Do you know the social network?

The social network of all the people you know, and all the people they know, and all the people they know. We don’t think about it much, but Drs. Christakis and Fowler show us the power of these social networks in their book, Connected.It’s six degrees of connection to anyone in the world, and only three degrees of influence to the people in your social network. Those friends of friends of friends have a bigger influence on you than you realize. They can bring you a partner, job, happiness or anxiety, and even extra body weight. And you have a bigger influence on them than you realize too. Everything that we say and do impacts our friends, and through them goes on to impact people that we do not know or think about.This book is a great read and has some relevant takeaways. First, you are never really alone. The quality of your connections can always be improved, but they are always there. People can only exist in relation to others, for better or worse. Second, you might be the average of the five people you spend most of your time with, but maybe not. That truthism neglects the incredible, inescapable web of relationships that we live in.Here are my notes and quotes from the book:

Loneliness is the discrepancy between our desire for social connection and the quality of our actual connections“Morality’s ancient dilemma: us or me” – Ian McEwanThe only major threat to humans is other humans“Our ability to get along emerges spontaneously from the decentralized [unforced] actions of people who form groups with connected fates and a common purpose”“Belief systems are like a shark that has to constantly be fed… if you don’t feed the delusion, sooner or later it will die out or diminish on its own accord. The key thing is that it needs to be repetitively reinforced”“Some people can be carriers of an idea without themselves exhibiting te behavior related to the idea”