"You Need 50 People."

Kurt Vonnegut on loneliness, community, and why marriage can never be enough for anyone.

This piece was originally published in July 2024.

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I don’t think I was prepared for how exhausting and lonely parenting can be in the modern world. Despite having active young kids and constantly taking them places, I still find myself longing for time to myself. Time to think, and time to talk to other adult humans about things beyond parenting. But the dishes keep spinning and the laundry keeps crashing and the days all run into each other in one giant blur.

We’ve talked before about how exhausting and lonely parenting can be in the modern world. But it’s not just parenting—it’s modern life. I think many of us are far too lonely and disconnected. There’s a real hunger for community, for depth, for true connection. It’s only when I step out of the extreme workaholism of modern parenting and take a break—when I go camping, when I get into nature, or when I finally take that day off I’ve been meaning to take for ages—that’s when I realize just how bare-bones and lonely parts of everyday life can become.

We’re not meant to carry all of this burden in siloed houses so far apart from each other. The nuclear family is too small. (There, I said it.) Marriage isn’t really working. We can begin to drown inside of it, and forget that all of these fights—the fights over the cooking and the cleaning and the work and the children—are really about something else entirely.

Kurt Vonnegut, an American writer, humorist, and the author of fourteen books, speaks to the depth of loneliness that so many people feel and why we’re really fighting with each other. In the essay collection “If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?” Vonnegut shares sharp, precise notes on why it’s too much—and what we can do about it.

What we’re really fighting about, he argues, is that we don’t have enough people.

“Only two major subjects remain to be covered: loneliness and boredom. No matter what age any of us is now, we are going to be bored and lonely during what remains of our lives. We are so lonely because we don’t have enough friends and relatives. Human beings are supposed to live in stable, like-minded, extended families of fifty people or more.” — Kurt Vonnegut

We need other people.

We need fifty other people. Or more.

One person cannot be everything and everyone for another person. Our partner cannot be our therapist and our confidante and our bowling pal and our reading group and our cooking group. It’s impossible to be all of this to each other.

A marriage is not enough. A friend is not enough.

We need more people.

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Do you have fifty people?

Vonnegut goes on to talk about marriage, and why marriage isn’t falling apart because marriage is wrong, but because our families are too small.

“Marriage is collapsing because our families are too small. A man cannot be a whole society to a woman, and a woman cannot be a whole society to a man. We try, but it is scarcely surprising that so many of us go to pieces.” — Kurt Vonnegut

So, he recommends, “everybody here [should] join all sorts of organizations, no matter how ridiculous, simply to get more people in his or her life. If does not matter much if all the other members are morons. Quantities of relatives of any sort are what we need.” And the cause of fights in marriage? It turns out, he surmises, “what they’re really yelling at each other about is loneliness.”

“What they’re really saying is, ‘You’re not enough people.’”

We are born into our immediate families. These families have gotten smaller and smaller over the last century, and farther apart. Many of us are just starting our own immediate families now.

But we don’t get told to invest as much time in developing our communities, being active socially, or building the networks we need beyond the structure of family or work. Your job is not your family. Your job is not your community. It is a component—but it is not the entirety.

We need warm-blooded people, to mix and mingle with, to be in the presence of. They do not have to be perfect people. They do not have to have all the same ideas and opinions as you. It does not matter much if all the other members are morons, he says. Find what they are good at—perhaps they are good at cooking food, or repairing faucets, or teaching your kid how to play an instrument or a sport.

We need a bunch of people. More than most of us have.

In a second speech, he goes on to elaborate on knowing the secrets to what women and men want. It’s remarkably similar to his story above:

“I know what women want. Women want a whole lot of people to talk to. And what do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.”

And men? “Men want a lot of pals.”

Obviously I don’t agree with the simplicity of men and women being entirely different (nor do I believe that marriage is just about a man and a woman) — but the underlying point rings true: as people, we want other people to hang out with. We need other people to be around, to check in with, and to talk to.

