M&Ms: The Community Deficiency

You and I have a deficiency.

Kurt Vonnegut said, "Think of the British Navy, whose sailors filled the world's oceans during the height of their empire. And yet their sailors felt lousy all the time and died off in large quantities. Of course, this was all due to a vitamin deficiency."

But, a vitamin deficiency is tough to diagnose.

It was a long time, and many dead sailors before anyone could figure out why it was all happening. An estimated 2 million sailors died from Scurvy from the 16th to the 18th century.

A survivor's story from a 16th-century English voyage tells us just how bad a simple deficiency of something vital can get:

"It rotted all my gums, which gave out a black and putrid blood. My thighs and lower legs were black and gangrenous, and I was forced to use my knife each day to cut into the flesh in order to release this black and foul blood. I also used my knife on my gums, which were livid and growing over my teeth. . . . When I had cut away this dead flesh and caused much black blood to flow, I rinsed my mouth and teeth with my urine, rubbing them very hard. . . . Many of our people died of it every day, and we saw bodies thrown into the sea constantly, three or four at a time.”

—The Age of Scurvy, sciencehistory.org

Illustration by Gustave Doré from a book-length edition of Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Scurvy was responsible for more deaths at sea than storms, shipwrecks, combat, and all other diseases combined. (Source)

And to think Scurvy happens because one hasn't had enough vitamin C.

Once the British Navy figured it out, thanks to surgeon James Lindt in the 18th century, and started handing out limes and lemons for long voyages, they conquered the disease.

But how could you and I have a deficiency? After all, don't we have access to more wonderful things than any of our ancestors predating us?

Well, unfortunately for us, our ancestors had something many of us don't have. For most of our existence, our ancestors had access to 50 or more other adult family and tribe members at all times.

Kurt once again enlightens us, "A husband and a wife and some kids aren't a family, any more than a Diet Pepsi and three Oreos is a breakfast. Twenty, thirty, forty people—that's a family." And Kurt is someone who had seven kids. Most of us today are lucky if we have a wife and one or two kids.

Here is how some of my ancestors lived in the late 1800s, just a few hundred years ago.

Decorating of the Bride, by Paja Jovanović.

If you are skeptical of paintings of my ancestors, here are photos of a family unit, taken a little less than a hundred years ago.

And I am fortunate I got to experience that life as a kid.

We were dirt poor in material things in rural communist Albania in the early 1990s. But we were wealthy in family members. Between my parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and their kids, there were many people in one house. And next door was my grandfather's brother and his five children. Many of whom had their own children, some the same age as me. All in all, over 30 of us were within a few feet of each other.

My parents say I got scolded a lot for the bad things I did as a kid, sent to the wall, if you will, for punishment. But sometimes, I'd run next door to my great uncle's house instead of taking the discipline. And I do remember getting treated quite well there. I'd get treated like a diplomatic refugee who escaped an oppressive regime. First, they'd feed me. Then they'd tell me everything would be alright. Then, my uncle would negotiate my return on condition that I wasn't punished.

But chances are high that your ancestors didn't live that differently, either.

And the thing about a tribe, family, friends, and community deficiency is that it takes time to set in, just like a vitamin deficiency. You don't know you're lonely until much later in life. And just like a vitamin deficiency, it causes all sorts of weird symptoms that are hard to diagnose in people.

Look at our society today: perfectly wealthy in material things yet starving for something critical.

The data from a study published by the office of the U.S. Surgeon General in 2023 looks bleak.

So, how important is curing this deficiency?

In The Secret to Our Success, Joseph Henrich said, "Puzzlingly, our kind are physically weak, slow, and not particularly good at climbing trees. Any adult chimp can readily overpower us... Our guts are particularly poor at detoxifying poisonous plants, yet most of us cannot readily distinguish the poisonous ones from the edible ones. We depend on eating cooked food, though we aren't born knowing how to make fire or cook. Compared to other mammals of our size and diet, our colons are too short, our stomachs too small, and our teeth too petite."

Joseph adds, "Our infants are born fat and dangerously premature, with skulls that have not yet fused." But did you know that an infant baby comes pre-wired to know when another human is gazing at it, pre-wired to react to eye contact? We are highly specialized social creatures, and nature seems to think this is even more important than knowing how to make fire or cook.

From the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

The nuclear family has been a poor substitute for what we used to have. Community centers, third places as they're sometimes called, like churches, are disappearing. And we are lonely because we don't have enough friends and relatives.

So what is the answer? How do we cure our modern Scurvy before it does us in? Although I am trying hard to re-create for my children what I had as a child it is nearly impossible to do it exactly, times have changed, still I try.

But Kurt Vonnegut gives us a pretty good answer to what might be the lemons and limes, the cure, for our modern deficiency:

"Your class spokesperson mourned the collapse of the institution of marriage in this country. 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. So I recommend that everybody here join all sorts of organizations, no matter how ridiculous, simply to get more people in his or her life. It does not matter much if all the other members are morons. Quantities of relatives of any sort are what we need."

---

Three Memes: Cooking, European and American Minds, The Computer Disease

We might not be born able to cook but boy is it a good skill to have.

People will always need to eat and you’ll always be able to make people happy by cooking for them.

I am not a great chef or anything but even I can burn a little meat.

I once invited all my engineering teams over my house and I grilled a little bit for all of them. It was a ton of fun.

Although that life lesson about John Gacy might be meant to be a little tongue-in-cheek, I think cooking for people is a great way to make friends.

My only regret is that I haven’t been able do it more often.

---

There’s a fun Meme format going around where Europeans say things we Americans just wouldn’t understand. And similarly we Americans do the same to the Europeans.

This particular meme is perfect because the Europeans hate ice water for some reason.

---

Computers are a lot of fun, and useful, there is no denying that.

Which is why The Computer Disease is a very real thing.

---

—Louie

P.S. You can reply to this email; it will get to me, and I will read it.