What Newfield discovers is that exiters experience both a sense of independence and a persistent connection they are not completely dislocated from their roots once they “arrive” at their new destination. Newfield also examines how these exiters forge new ways of being that their upbringing had not prepared them for, while also considering what these particular individuals lose and retain in the exit process.ĭegrees of Separation presents a comprehensive portrait of the prolonged state of being “in-between” that characterizes transition out of a totalizing worldview. He presents their motivations for leaving as well as how they make sense of their experiences and their processes of exiting, detailing their attitudes and opinions regarding their religious upbringing.
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In Degrees of Separation, Schneur Zalman Newfield, who went through this process himself, interviews seventy-four Lubavitch and Satmar ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews who left their communities. Give us your feedback in the comments below or on Twitter using #JustExplainItNews.Those who exit a religion-particularly one they were born and raised in-often find themselves at sea in their efforts to transition to life beyond their community. So is the six degrees of separation theory fact or fiction? Do you think it can be definitively proven? Let us know what you think. According to a study by social media monitoring firm Sysomos, five or less steps separate almost all of Twitter’s 5 billion users. On Twitter, a network is created when users follow each other. For example, LinkedIn users can set up an introduction - through a direct connection - with someone they’d like to meet. Other sites like, Twitter and LinkedIn, use online social networking to connect members. And if you limit it to just the United States, it was just 4.37. They analyzed the information from 721 million active members, and researchers found that the average number of connections from one randomly selected person to another was 4.74. Now let's see how this theory works in people’s social media lives…įacebook, along with the University of Milan, organized a study in 2011. It’s a trivia game that challenges players to find the shortest path between actor Kevin Bacon and another actor – through his or her film roles. And between them, there are six degrees!Įven Hollywood has its own version called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. We discovered I was a link between actresses Angelina Jolie and Elisha Cuthbert. Ok, admittedly I’m not a scientist, but we here at the show conducted our own investigation to test the six degrees of separation theory. However, researchers did find that the successful e-mails took an average of just five to seven steps to reach their targets. Over 60,000 participants created 24,000 e-mail chains, but less than 400 messages reached their marks. They asked participants across the globe to try to reach 18 people they had never met by sending e-mails through acquaintances. That’s when Columbia University researchers released the results of their "Small World Research Project” – an Internet version of Milgram’s experiment. One of the more recent attempts to prove we are closely connected was in 2003. He found that people, who successfully completed the task, did so with a chain of six or fewer connections.
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Milgram asked initial participants to mail a letter through friends, and then friends of friends, to a designated stranger living in Massachusetts. In the 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram’s small world experiment confirmed that two strangers could be connected in six degrees. Over the years, many attempts have been made to prove that mutual friends might connect two random people.