“[We] want a whole lot of people to talk to. And what do [we] want to talk about? [We] want to talk about everything.”

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Content is not community.

At night, the loneliness inside all of us conspires to bring us to our tiny slot machines, those little window boxes of Internet access. Whether it’s the phone or the pad or the wall screen, we scroll through TikTok and Instagram and Messages trying to find the closeness we crave. What we want is so powerful: we want laughter and connection and human touch and art and magic.

But what we get from tiny screens is not enough. He warns against trying to find community inside the screens. “Don’t try to make yourself an extended family out of ghosts on the Internet. Get yourself a Harley and join the Hell’s Angels instead.”

“I hope you know that television and computers are no more your friends, and no more increasers of your brainpower, than slot machines. All they want is for you to sit still and buy all kinds of junk, and play the stock market as though it were a game of blackjack.”

We need, he writes, warm-hearted people. “And only well-informed, warm-hearted people can teach others things they’ll always remember and love. Computers and TV don’t do that. A computer teaches a child what a computer can become. An educated human being teaches a child what a child can become.”

Consumption is not community.

There is a difference between consumption and connection. Scrolling through an algorithmic feed and leaving comments on posts is not deep enough for connection. It is info-tainment, entertainment, and communi-tain-ment (is that a thing?). It is Community-Lite.

We need more time in conversation, where the words tumble out and spill onto the table. Where we let each other ramble and discover. Where we wander and pause and pick back up again.

We need more creators and keepers of local community. We’ve forgotten how important this work is for each other, and Vonnegut, in a commencement speech, reminds people that while there may be “a handful of celebrities” from your graduating classes, the majority of people will find themselves “building or strengthening your communities.”

And this is the point that is so important I highlighted it and underlined it:

“Please love that destiny, if it turns out to be yours—for communities are all that’s substantial about the world.” — Kurt Vonnegut

It’s up to us to reach out, meet as many people as possible, and build our extended families, our communities, and our loose ties. These are the ties that hold up the human ecosystem, and they are so fragile and precarious for so many of us right now.

When I am the happiest in my life, it’s when I’m surrounded not just by high-quality soul sisters and friends who I love spending time with, but also by neighbors I wave to on a daily basis. It’s knowing the names of the local business owners, and chatting with neighbors in the street. This is one of the reasons why I’ve prioritized joining communities throughout my life. Online, offline, local, distant—I want the breadth and the depth. I don’t want to live alone, and I can’t pretend my family is enough. I want to be vibrant, connected, and communal.

And it’s even harder when you’re overwhelmed by the load of parenting and the slam of long work hours. In the early days, I had to challenge myself to get out and find ways to connect. I browsed the local bulletin boards, and I read up on what the local library had on offer. The community college has regular classes, and I did a six-week drumming circle and tried the salsa club, as well. Now I see many of these people regularly at the local coffee shop and we bump into each other at the library and yoga studios.

Getting out there and fighting the tide of overwork and the isolation of modern life is extra effort in a world of work that already wants to eat all of our available time.

But community is more important than we know.

Go find your people. (Even the doofuses.)

It will be more people than you think you need.

— Sarah K Peck

Leadership | Business | Parenting | Mindset | Humor
​Wise Women’s Council (Leadership Incubator)​
​Startup Parent (Podcast & Essays)
​Founders With Kids (Community)

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PS: As an entrepreneur, I could tackle many projects, many of which are more scalable than what I’m building. But I’m focused on building community and connections. My focus is connection and intimacy (often within the niche of parent founders). It’s not an easy project, but what we’re building is working. It’s why I built The Wise Women’s Council and Founders With Kids.

THE WISE WOMEN’S COUNCIL: FALL 2025!

I run a year-long leadership program for ambitious, kind, creative women who want to live life on their own terms. We’re kicking off the next cohort of The Wise Women’s Council this October. There are pages and pages of notes from women who have been through the program — read what they have to say here.

Apply to join the next cohort!