small-world experiment comprised several experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and other researchers examining the average path length for social networks of people in the United States. The research was ground breaking in that it suggested that human society is a small-world-type network characterized by short path-lengths. The experiments are often associated with the phrase "six degrees of separation", although Milgram did not use this term himself.

        2- Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 94: O friends! It behoveth you to refresh and revive your souls through the gracious favors which in this Divine, this soul-stirring Springtime are being showered upon you. The Day Star of His great glory hath shed its radiance upon you, and the clouds of His limitless grace have overshadowed you. How high the reward of him that hath not deprived himself of so great a bounty, nor failed to recognize the beauty of his Best-Beloved in this, His new attire. Watch over yourselves, for the Evil One is lying in wait, ready to entrap you. Gird yourselves against his wicked devices, and, led by the light of the name of the All-Seeing God, make your escape from the darkness that surroundeth you. Let your vision be world-embracing, rather than confined to your own self. The Evil One is he that hindereth the rise and obstructeth the spiritual progress of the children of men.