Degrees of Separation: Part One
By Anna Gaberscik
The Theory of Six Degrees of Separation can be traced back to a spark lit by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy, who published a series of short stories in a book titled Everything is Different in 1929. In one particular story, titled “Chains”, he wrote that as various types of technology advance over time, the connections between us and thus our interconnectedness will grow regardless of distance. The chain of links becomes more and more complex, the links constantly interlocking. As a result of this short story, countless studies were conducted in order to test this theory. The most famous experiments were conducted by American sociologist Stanley Milgram in 1967, who dubbed the term ‘small world’ experiment. It was from these findings and those of numerous other scientists that the ‘Theory of Six Degrees’ was developed. The idea proposes that any two people on the planet can be connected to each other through six or fewer steps.
Here are two excepts from “Chains” by Frigyes Karinthy, 1929.
Everything returns and renews itself. The difference now is that the rate of these returns has increased, in both space and time, in an unheard-of fashion. Now my thoughts can circle the globe in minutes. Entire passages of world history are played out in a couple of years...
Karinthy then describes a game in which he and his friends toy with testing out his concept of connections:
A fascinating game grew out of this discussion. One of us suggested performing the following experiment to prove that the population of the Earth is closer together now than they have ever been before. We should select any person from the 1.5 billion inhabitants of the Earth - anyone, anywhere at all. He bet us that, using no more than five individuals, one of whom is a personal acquaintance, he could contact the selected individual using nothing except the network of personal acquaintances. For example, "Look, you know Mr. X.Y., please ask him to contact his friend Mr. Q.Z., whom he knows, and so forth." "An interesting idea!" – someone said – "Let's give it a try. How would you contact Selma Lagerlöf?" "Well now, Selma Lagerlöf," the proponent of the game replied, "Nothing could be easier." And he reeled off a solution in two seconds: "Selma Lagerlöf just won the Nobel Prize for Literature, so she's bound to know King Gustav of Sweden, since, by rule, he's the one who would have handed her the Prize. And it's well known that King Gustav loves to play tennis and participates in international tennis tournaments. He has played Mr. Kehrling, so they must be acquainted. And as it happens I myself also know Mr. Kehrling quite well." (The proponent was himself a good tennis player.) ~AII we needed this time was two out of five links. That's not surprising since it's always easier to find someone who knows a famous or popular figure than some run-of-the-mill, insignificant person. Come on, give me a harder one to solve!”
Here is a link to the full text of “Chains” by Frigyes Karinthy, a delightfully witty short story.
We fast forward to 2020: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms allow us to exchange and communicate with people all over the world, shrinking the physical distances that exist between us in a way unimaginable 100 years ago. Not to mention the advances in transportation technology that bring people to new places more than ever before. The complex and far reaching effects of globalization have also lead to a world in which the interconnectivity of our lives is undeniable and inevitable; for better and sometimes for worse. The web that we live in is sustained by the mutual cooperation of every moving part, our lives interwoven, interdependent.
These links include national governments, corporations, international organizations, and of course, individuals. The balance is a very delicate one, for if one link cannot provide a certain good or service to the degree it is expected to, a number of subsequent links will feel the effects. Every link in this chain, is connected to many others. Every link is crucial.
With the outbreak of COVID-19, we see just how delicate the stability of this system of interconnectivity can be.
Epidemics and pandemics change our socio-political landscape drastically: laid bare are not only the hard to swallow truths of our interconnected existence, but also how much we miss that very interconnectedness when we are forced to almost entirely cut each other off.
What keeps us together is our joint struggle of coping and readjusting. Our shared struggles of social distancing. Although many of us are more separated from immediate contacts than ever, what binds us must be strong enough to at least figuratively bridge that distance. As we will discover throughout the course of this series, a populace without a strong sense of solidarity is troublesome. We impose damaging collective hurt on ourselves when we alienate each other.
The heightened proximity of all of our experiences during this pandemic increases the likelihood of us connecting with people we could have never imagined connecting with before. We are intensely engaged with each other digitally, seeking human interaction in any way possible. The threads between us were always there, just waiting to be engaged. The degrees of separation that connect, rather than separate us become more apparent through the affects of an outbreak such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
We must develop a healthy relationship with precarious situations like these, and yes, that is a lot to ask for. We also must develop a healthy relationship with fear; especially in times of heightened tensions. Learning how to reckon with these new circumstances will allow us to better handle them in the future, and although we have gotten many chances to do this throughout history, the advances made have proven to have not been enough. Alongside systemic change that needs to occur, we must be steadfast enough in our support for each other. Divisive political tactics employed for the political and economic gain of a few cannot be tolerated; racist, classist and xenophobic propaganda that points fingers at certain ethnic groups for causing and spreading infections cannot continue to prevail as they still do today. Moreover, we must recognize how the lack of trust in national and state institutions (often a result of tactics mentioned above) also threatens to rip apart the very threads that keep us together.
Normally, there isn’t one particular event or condition that internationally connects us as much as COVID-19, and thus we are all collectively stripped down to the very basics of our existences. At this moment in time, we all share something in common, and this one thing is wrecking havoc on our lives. It is causing us all to feel similar emotions, and we find ourselves asking the same questions.
