From a short book he wrote toward the end of his life, a series of mini interviews with famous and infamous people from the world beyond.  Afterlife Correspondent Vonnegut would enter the Pearly Gates for each interview, pursuant to the deal the atheist made with St. Peter to be allowed into heaven to conduct these short chats with historical figures for the benefit of those of us walking on the earth at that particular moment in time.  The proceeds from the sales of the book were donated to National Public Radio, or possibly to WNYC.

In his short intro Vonnegut describes the loneliness of modern life, a theme he often revisited.  He contrasted life in modern industrialized society to the vastly more social lives lived for millennia by groups of humans.  An Ibo baby in Africa is taken to meet her 400 aunts, uncles and cousins who take her in their arms by turn and coo at her and tell her how beautiful she is.  Wouldn’t you love to be that baby? asks Vonnegut.

The truly genius take is this, and I don’t have the text ( less than two sparsely type-set pages in total) in front of me so you’ll pardon (or not) a paraphrase.  

Freud didn’t know what women want, wrote Vonnegut, but Vonnegut does.  Women want to talk, to everyone, about everything.  What do men want?  Some pals and nobody to be mad at them.  The modern arrangement, a man and a woman pair off and live together, become the largest part of each other’s social universe.  

The woman gets somebody to talk to about everything all the time: but it’s a man.

The man gets a pal and somebody not to be mad at him: but it’s a woman.

Because a great Vonnegut insight should end with a profound, yet comic bow he adds:

Each one, unwittingly, has the same anguished complaint against the other: “you are not enough people!”.

As pithy a nutshell of something fundamental as any you’ll hear today, it seems to me.