Social Networks and You

This past weekend, I had the honor of helping to open and close a triennial forum of over four hundred highly accomplished people who were convening for the two purposes of intellectual stimulation and social connection. There were entrepreneurs, academics, captains of industry, congressmen, film and television directors, at least one award winning Broadway playwright and star, high tech super-geeks, best selling authors, and extraordinary people from many domains of our national and global culture.

The choice of a philosopher like me to launch and knit together the themes for a weekend of ideas is one thing. But to pick a philosopher to rouse others to peak sociability with each other is another matter altogether. We philosophers aren't exactly known as paragons of social grace and success. You may know what I mean if you had one of those philosophy professors in college who would respond to a greeting of "Good Morning" by trying to prove you wrong.

Socrates was poisoned by popular demand. Diogenes the Cynic was a sort of ultimate loner whose habits of personal hygiene probably guaranteed his typical solitude. One Emperor exiled all the philosophers from Rome and suddenly saw his approval numbers go up. I don't think there is any historical evidence that Kant or Hegel ever tossed back a few beers and had some laughs with friends. Even Descartes wasn't exactly a scintillating conversationalist. "I think therefore I am." What? You think therefore you are what? An incomplete sentence launches a career. This does not strike you as a guy who would be the life of the party.

And poor Arthur Schopenhauer: his very smart mother once heard a view that there could only be one genius in a family and tried to push her bright son down a flight of stairs -- not exactly an ideal of social normalcy in their house, and it was all reflected in his philosophical work.

Jean Paul Sartre, one of the most famous twentieth century philosophers, is perhaps best known for his adage that "Hell is other people." If there was ever a French Existentialist Bowling League, I suppose this could be their slogan. I can just imagine it embroidered across the backs of their black bowling shirts.

This makes it all the more difficult to understand the results of a New York Times study some years ago that determined the best place in Manhattan to pick up a date was the Barnes and Noble bookstore, and that, within the bookstore, the number one section for romantic hookups was the philosophy section. I guess that's the one part of the store where you can know for sure that anyone you see is not doing anything Saturday night, or probably any other night, for that matter.

So it was a bold decision for the organizers of the forum to ask me, a philosopher, to say a few words about sociability and social connections to help launch the days we would all have together. I took up the challenge and ruminated a bit on the importance of our friendships and other close social contacts. I'd like to share a few thoughts here.

A couple of years ago, I sat next to a company president on a flight across the country, and he excitedly told me about an exercise that a psychologist friend had asked him to do. He was to take a sheet of paper and draw five columns vertically, and five rows horizontally, with room enough for several words, or a couple of sentences, in each resulting block. The vertical columns were to have the headings: (1) Physical Health; (2) Economic Health; (3) Social Health; (4) Moral Health; and (5) Spiritual Health. The horizontal rows were supposed to be labeled Friend 1, Friend 2 and so on through 5. He was told to write in the names of the five people he spent the most time around. Friend 1 could be his wife, but the rest should be outside the immediate family. He was to fill in information about all these people. The psychologist left the room for a few minutes while he jotted down his impressions.

When this man's wise counselor returned and read the chart, he said, "This is your future. We can predict our personal health along these five dimensions by looking at the people closest to us. Take note. And then take whatever action you need to take."

I was fascinated. I asked the gentleman what had happened in his life as a result of this information. He was obviously very excited about it. His next words to me were, "Well, the divorce was easy." Then he said, "Dissolving my business partnership was much more complicated." He had decided that some of the people closest to him were having an effect that he did not want.

The idea behind such a chart and exercise is ancient. We tend to become like the people we're around. Social contact is contagious. Human nature is amazingly malleable. And, as the most insightful philosophers have always insisted, that makes it important for us to choose our friends well. When we have the chance to get to know great people, wise and virtuous individuals, we should never pass up the opportunity. And we should cultivate such intimates in our lives. Shakespeare wrote "It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of another; therefore, let men take heed of their company." (Henry IV) Cervantes even added to his great novel Don Quixote the adage, "Tell me what company you keep and I'll tell you what you are."

There's a new book relevant to all this called Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, by Harvard researchers Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler. They add to the famous sociological claim that only "Six Degrees of Separation" stand between each of us and almost anyone else on earth, their own distinctive conclusion that there are "Three Degrees of Influence" by which our behavior affects, and is affected by, others.

The actions of friends of friends of friends can raise or lower the probability of good and bad things in our own lives, whether we know the people separated from us by all three degrees or not. My favorite line in the book puts it like this: "You may not know him personally, but your friend's husband's coworker can make you fat." But then again, by their reasoning, you can do the same to him as well.

The conclusions I draw are two-fold: First, that it matters even more than we have ever realized in the past who the people are that we meet and socialize with on a daily basis. We need to have as close acquaintances friends whose good judgment we can count on to choose as their other friends and associates individuals who will not abuse the privileges of all-you-can-eat restaurants, lest we all have to loosen our belts. And second, every time you put down that second Twinkie, you may be affecting public health on a much broader scale than you might ever have imagined.

Hence the advice: you be wise, and I'll be likewise, and many may gain as a result, as our actions propagate through our social networks of surprising influence.