A Man Without a Country – Kurt Vonnegut
Okay, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want: a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.
What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them.
Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.
A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys.
But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.
When a couple has an argument nowadays, they may think it’s about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they’re really saying to teach other, though without realizing it, is the: “you are not enough people!”
A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It’s a terribly vulnerable survival unit. (p. 48-49).
The imagination circuit is taught to respond to the most
minimal of cues. A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten
numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes
over these and envision the eruption of