New Mexico Mercury

Six degrees of separation has become a cliché, or at the very least a metaphor for the idea that chance and science are linked in connecting us. We are surrounded by a variety of circumstantial evidence attesting to the fact that we touch one another in ways we may find surprising. The oft-mentioned “global village,” and other versions of “togetherness” as desirable states pop up at unexpected times and in the least likely places.

It might be a film or novel, in which a clever plot line leads us to paths that intersect. It might be the discovery of a skull several million years old that reveals similarities to modern homo sapiens, leading us to the conclusion that we developed on a single branch of the human tree rather than on separate branches or even separate trees. It might be a personal experience, astonishing and cherished, through which we come upon a link that kindles our gratitude.

Every once in a while a thinker, author or popular culture guru gets us all thinking about how “together” we are. In today’s world everything from the latest fad in pop psychology to increased population density to Facebook and other social media capable of giving us 1,000 “friends” in no time at all, constantly remind us of how close we have become.

The idea of six degrees of separation first gained prominence after World War I, when Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy published a volume of short stories called Everything is Different. One of the stories was “Chain-Links.” Karinthy believed that the modern world was shrinking, due to the ever-increasing connectedness among human beings. He posited that, despite great physical distances between peoples across the globe, the growing density of human networks made the actual social distance smaller. And this was long before the Internet, with all its social media sites, email, tweeting and so forth!

The characters in Karinthy’s story began to discuss this idea and “ ( . . . )  a fascinating game grew out of this discussion. One of us suggested performing the following experiment to prove that the peoples of the earth are closer together than they have ever been ( . . . ) We would 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 acquaintance.”

According to Wikipedia, Karinthy is regarded as the originator of the notion of six degrees of separation. And that notion, in turn impacted the related theory of three degrees of influence, which deals with the quality of connections rather than simply their existence. From then on, mathematicians, sociologists, physicists and others have continued to expand what has come to be known as the field of network theory. As with so many theories that find their way into popular discourse, this one may be regarded as a fun idea or explored scientifically.

Yet despite the apparent shrinkage of modern day life, we have never been more separate. Class, race, gender, age, mental and physical abilities, disparate educational opportunities and access to health care divide us irremediably, often brutally. Forced exile and great migrations uproot peoples from their natural habitats, creating disruptions of language, custom and wellbeing. Although the so-called social issue differences have been tamed to some extent in recent years—how we identify sexually, our religious beliefs or cultural manifestations—, they still trigger large scale bullying and hate crimes. I am talking about people being made to feel othered, the very antithesis of connection.

Although we now have an African American president and almost had one who is Mormon, these identities remain uncomfortable in mainstream society. President Obama has received hundreds of times more death threats than any previous occupant of his office. Ugly racially-motivated derision is widespread and outrageous, and those who engage in it seem to feel entitled. If Hillary Clinton runs for president in 2016, we can anticipate that a great deal of the campaigning against her will focus on her gender, in ways that are subtle as well as crass.

While citizens in the top economic tier luxuriate at the world’s most expensive spas even as members of the middle class are forced into homeless shelters and the poor go hungry, the idea of six degrees of separation acquires farcical characteristics. For the privileged, gated communities hold the multitudes at bay. For a Black youth such as Trayvon Martin, even a gated community offered no protection.

The six degrees of separation phenomenon nurtures an interest in genealogy, and has produced a number of popular television programs. Roots, the TV miniseries based on Alex Haley’s 1976 novel by the same name, riveted audiences fascinated by the idea that African American families could trace their heritage all the way back to their African origins. The Genealogy Road Show, Family Historian, and Who Do You Think You Are? are more recent productions in the ever more popular reality show genre.

Progress in crystallography and biological therapy is also to be noted. Gene therapy promises cures to many serious illnesses and conditions, and those who consider its potential to be the next great leap in medicine and those who object to the necessary experimentation on religious grounds continue to fight over its use or abuse.

The relatively new science of DNA has freed innocent prisoners (including many who have spent half their lives on death row or, tragically, been executed before they could be cleared of a crime they didn’t commit). It has reunited stolen grandchildren with grief-stricken grandparents in Latin America’s Southern Cone. It has also enabled the family members of the disappeared in Guatemala and elsewhere to identify the remains of loved ones murdered and tossed into unmarked graves.

