SIX DEGREES OF CONSTERNATION

There’s a theory, you probably know a lot more about it than I do, called “Six Degrees of Separation” which basically tries to persuade us that if you are connected to your circle of acquaintances and then each of them is connected to everyone in their own circle of acquaintances and so on, you are somehow linked to everyone on this crowded little planet of ours. You don’t need me to explain it to you, you already know this stuff I’m sure. Sometimes, however, I rather think that some of us still manage, through no fault of our own, to fall out of the loop.

In order to test this theory, if I were to say, recommend a blog like the rather excellent one written by “akh” (you should give it a try you know, you won’t regret it) to both of the people I know in this world (alright, I exaggerate, it’s more than two. I TRUST two, but I know quite a few more, but not that many…), and they all did the same, before the day is out, either the President of the United States or Tilda Swinton or (shudder) Anne Widdecome or indeed any other living person you care to think of should be reading his observations and maybe commenting upon them.

This obviously just doesn’t happen. (I tried, akh, I really did!) He has his followers who number about 50, and there are bound to be a few others who choose to remain anonymous, and I’m sure that some of them have recommended his blog to several of their friends via FizzBok or Twittle or some other networking option, and they in turn will have passed on the odd link and so on. My the simple laws of mathematical progression (if you remember that thing about doubling the pennies on each square of a chessboard) there should be more people reading what he says than currently exist on the whole planet, and yet he told us recently that the most people who ever read one of his posts is 664, (still much better than my own high of 27) so somewhere along the line there must be a fundamental flaw in this theory.

Now, akh is a bit of a vital cog in the interlocking network of a largish number of lives. He’s been a manager and a colleague to a lot of them, and a relation or a friend to others, which means that he has a fair few contacts and people who keep in touch. His FizzBok network alone numbers over 150, and his Twittfolk (Twittfield Thunderbolts?) number about the same and whilst I assume that there’s a fair amount of crossover (and to quote something I read recently “FaceBook is for people I know but I don’t like, Twitter is for people I like but I don’t know” so maybe not), that still adds up to a pretty large number of people, each of whom should also know yet more people. Certainly many, many more than just six. So why aren’t “Heat” magazine (other trashy celebrity magazines are available) kicking down his door and photographing his living room?

I guess it does depend after all on the circles you move in, and we can’t all be of huge importance to the whole wide world otherwise we’d never get anything actually done, instead we’d all be reading about what each other of us had wisely and sagely pronounced upon every morning. Sadly though, the cult of celebrity now dominating a lot of people’s lives is now starting to make us think that somehow we’re not significant enough even if we touch, like in akh’s case, nearly 300 lives on a regular basis.

Really famous people, of course, number the lives they touch regularly in the millions, if not billions and probably think that allowing six degrees is rather excessive. Perhaps this is why people (or hangers on) are so keen to cultivate a famous friend, although the circles that the rich and famous move in tend to be mostly made up of the rich and famous. This does explain the “celebrity marriage” phenomenon, though. You and I might be destined to ultimately be living with someone we met in the supermarket or the pub because those are the places we go. Celebrities hang out at places celebrities go, so I suppose its only to be expected that they end up with other celebrities in their lives. I wonder if “behind closed doors” any of them ever really resemble the public perception we have of them? It must be hell when one of your stars starts to fade whilst the other shines brightly on.

You can understand the attraction of being an acquaintance of someone notorious if it means that you are only “one degree” away from everyone they influence, even though that degree is a yawning chasm that makes the Grand Canyon seem like a crack in the pavement. For some such a connection, however tenuous, makes them feel slightly more special, and perhaps feel like some of the stardust has rubbed off on them. Fame itself does appear to have its perks, although the ghastliness of it would appear to outweigh that to someone like me who values his privacy. I wonder if maybe people desperate to achieve fame really just crave the wealth it might bring them, or just have a yearning to be remembered after they’ve gone, or even just want to get free stuff and attend big events and not have to book tables at restaurants? I often wonder how many, once they’ve got the celebrity they sought, or maybe -  even worse - have found it and lost it again, regret the day it ever came knocking at their door.

In his book (based on his TV series of the same name) “Fame in the 20^th Century”, written in 1993 before the recent huge wave of reality TV shows and celebrity culture obliterated everything in its path, Clive James concluded that:

“The famous help us to live. What they do, they do for us. Fame is what we do to them. We turn them into characters and put them in a show, a modern version of the passion play. The ones we respect burn like angels. The ones who ask for worship burn like witches. Fame, like happiness, ruins everyone who pursues it for its own sake, and exalts only those who have proper work to do.

Those who are famous have their importance only to the extent that they help give meaning to the lives of those who aren’t. Ordinary life isn’t just the hardest kind to lead, it’s the best, and the famous people we like the most seem to tell us that by their way of staying human, as if there were a fallible, frail human being behind the glory – which there always is.”

Many, many years ago, I used to watch a TV drama series called “A Very Peculiar Practice” which was written by Andrew Davies and was set in a cash-starved University in the 1980s (so no change there then). It was a very good programme by the way, and only the first series ever got a DVD release, which is a bit of a shame. One of the early episodes had one of the student characters stating “…in any university there’ll only be about a dozen people really worth knowing. Find them, and there’s your education” and I’m beginning (only beginning, how old are you?) to think that life’s a lot like that, too, and maybe people like me are just destined to have never numbered amongst the vital dozen in anybody’s personal university of life.

I suspect that it’s possible that I’ve never managed to track down any of the sorts of people that those “in the know” might consider to be “important” enough to pay attention to either. That elusive, ephemeral “dozen” that might have made my life flow along just that little bit more easily. Instead, I’ve just found the people that I like, and who are “important” to me, and that’s usually been good enough as a rule. Equally, I am certain that I will never be “important” enough to be counted amongst anyone else’s “vital” dozen, either. I do have friends, of course, but I have seldom feel completely “vital” to most of them.

Later on in that same episode, Andrew Davies also ponders on the notion that conventional wisdom suggests that we spend our second year in university trying to get rid of the friends we make in our first year, which again has parallels in the world in general. Perhaps that’s what’s always been my problem; I’m just not a “second year” kind of a guy.

I suppose quite lot of this stuff depends on what you personally consider to be “important” in the first place, but I’d always value friendship and trust (you two know who you are…) over fame any day of the week, which is probably why I’ve always found it particularly easy to fall off people’s radar, and that is ultimately why I have to come to the conclusion that the “six degrees” theory is one that I can only apply to someone else.

Sorry akh, despite all my best efforts, the President isn’t likely to come calling because of anything I might have said.