Many of us are familiar with the “six degrees of separation” theory. This is the idea that everyone on the planet is connected to everyone else by no more than five other living people, including strangers, who have social connections with either you or the others. In the culture this theory has taken root in the parlor game, “Six Degrees From Kevin Bacon,” for the movie industry.
There is some support for this theory. So you should be connected to both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump by some combination of five or even fewer others. Our politically divided population is more deeply connected than we could have imagined.
But I have been thinking about a different version of this lateral idea, which connects living people to each other at one point in time. I am thinking that the theory can be revised to address degrees of separation over time. That is, a connection I might have made years ago is connected to a recent connection through an improbable series of links. Let’s call this ladderal degrees of separation,1 in contrast to the lateral theory. Continue reading “Degrees of Separation–Lateral and Ladderal”
- A play on words, “ladder” here representing the movement of time as climbing from past to present,[↩]