The first prompt of the Degrees of Separation series is as follows:
How do you meaningfully connect with loved ones while upholding the rules of social distancing? (Wie schaffst du es in der derzeitigen Situation, Zeit mit Freunden und Familie zu verbringen?)
In what moments do you feel the most united with people that you don’t know/ strangers ? (In welchen Momenten fühlst du dich am meisten mit Menschen verbunden, die du nicht persönlich kennst?)
What about the future makes you feel nervous?(Was macht dich in Bezug auf die Zukunft nervös?)
I look forward to your amazing responses! Please respond by clicking on this link and filling in the blanks:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc7vdG7B_qZtzapxxAcwo3Ma1M4TAN4CAr0EqX2wPWfMQhZvg/viewform
If you can’t reply via GoogleForms, send an email to hq@jumpstar.love. If you send us your answers via email we kindly ask you to copy and paste the following statement into the text body: I hereby confirm the free transfer of the usage rights of these texts to "Brunnenpassage / Caritas " for the project Jump!Star. We will add the responses into a Jump!Star 'Time Capsule' document. -- Hiermit bestätige ich die kostenlose Übertragung der Nutzungsrechte der Texten an die "Brunnenpassage / Caritas" für das Projekt Jump!Star. Die Texte werden in einem Jump!Star 'Time Capsule' zusammengefügt. *
Here are some example responses.
Question 1: We wave at each other from across the street and create shared spotify playlists!
Or:
Question 1: I video call loved ones more than ever before. I have familiarized myself with Zoom and Jitsi, and use Facebook, Facetime and Skype as well. When I speak with people on the phone I share absolutely every detail of my day, and they do the same. Some days are boring and depressing, and I don’t wish to talk much about what was done or not done. On those days I prefer to listen. We connect over shows and music, I like to hear about what people are watching or listening to. Then maybe I will watch that same show or listen to that same album and then we can talk about it the next day again: connection! If I am speaking with someone far away I like to hear about what is going on where that person lives. I like to talk about food. What I am eating and cooking, what the other person is eating and cooking. Pictures to accompany these stories are a plus. Although we can’t talk about recent ‘physically’ shared experiences, we reminisce. We talk about the times that we were able to meet up with each other. When was it, what did we do? Maybe we talk about distant memories with each other, a time spent together years ago: “do you remember the potato stew that grandma and grandpa would cook for us? I was thinking about them so I made it today, to remind me of them. When I was eating it I felt like I was 15 again. It was so good that I ate too much of it, I reminisced a bit too much, I suppose.”
Question 2: I do not feel connected with strangers very often in Vienna, but the times I have interacted, it has been with the cashiers in my local supermarkets and stores. Today I went to see if my local ‘store that sells everything’ store sold larges cardboard boxes. I went in and asked the two men if they sold that. They said no but they could give me some from the back for free. As they went to the back room I looked around to see if I could buy something in the store to support them, but I really didn’t need anything that they had, and I didn’t want to purchase a large rice cooker just to be polite. When they came back they handed me the boxes. I asked them if they were sure they didn’t want to charge me anything, and they said no. I thanked them and left, pleasantly surprised by my luck. I hope that their store can survive. Another day I went to a local supermarket and asked if they still had masks. The young woman seemed eager to chat and ranted to me for a few minutes about how some people came to the store seven times in one day to claim the free masks. In Vienna, free masks are handed out in supermarkets. I listened and agreed that some people might be a bit overzealous. I thanked her for being here for all of us, for continuing to come to work so that we could continue to buy the groceries that we need. Her eyes crinkled a little bit when she said goodbye, so I suspect she smiled at me. I wasn’t entirely sure though, most of her face was covered with a mask.
Question 3: Financial security. Internship opportunities, job opportunities/market. The prospect of unemployment, and whether or not the system I live in can handle the amount of people currently unemployed due to COVID-19 and those that will still come. What will happen if/when I am one of those people? Most of all, I worry about people themselves. People that I know and love, also people that I know of. I get nervous that we might never hug each other again, or go to crowded concerts and festivals. Or maybe it will just take a long time. I am nervous that I will lose my patience, and that others will too.
Next ‘Degrees of Separation’ :
There are always a number of us bound to resist orders and rules, even if they are set in place to protect the health of the general public. In the second essay, we delve into human defiance and resistance in the face of outbreaks, a fascinating occurrence with often lethal effects.
Sources:
Hackerearth. The Theory of Six Degrees of Separation. Medium, February 2017. https://medium.com/@hackerearth/the-theory-of-six-degrees-of-separation-8a92bc5e3221. Accessed March 21, 2020.
Moore, Gardiner. The Theory Behind Six Degrees. Harvard Business Review, February 2003. https://hbr.org/2003/02/the-science-behind-six-degrees. Accessed March 21, 2020.
Rouse, Margaret. Six degrees of Separation. Techtarget: WhatIs, February 2017, https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/six-degrees-of-separation. Accessed March 21, 2020.