Beatriz Baptista > Recent Status Updates

'No one can turn the clock back, did you say ?' said Woland
'That's true. But we can always try. Azazello!'

book two: the flight

para já continua hilariante !!!

“We are told by the powerful that, in times of instability, our fears will bring out the worst in us. In reality, it is the stability of this system that best demonstrates the awesomely destructive power of our fears. Governed by fear, people are largely cooperative with systems that produce torture, mass death, and annihilation.”

“Our atomized and alienated society leaves little organic space for political communion or even shared compassion. And in the spaces between us, fear grows.”

”This is not simply a task of educating ourselves but the ongoing work of charting and experiencing reality together and sharing our joy and grief over the wonders and tragedies of our times.”

“In a world where we are steadily being splintered apart, where so much of our social lives have been reduced to commercial interactions, and where fellowship and belonging are desperately lacking, we must relearn how to hold space and belief together in ways that anchor us to each other and to our collective moral commitments.

“In order to invest in a new vision, and a new way of living, we have to believe in each other and our capacity to create something better. Our belief in human potential must outweigh our fear of human failure. Our imaginations must be courageous.”

”We must also “continue to create our own works of visual art, fiction, and poetry that drive people to envision cooperation and mutual aid as our primary responses to crisis.”

“We have been taught to imagine that “the alternative” to policing is nothing less than brutal chaos. Then, in addition to building relationships that foster collective power, interdependence, and care, we must educate people about alternative interventions that actually address the needs of people affected by violence, poverty, and climate collapse.”

“After all, it’s undeniable that people sometimes hurt one another (…). For example, many people know no recourse for violence besides calling the police, even if they do not believe that doing so will lead to any form of resolution.”

When we experience a taste of collective power, our courage will grow, as we recognize that we are stronger together and that we are not alone.”

“By expanding our relationships and embracing interdependence, we can leverage power against the threats we face and extend care amid crisis. We can courageously reach out and connect with other people, even if we feel like we don’t have much in common with them.

“There are many layers of fear associated with this abandonment: fear of what would happen if the system no longer managed our lives, fear of being devoured by the system ourselves, fear that we cannot win, and perhaps most dauntingly, the fear that we cannot do any better than this, that our hopes to the contrary are the utopian dreams of childish idealists.”

“Capitalism requires an ever-broadening disposable class of people in order to maintain itself, which in turn requires us to believe that there are people whose fates are not linked to our own: people who must be abandoned or eliminated.”