Unproven, but there's evidence suggesting it might.
I suspect Guangdong was chosen for Contagion because that's where the SARS-CoV-1 virus is thought to have originated from in the early 2000s.
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I suspect Guangdong was chosen for Contagion because that's where the SARS-CoV-1 virus is thought to have originated from in the early 2000s.
I'm pretty sure we live in a world where someone not knowing where their next meal is coming from is treated as a human rights violation, and you think people would be better off to live in those circumstances forever?
Why do you imagine the world without the agricultural revolution would not have "boundless human suffering"? Why?
I don't think you appreciate the argument of communists. It's not about replacing a broken system, it's about having no system. You can't have government, you can't have business, you can't have any form of leadership. No hierarchy, no religion, no families, no ladders to climb. Anything that could be remotely described as systematic is banned. And if any bit of a system is retained, not only will it be said to not be communism, it will explicitly be called capitalism.
If you replaced the "broken system" with a "better system", communists would call you a capitalist and spit on your grave.
Does your personal experience as a fish inform this opinion? The life of a fish is perpetual joy?
As I understand it, fish spend most of their time eating or mating, or trying to do those two things. They're not compelled by external factors to perform tedious tasks for the benefit of other fish (...well, maybe except those little ones that clean shark's teeth in exchange for scraps).
You appear to be describing anarchism. Actually, something even further along than anarchism, since I don't believe any anarchists want to abolish families.
The issue is that you're not actually presenting "the argument of communists"; you're presenting your own curated description of what you think they want. But as we both well know, you're not actually very interested in listening to left-wingers or coming to a nuanced understanding of what they want.
Describe away, I've got no problem with that-- but don't pretend that any actual communists would read your description and say, "yep, that's it".
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USA
Yes, Guangdong is where both the bats live that contain COVID-19 AND they had more human cases of the strain closest to that found in bats, so it is unlikely that it could have started anywhere else, as no one has found 'patient zero" yet and Guangdong is the only location to meet the criteria thus far. Like Agema said though, Contagion likely chose Guangdong because that was where SARS, (COVID-19's cousin), originated as well. It makes sense for them to be related coming from the same region, and from what researchers have said, there are likely a lot more of these bat diseases there that pose a threat to humans as well, so this is likely not the last we have heard of this happening.
Although we have only been able to find very few people with the original COVID-19 genome at all, they did find 4 in Guangdong actually carrying the Ancestral genome, I think I read later they found 11 in Guangdong later, but that is more than found anywhere else and it is closer to the original than elsewhere because the others had more mutations showing that the virus that was most spread in Wuhan had already mutated by that point.
Phylogenetic network analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes
This is a phylogenetic network of SARS-CoV-2 genomes sampled from across the world. These genomes are closely related and under evolutionary selection in their human hosts, sometimes with parallel evolution events, that is, the same virus mutation emerges in two different human hosts. This makes...
www.pnas.org
Not being able to find " patient Zero" however, means it is still possible they contracted it somewhere else, but all the evidence we do have thus far shows that it most likely came from Guangdong and then mutated prior to reaching Wuhan.
Though I just had to add this to "encourage" this zombie Apocalypse scenario because I am twisted that way...
We actually already have the technology to create " vaccines that spread themselves" now, so like these scenarios where the immunologists and virologists trying to stop a pandemic cause a zombie Apocalypse instead by creating a vaccine that causes everyone to turn into zombies... Well here is some sweet nightmare fuel for ya:
We now have the technology to develop vaccines that spread themselves
Prevention is better than cure, so we should start using genetic techniques to stop dangerous animal diseases jumping to humans, say Scott Nuismer and James Bull
www.newscientist.com
Vaccines of the future could be as contagious as viruses
Scientists are taking a leaf from the virus playbook and devising vaccines and antiviral therapies that can spread from host to host.
www.popsci.com
National Lab Scientists Work to Reprogram Genes to Fight COVID-19
Using CRISPR, Sandia National Lab researchers are genetically engineering antiviral countermeasures to fight the coronavirus—and potentially future outbreaks.
www.nextgov.com
Reprogrammed viruses as cancer therapeutics: targeted, armed and shielded - PMC
Virotherapy is currently undergoing a renaissance, based on our improved understanding of virus biology and genetics and our better knowledge of many different types of cancer. Viruses can be reprogrammed into oncolytic vectors by combining three ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
MUHAHAHA! When I was in college and reprogramming viruses, I used to call my brother up and intentionally freak him out giving him nightmares by telling him what I was working on because I know how much this gets under his skin for shits and giggles. ( I am such a good sister aren't I? ) XD
Top 5 cases of zombies from the real world
Are there any zombies in nature? And what about humans, are we ever at risk of zombification? Read our special feature to find out what science has to say.
www.medicalnewstoday.com
JUST TO BE CLEAR THOUGH: I am only kidding and there is really no threat of a zombie apocalypse vaccine, and everyone should be vaccinated. It is just mildly entertaining to make paranoid people freak out over nothing.
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May I present to you the second chapter of the communist manifesto:
Communist Manifesto (Chapter 2)
On the relation between Communists and the working class
www.marxists.org
Feel free to ctrl + f for "family" to skip straight to the relevant part. Imagining that I don't know what I'm talking about is a questionable strategy. I'm very good at knowing what I'm talking about. Marx and Engels describe marriage as a capital relationship, more inevitable to disappear than necessary to abolish in a theoretical communist word, and describe parenting as some combination of child exploitation and perpetuating class structures.
