Hating is weakness, while disliking is strength.
Hating is weakness, while disliking is strength.
―
Atrona Grizel
Thoughts humiliate more deeply than fists ever could. People forget physical insults, but they do not forget “intellectual delegitimization."
― Atrona Grizel
The state has nothing to say to individuals who go their own way, except in the form of sanctions—because if everyone truly went their own way, there would be no state at all. The state exists solely to imprison individuals within society and to call this confinement “national identity.” Classical sociology labels the refusal to submit to this externality as a “failure to achieve sociality,” because sociology, quite simply, has no adequate term for people who remain loyal to their own reality rather than to the imposed reality. Such people are rendered as “misfits,” “excluded,” or “victimized,” but they are invariably assigned a negative role. For if the inner world were to surpass the outer world in influence and scope, there would be no such thing as society at all—and societies exist precisely to perpetually conceal this fact. Mainstream sociology, accordingly, evaluates individuals—those so-called “social animals”—solely on the basis of whether they can adapt to “society.” The individual works for the state, and then the state feeds them; mainstream sociology takes this as a given. That is, the individual is always situated within a larger external system and defined by it. Because if people were to define themselves on their own terms, rather than absorbing the roles and values imposed by the societies they are born into and calling this absorption “identity,” states would collapse and sociology would be discarded.
―
Atrona Grizel
What am I living
for? Nothing, really. I’m just living. But if an aim is required, it might be
this: discovering one more unknown Sovietwave track, becoming addicted to one
more piece by the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble that nobody listens to. While
feeling completely trapped and tormented, and at dawn, while thinking about
whether I might let myself fall out the window, I discover one more piece of
music, one more song about them… and my face smiles involuntarily… as if they
understand that I’m sad and are sending me gifts to make me happy. It works.
The music in life is provided by these two states anyway, one with the hammer
and sickle in North Asia, the other with the red star in East Asia. And after
death, there will be no need even for music, because I will have gone to join
them, who are themselves music. The body of the USSR was the largest body in
the world, and it died, but its spirit is still here. The DPRK, on the other
hand, has its body here, but its spirit is dead, and perhaps it never even
entered that body at all, instead wandering aimlessly in other realms. Yet both
are dreamers, and at their core neither belongs to this world; they come from
another dimension. They are like alien nations dropped from space and sold to
humans as “human states.” They too come from where I come from: nothingness. We
have no home, because our home is nonexistence itself. And within that
nonexistence, when the spirit of the Soviet Union, after a long wait, finally
comes with me, and when the body of North Korea finally dissolves itself and
its spirit becomes fully free and follows after me, and when I too abandon my
body and ascend into an abstract being, all our spirits will unite in that
nothingness, and nothingness will be our existence.
―
Atrona Grizel
Suppression works
until the body starts speaking in symptoms instead of feelings.
―
Atrona Grizel
Humans are too
irrelevant and insignificant to be furious at.
―
Atrona Grizel
To think without
boundaries means not finding anyone worth talking to, for their chains are
their oxygen.
―
Atrona Grizel
In public talks,
the constant repetition of “thinking and questioning” by those on stage
resembles an empty slogan on a flashy billboard meant to attract customers.
They say “think,” but when it comes to the action itself, they do not do it. No
one there, including the audience, actually thinks, yet while listening to the
speakers, they assume there is some “sacred cause.” The audience gives it their
belief, and the speaker spreads its propaganda. According to these people, the
intelligent generation is themselves, simply because they are the new
generation. This belief has been fed to every society throughout history to
maintain the illusion of “progress.” That is why speakers say, “You should not
say yes to everything that comes before you; you must object.” By this, of
course, they mean that anything except themselves may be objected to. Because
if you object to this sentence, either the whole hall suddenly looks at you
with scornful eyes or openly bursts into laughter, and in the worst case, if
they descend upon you, you are sent to a psychiatrist to be “fixed.” For there
is something whose questioning they do not want: their own understanding of
questioning.