Some genealogy projects have less worthy aims. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) has used its excellent genealogical database, one of the most complete in the world, to identify those murdered during the Jewish Holocaust, for example, and baptized their “souls” into the Mormon faith, making easy “converts” while enraging Jews who rightly consider the practice to be insolent in the extreme. Needless to say, bridging degrees of separation can be a tool for any interest. It all depends on who makes the connection, and to what end.

I am more interested here in exploring social and psychological connections than in researching the science, or attacking the pseudoscience, that place us close to or distant from our neighbors. We belong, after all, to the human family. Why do we need a parlor game to acknowledge this?

On the other hand, the idea that “blood is thicker than water” does seem to express feelings that go beyond the purely relational. Cultural differences come into play here as well. Some people would give a kidney or their life for a family member. Others would do so for anyone. Still others wonder how they could have been born into a family in which they feel so alien.

In this respect South America’s Southern Cone has been the scene of great turmoil in recent years. As the grandparents and grandchildren who were victims of the Dirty Wars of the 1970s reconnect through the DNA bank established by Argentina’s Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the younger generation must grapple with the fact that they have grown up in the homes of those who murdered their parents or were complicit in their deaths. Some have resisted turning against those they always considered their real parents. In others, resentment and rage have been almost too much to bear.

As I say, I am more interested here in exploring the social and psychological connections than in researching the science. I am appalled by the ignorance and exclusivity that has kept one worthy struggle for social justice separate from others, or one group of people oblivious to the needs of other groups, whose exploitation and/or oppression almost always accrues to their benefit.

When will those struggling for economic justice realize their fight is intimately linked with the struggles for racial, gender and LGBTQ justice? When will those suffering from the crimes of corporate greed or governmental warmongering understand that incest, rape and other forms of so-called domestic violence are but more intimate examples of the same sort of power gone rogue? When will those pushing for immigration reform link other social justice issues with their own? And when will all these groups come to understand that without environmental justice we are all doomed?

I believe that this failure to understand how what oppresses one oppresses all was at the root of many of our twentieth century failures to achieve social change. If we were Marxists, we prioritized class. If we were feminists we prioritized gender. If we saw change as possible only within the individual, we prioritized one or more version of spirituality. If we thought only a healthy body capable of motivating healthy social interaction, we put our energies into fitness and holistic practices. In retrospect, all these theories had something to offer. But extreme sectarianism kept us from listening to each other. Each group claimed there would be time to consider the needs of others once victory was theirs. Of course that time never came.

As our social conscience becomes more sophisticated, and as history demonstrates that acknowledging the full humanity of every group and individual enriches rather than detracts from our community, some progress is made. In the past several years a third of our states and almost half our national population have come to recognize marriage equality. Most of those who opposed the change have surely noticed that God hasn’t struck us down nor has their world fallen apart. And a few veterans of the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s have admitted that the struggle for gay rights is comparable to the struggle for the civil rights of African Americans.

Yet each new victory inevitably assigns some group to the hell at the bottom of the social pyramid. It is as if we must target someone to be the repository of our ignorance and fear, and in so doing attempt to build ourselves up. Today that most targeted of all groups is composed of transgender women and men, and to an even greater extent those who identify as Intersex (individuals who were assigned a sex at birth, almost always male, and have grown up with a socially-imposed identity they did not choose and do not recognize). Just because such people are beginning to speak out, beginning to be visible at the fringes of our exclusionary social compact, does not mean that we have made room for them. They are ostracized, bullied, imprisoned or murdered daily.  

If only six degrees of separation or less stands between each human on our planet, surely we can understand that what oppresses, endangers, bullies or betrays one of us oppresses, endangers, bullies and betrays us all. And from this understanding it stands to reason that our coexistence with animals, plants, oceans, and air should be equally important.

Six degrees of separation is like a parlor game, an intriguing pastime or food for a few moments of carefree thought. It’s when we translate it into daily living that it becomes more serious. Then we are called upon to put socially conditioned fears and biases aside, and to contemplate the beautiful consequences waiting when we breach borders built of fear.