Dude, he's writing in the 19th century. He's talking about women being emancipated and working class offspring getting educated by the state rather sent out as child labour.
I dunno, let's just actually quote the passage in question:
If you read the highlighted bits (bolded by yours truly) with the context of the times of child labor, it reads rather differently than "no more families, all loyalty to the state", doesn't it?
I'll reply to that other thing about agriculture later, I don't feel like it at the moment.
Alas for the death of the "Haha" reaction emoji. Gone before its time.
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So, he's talking about a very specific conception of the family (one which involves child labour)?
Have any of you googled "communism abolish family"? There's no shortage of people still arguing for this. Hell, the self-described marxists who wrote the Black Lives Matter website claim to "disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other". So we have communists at the dawn of the ideology, and we have communists today. Should I go hunt down more literature for all of you, or is someone going to do 30 seconds of research before just assuming I'm wrong? (I'm not wrong.)
Or maybe one of the actual communists who comments in this forum will get involved. I can't help but notice that it's not the communists disagreeing with my descriptions.
I thought the abolition of the family was more about free love rather than getting rid of families. Eg. You can have whatever family you wanted (legal age etc permitting.) It can have two dads or mums rather than two different genders. You don't HAVE to be married to have kids. You don't have to have a partner to have kids. You can have surrogates. All these things we're banned by the ’Patriarchy’.
Like, you quote from BLM sounds like, to me, finding family in friends, rather than just blood relatives. That’s not really offensive to me. Abolish the Family is, like normal for Lefties, a really stupid name for what they are trying to do
I did find this.... Which I don't think backs up either of our viewpoints. Just someone else take:
Want to Dismantle Capitalism? Abolish the Family
Feminist theorist Sophie Lewis’s new book looks at how rethinking pregnancy and the idea of family as forms of labor is central to emancipatory politics.
www.thenation.com
You say...
To which my answer is: if you want to make a point, either provide your own evidence, or make a reasonable argument. Don't rely on others to do either for you.
I hear "I fucked up and now I'm going to trick you into doing my research for me."
To which my answer is: if you want to make a point, either provide your own evidence, or make a reasonable argument. Don't rely on others to do either for you.
That people do not deign to engage your laughable descriptions does not in any way imply agreement.
Tstorm’s greatest issue with communists is how little we care about his juvenile Birch Society bullshit.
"Family" as they mean it there is a set of structures and traditions; these can differ by place and time. What they mean is perhaps more abolishing the existing structure and traditions of the family of the time. Such criticisms for Marx in the 19th century are:
1) The family as a primary unit of holding wealth (i.e. that ownership passes down generations) and this is a major part of its function. This particular function is incompatible with communism, because private ownership of the means of production is to be scrapped.
2) Women had little rights in the era: marriage in many senses existed as "ownership" of women by men, who took control of their property. The existing family structure (of the 19th century) decisively subjugates women to their husbands.
3) Many leftists have long contended that housework is work. Women were doing labour that was unpaid and unrecognised, despite performing a societally important and productive function.
4) The working class family is already destroyed in Marx's view: children are exploited for money, and their labour in workplaces means therefore they are de facto raised communally anyway. I suppose a parallel amongst the rich was sending children to boarding schools, or being absent parents and leaving them to nannies and tutors.
5) The existing family structure was emotionally damaging. People (especially women) felt the need to marry for status and wealth rather than love and emotional support, and got stuck in them because divorce was incredibly difficult.
And so on. What they were envisaging was a more freeform way for humans to relate. Many socialists at the time accepted that in practice people would tend to organise as one man, one woman and their children, and that would be totally fine. But there could and should be provision for doing other ways in accordance with the needs and preferences of all involved (men, women and children). In order to do so, however, the existing structure of the 19th century "family" would have to be "abolished".
One might note that Marx would have probably found many of the reforms of the ensuing century and a half satisfactory: universal public education, childcare facilities, easier divorce, the reduction of stigma for extramarital sex, cohabitation and child-raising, female emancipation and involvement in the workforce, etc. Arguably, our move towards this model suggests that many of his criticisms had weight and society came to similar conclusions. Some people have looked at more radical moves towards free love relationships with public/communal child-raising, but they're relatively rare, and I don't think there's any demand that this be an official societal system enforced on unwilling individual men and women.
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I did. Twice. I'm still being told I'm making things up by half the people here.
You're insulting me, but you aren't disagreeing.
You're insulting me, but you aren't disagreeing.
As in all things, there are different interpretations in different times and places because circumstances change. It's important to try and understand the theory away from the circumstances. What's the issue with family that runs contrary to a classless, stateless society? What is family but a distinction between one group of people from the rest? That's a class of people. It may look as though some of what Marx would want may be implemented by now, that child labor is gone in many places and education is socialized, but modern education is almost less about education than it is about class hierarchy. I don't think even wealth as a metric can compete with the classicism that is modern education and the degree system. Inheritance is still very much a thing, one that many actively protest, and even if inheritance at death ceased to be a thing, passing the things you own to your children while alive would still be a thing. That's all utterly incompatible with communism.
Family is favoritism. Family creates inequality. If your sole goal is equality, it makes perfect sense to go after the institution of the family. The logic makes sense. The historical record is there. People claiming I'm wrong are gaslighting this, badly.
That this is how you think of family is more revealing of you than of anybody left of you.