This line — a deliberate inversion of Lincoln Steffens's famous remark about the Soviet Union ('I have seen the future, and it works') — captured Vonnegut's central argument. He had visited Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War, where the population was starving and blockaded, fighting with Mauser rifles older than Vonnegut himself. Yet their society functioned because every Biafran was a member of an extended family — 'he had hundreds of relatives he knew by name and reputation.' Those families 'took care of their own wounded, their own lunatics, their own refugees. They shared equally whatever they had.' No government bureaucracy was needed. Vonnegut's point was provocative: the nuclear family was a failed experiment. 'One out of every three of us here has been or will be divorced,' he said, and the real reason was that 'the nuclear family doesn't provide nearly enough companionship.' His imagined divorce speech: 'You, being human, need a hundred different affectionate and like-minded companions. I'm only one person.'