The film Crash, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2006, features multiple protagonists. In fact, it’s hard to pinpoint a single main character. Significant actors portray various minor roles across different races, contributing to episodic storytelling. This is perhaps a narrative only possible in a place like Los Angeles, a city within America. British Jewish playwright Israel Zangwill once called America the “melting pot” in his Broadway play of the same name, referring to how immigrants of different races and ethnicities live together in America. Yet, they remain mixed but not united. The movie is about racial conflicts and clashes (Crash) between different races. The investigator Graham Waters (played by Don Cheadle) in the film interprets this phenomenon in his own way:
“I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.”
Regardless of whether a person is selfish or altruistic, we live together. Life isn’t easy if you don’t coexist with others. Today’s life has become too inconvenient without depending on others. Most of what we have on our breakfast table is thanks to the efforts of many different people. The clothes we wear might be made from wool from Tibetan sheep, designed by an Italian designer, and manufactured in a factory in Malaysia. My desk is filled with countless items made by people I’ve never met and whose names I don’t know. If I had to make all of these things myself, it might take a lifetime. I am merely fulfilling my role in the job given to me. No one has directed all of this. As Eric Beinhocker puts it, there is no benevolent dictator or responsible person who oversees the economy. Even though the world occasionally faces economic crises, it still functions well today. What is actually happening? Adam Smith explains this daily miracle as follows:
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”
In other words, Adam Smith believes that such miraculous events occur due to the workings of an “invisible hand.” Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is, in fact, the price. This price is the result of humans choosing competition and cooperation to maximize their own interests. At first glance, it seems like the world of infinite competition has no conditions. Regardless of race, nationality, age, or gender, people participate in this competition and supply goods for our breakfast tables and daily needs under better conditions. However, the world is not perfect. For the “invisible hand” to work perfectly, several difficult conditions must be met. Above all, there must be a perfectly competitive market. Economics textbooks explain that for a market to be perfectly competitive, conditions such as a large number of firms, homogeneity of products, free entry and exit, and complete information must be satisfied. For this to happen, there must be countless firms in a market, such that no single firm can influence the market price. However, in reality, perfect competition does not exist. To compete in a market, entry and exit must be free. In such an environment, it is impossible to expect profits above an appropriate level. But reality is different. Even for a small business, capital is needed, and information about that business is required. Even if you figure out a way to make money, the opportunity may not come your way easily.
If humans had no way to save, they might have been more cooperative. In a world where everything produced today would disappear if not used today, people’s greed would have been limited. Ironically, however, the development of corporations and financial markets has indeed been a driving force behind the development of today’s capitalism. The problem is that not everyone has access to this capital under the same conditions. Leading companies have made more money through monopolies or collusion between companies. Inequality clearly exists.
Another condition for a perfectly competitive market is that information must be provided immediately and fairly to all participants in the market. While many markets today are relatively more open to participation than in the past, information about profitable businesses is still concentrated among a few. At least for a certain period, this is the case. Information related to prices must be equally and immediately conveyed to all competitors. Such an efficient market does not exist either. Despite the development of communication and transportation, leading to increasingly perfect competition, the “selfish gene” does not share advantageous conditions with others. Until recently, it seemed that only those within a market knew which businesses were profitable. While additional participants may reduce profits over time, certain businesses remain monopolized by a few for a while. To achieve such luck, one might need a friend or relative in that business. This isn’t a story from long ago. Today’s information society has indeed made information previously monopolized by a few accessible to the general public. However, special information is still shared only among a few. High-level information in the stock market continues to be exchanged secretly among a few, even today. Hence, a perfect market does not exist.
In reality, markets always have some degree of unfairness. In a perfectly competitive market, there are no excessively profitable companies or individuals. However, reality is different. While the process of producing and selling goods may retain some degree of competition, the process of distributing the results is not as efficient. Critics of today’s market economy point out that “the invisible hand was effective in making bread, but clumsy in distributing it.” The fact that wealth concentration is worsening today gives some validity to this claim. Perhaps there seems to be a need for another “invisible hand.” Let’s set aside this topic for now. For the “invisible hand” to work, the problem of the “stupid gene” must be solved. This is because there are always traitors who seek to profit by not adhering to the rules of the game. People who refuse to cooperate for immediate gain are everywhere.
