Six degrees of separation

Is it really true if you were to pick randomly of any name in any phone books of this world, you could actually trace your connection to that person with only six different persons of this world? I wont put this theory to the test but i do know that with social networking web like twitter and facebook, the world has shrunk in size. Im now reconnecting with my old school and college mates and even with my former tutor at law school whom I have not met and seen for years.

But I thought I should post something on this much touted social theory on an incident that I encountered recently. I came to know a person here from one of the balkan states who happened to be married with a canadian whom I met at one of the endless dinner functions that me and my wife attended. She was introduced to us by the wife of the world bank director here. The Director who is a Sri Langkan is one of my golf buddies. One night me and missus bumped into her with her friends, a couple on holiday here from Canada. When we were introduced, I asked the husband of the couple where he worked and he told me that he used to be a police officer. I told him that I used to know a government lawyer, a prosecutor to be exact working in Canada and now she is a judge at the International Tribunal at the Hague. And we were actually good friends but somehow I lost contact. To my surprise, the husband told me that he knew the person I was talking about and in fact he used to work with her in some of the criminal prosecutions they did together. What a small world indeed! but there you go with six different persons I randomly met, I could reconnect with a friend. Of course with the modern days wonder called Facebook, the "mutual friend" button could probably take you to your long lost friend within a click of a button.

But that is not my central thought of the day. This is... With only six different people or six degrees of separation with every person on this planet, we are actually very close to one another than we thought. This may sound corny and idealistic to some, but why the heck do people still hate each other? Okay, I do a have a fair idea on some of the answers. I just thought I wanted to pose that question as my closing thought for this post. Have a good day ahead :-)