Chains

We were arguing energetically about whether the world is actually
evolving, headed in a particular direction, or whether the entire
universe is just a returning rhythm’s game, a renewal of eternity.
“There has to be something of crucial importance,” I said in the
middle of debate. “I just don’t quite know how to express it in a
new way; I hate repeating myself.”

The concept of Six Degrees of Separation was made famous by Stanley Milgram’s Small World experiments in the 1960s, and has been popularised by the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

However, the idea of a Small World appeared much earlier, in 1929, in a curious short story called Lancszemek (Chains) by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy. Click here to download a PDF of the English translation.