Even if they do cooperate, selfish cooperation exists solely for their benefit. This is what is known as collective selfishness. We are not here to criticize such a society, but to point out that in this increasingly small world, collective selfishness still exists through selfish cooperation. This is the reality.
Collective selfishness, like the “selfish gene,” is one of the important phenomena that describe our society. Reinhold Niebuhr, the author of Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), which was selected by Time magazine as one of the 100 best books of the 20th century, points out that “even moral individuals turn into collective egoists when they belong to a group within society.” If even moral individuals behave this way, imagine the collective selfishness of a group made up only of selfish people. In fact, human history includes many tragedies created by this collective selfishness. The aristocratic class and the yangban class created many mechanisms and institutions for their exclusive benefit. The caste system in India, though slowly changing with economic development, still exists in Indian society. The privileged class always justifies their special interests by claiming it serves the greater good, but ultimately, they are obsessed with their immediate gains.
This method is used by all political groups, regardless of time or country. Just as the culture and history of a society can trap individuals and cause cultural clashes, collective selfishness creates social and political conflicts among various groups. While individual selfish behavior can be somewhat suppressed through religion and moral education, collective selfishness cannot be controlled by such means. This is because intergroup relationships are defined more by the dynamics of power than by ethics. Many studies report that groups of individuals with similar opinions tend to take more extreme positions than individuals, and groups with a common goal are more likely to make extreme choices than individuals acting alone. The phenomenon where peaceful protests turn violent, thereby losing their meaning, can be explained by the same logic. This occurs even without the presence of “agitators.” Perhaps it’s because they can share the risk. War, too, is nothing more than a provocation of collective selfishness among young people who are desperate to find something new to achieve their collective interests. There are always plausible justifications and fervent propaganda in such situations.
We all belong to various formal and informal groups or associations and live our lives within them. While the organizational chart of a company or group may resemble a pyramid, if we were to depict human relationships, they would resemble an internet network. No matter how much an organization tries to establish pyramid-shaped relationships, people will form relationships beyond command lines. The terms “node” and “link,” which we have mentioned, are internet terminology. Using these terms to describe human relationships, “node” refers to an individual, and “link” refers to the relationships between individuals. The Buddhist concept of dependent origination (緣起說) also teaches that human relationships are interconnected like a network. Dependent origination means that all phenomena in the universe are not created independently but exist by constantly influencing and changing each other. All complex systems that seem disordered are composed of numerous networks that are interconnected. Being connected means that they can influence each other. This is why they become complex and are called complex systems. Even in a small village of about 20 people, numerous events and incidents occur. So, what about the human network we live in today?
As mentioned earlier, the world is becoming more complex and, at the same time, smaller. The society we live in has become truly small. There is a mid-career actor named Kevin Bacon. He has appeared in supporting roles in films like A Few Good Men, The River Wild, Hollow Man, Apollo 13, and Death Sentence (2007). There was a time when a game called “The Kevin Bacon Game” became popular among American college students. The game worked like this: one would pick any actor in Hollywood, start with a movie they starred in, and connect the actor and films until they found a movie that featured Kevin Bacon, with the shortest connection winning the game. Let’s take an example from the films we’ve referenced to illustrate this topic. Tom Cruise from Rain Man starred with Kevin Bacon in A Few Good Men, so that’s one step. Tom Hanks from Forrest Gump also appeared with Kevin Bacon in Apollo 13, so he’s one step away as well. Clint Eastwood from Million Dollar Baby starred with Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County, and Meryl Streep starred with Kevin Bacon in The River Wild, so Clint Eastwood is two steps away. Meanwhile, Morgan Freeman from Million Dollar Baby connects to Kevin Bacon through Eastwood and Streep, making him three steps away. Keanu Reeves from A Walk in the Clouds co-starred with Morgan Freeman in Chain Reaction, connecting him to Kevin Bacon in four steps. The goal of the game is to find the shortest connection using such chains of association. When we consider the connection between actors, the average number of steps to reach Kevin Bacon from any Hollywood actor is 3.6, and even for relatively unknown actors in minor roles, it takes no more than six steps to connect to Kevin Bacon.
