Mark Granovetter, a Stanford University professor focused on economic sociology ( http://www.stanford.edu/dept/soc/people/faculty/granovetter/granovet.html ), has hypothesized and studied The Strength of Weak Ties ( http://tinyurl.com/4r53j ) - that wider webs of ("weaker") relationships provide great value to the individual and society. If anyone has ever met a sage - someone who seems to be an old friend, because of their power of insight and empathy - we can understand somewhat the human-centered (even organic) basis of The Strength of Weak Ties.

We could look at The Strength of Weak Ties as simply that the connection between the individual and all of humanity is inherently close (and in an era of globalization, we should think of this as the key meme to unite humanity, hence the most empowering force for any diffuse global federation of partners, or a new global movement). How the greater portion of society operates is important. There is increasing discussion among progressive economists (see for example http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2004-December/018146.html or others at http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2004-December/date.html ) about either a possible Schumpterian anti-capitalist backlash, or at least the failure of capitalism to continue to unite - these conclusions are natural in the context of The Strength of Weak Ties and point to a new direction of diffusion of power (and strategy for power), with some similarity to the work of C.K. Prahalad (Bottom of the Pyramid Capitalism … see http://tinyurl.com/4qt6x where our pseudonym Aikidosphere has chimed in … - also a conference Eradicating Poverty through Profit … http://povertyprofit.wri.org/ and http://tinyurl.com/4pw3y ).

Perhaps the future organizational meme will be Aikido Capitalism - based on The Strength of Weak Ties.

In one extreme, people have nothing to do with each other and are on their own. This is clearly against human nature, and the nature of most every living species whose ability to function collaboratively is key to their ecological role and evolutionary position in life systems.

In another extreme, people become entirely co-dependent with each and every other individual for every thought, breath and act. This is also clearly against human nature, and an equally impossible ecol-social state of affairs as the other extreme.

Mark's distinction between strength and weakness in the context of relationships seems at first blush to be a little bit unrealistically black and white, but it represents a useful way to explain the value of connections between distinct groups to each group. The logical direction for Mark and others to go would be to the value of different groups to the whole (with cross-implications with David P. Reed's work - http://www.reed.com/ ), especially the value of those who value others different from them to the whole - because it is these groups whose members can be expected to behave to maximize The Strength of Weak Ties, to bridge gaps, and to unify.

Perhaps the greatest discrimination to be learned is to discriminate … depth that aims to honor differences of depth … from … superficiality that tends to develop a (seemingly) protective layer of insularity against superficially-different others. One result of the learning of such discrimination, is that racial discrimination would abate. Which is nice.

Some interesting papers on the strength of weak ties follow:

TinyURL equivalents in the text above (in case TinyURL ever disappears!):
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