What if we applied this to the entire United States rather than just Hollywood? Contrary to expectations, even for ordinary citizens, the number of steps to connect with a stranger didn’t exceed six. Before “The Kevin Bacon Game” became popular, Harvard University’s Stanley Milgram conducted a letter-delivery experiment in 1967, reporting that Americans were linked within an average of 5.5 steps. Milgram sent 300 letters to two villages in the Midwest and asked the recipients to “deliver the letter to Mr. A, a stockbroker living in Boston.” The letters were to be forwarded from one person to another, with each person choosing someone they thought would be most likely to know Mr. A in Boston. The recipients were also asked to write their names on the envelope, so Milgram could trace the path the letter took. On average, successful deliveries involved 5.5 intermediaries. What about Korea? As you might guess, Korea is an even smaller society. It’s often said that everyone is connected by one degree of separation. In 2004, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper and Yonsei University’s Institute for Social Development set out to connect a specific person living in Seoul, using 108 randomly selected starting individuals. The result was an average of 3.6 steps. In other words, it takes only 3.6 degrees of separation for Koreans to know each other.
What about beyond national borders? In a special case, imagine how many degrees of separation it would take to connect American actor Tom Cruise with Korean actor Ahn Sung-ki through their film networks. Tom Cruise worked with director John Woo on Mission: Impossible 2, and John Woo worked with Chow Yun-fat in A Better Tomorrow. Chow Yun-fat starred with Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Zhang Ziyi acted with Ahn Sung-ki in Musa. It takes just four steps. If we consider their real-life networks, the steps could be even fewer. In any case, it’s estimated that the entire world is connected by an average of six degrees.
The above games and experiments all show that the world is indeed a small place. But does this mean that all human networks are equal in terms of relationships? No, even within networks, we observe inequality. Recall the unequal aspects of complex networks we’ve discussed. Whether in nature or human society, complex networks seem to have a few key players who play important roles. Moreover, if I mainly interact with certain individuals, my network becomes limited. To reach the “small world” beyond occupational, age, or national boundaries, one must rely on someone else’s network. In real life, people with wider networks have more influence than others. In logistics networks, airports or ports that function as hubs play more important roles and generate significant economic value. The same applies to internet hubs.
This is what we see in complex networks, which we call scale-free networks.
Human networks resemble internet networks so closely that they can almost be quantified through search engines. Even if people worldwide can be technically connected within six steps, the strength of these connections varies. Just as internet websites have different levels of traffic and connections, so do human relationships. In the internet, some sites serve as hubs, just as “mavens” or “super-connectors” serve as hubs in human relationships. Our lives are greatly influenced by the networks to which we belong. It’s no exaggeration to say that most of our lives are determined by the groups we are part of. The networks formed through family and school are truly decisive. Human networks are never equal, and even within the same network, the strength of links varies. In fact, there are countless cases where a chance meeting with someone completely changes the direction of one’s life.
Napoleon Hill, often referred to as the father of modern success studies, met steel magnate Andrew Carnegie early in his career as a young journalist. During Hill’s study of the principles of success, doors opened for him when he mentioned Carnegie’s introduction. Through interviews with these successful individuals, he uncovered the principles of success. It’s said that the profession of a person immigrating to a foreign country is often influenced by the person who picks them up at the airport. There are countless examples of how meetings with certain people have determined one’s fate or changed the course of their life. This is why we must surround ourselves with mentors, teachers, or respected friends. It’s not just because we receive advice and support from them, but because we gain access to their human networks.
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