―
Atrona Grizel
I destroyed my
social naivety—that is, my inexperience and shyness—in favor of the dominance
of my inner reality. In fact, I didn’t even do it consciously; it happened on
its own as my thoughts darkened during the time I spent among humans. The world
kept shouting at me that I was someone to be hated, and in retaliation, I armed
myself against a humanity that had already armed itself against me. Ultimately,
I refused to let my enemy have any effect on me. I found myself harboring
almost no negative feelings toward who I was—because I had exchanged them for
the ability to be ruthless toward everything and everyone I choose. Moments
replay in my mind where I once felt ashamed of even the smallest of my actions,
but now, I have eliminated all shame within me. Even if I were to sink into
filth, I possess a bulletproof self-affirmation. And this radical acceptance of
the inner world inevitably brings with it a radical rejection of the outside
world. Outside I had no power. Naturally, my revenge became inward: an
obsessive fixation on absolute self-governance. But even so, I don’t engage in
pretentious mockery like the cynics do, because I don’t even need that anymore.
―
Atrona Grizel
The self is not
the brain itself but what the brain produces. That is, consciousness. And
consciousness is abstract. When I look at a photograph of a brain, I am not
looking at myself but at the “device” that creates me. Because “I” does not and
cannot physically exist. Calling a human being “a brain” is the same as calling
them “a liver.” But no, I am not the organ itself; I am the extension of it.
―
Atrona Grizel
Blending into
society makes a person forget themselves. One no longer remembers who they are.
Perhaps it is for this reason that the herd holds dominion.
―
Atrona Grizel
The greatest
rebellion is resignation.
―
Atrona Grizel
Reality exists to
be bent.
―
Atrona Grizel
Humans are not
natives of the Earth, but its invaders.
―
Atrona Grizel
A person who has
lived their life being criticized and scorned becomes accustomed to it. And if
one day in the future someone tries to praise them, they mock that person.
―
Atrona Grizel
To get a clock
that records every passing second, and to place it at the head of the desk…
―
Atrona Grizel
To be mistaken,
to live as mistaken, and to die mistaken: a brief anatomy of the “normal”
human.
―
Atrona Grizel
To add “meaning”
to existence is to kill it like toxins poured into the lake.
―
Atrona Grizel
The “nickname”
society gives to people who have reached deep reality, in order to protect and
maintain unreality: “negative.”
―
Atrona Grizel
Except for
helplessness and powerlessness, everything is fake. There is no “solution”;
only temporary suggestions.
―
Atrona Grizel
Everything that
is defined becomes artificial and degenerate. To name is to assimilate.
―
Atrona Grizel
The realest pain
is the pain that seeks no causality.
―
Atrona Grizel
My mother—or
rather my “female caretaker”—changes her personality the moment she starts
speaking on the phone. She begins to laugh artificially. She adopts a tone as
if she cares about the other person. She repeats general values as though they
were her duty. In short, she “fulfills the responsibility of being an adult”:
excessive “happiness,” excessive “progress,”excessive “politeness,” and so on.
Most importantly, she carries all of this out automatically. It is all fake,
and in fact this is a law that applies to all stereotypical adults. I suppose
she is not even aware of what is coming out of her mouth. Words just tumble out
on their own. This is not expression but conditioning. And the other person,
being just the same—just as stupid as she is—does not even notice it. Only I am
left alone, forced to see behind the curtain. Actually, everyone knows that
everyone else is acting. But that is the rule of the game itself: even though
it is secretly known what kind of nonsense it is, it is still taken seriously
and played as if it were “life.”
―
Atrona Grizel
I have not lost
my humanity; I have annihilated it consciously.
―
Atrona Grizel
A soul without
pain and worry is an empty and jobless soul.
―
Atrona Grizel
Society is a hell
of “saviors” where everyone preaches happiness according to their own recipe.
―
Atrona Grizel
Pride: to be
aware of one’s own value, to celebrate it, and to express it without
hesitation.
―
Atrona Grizel
People who are
alive are alive not because they approve life, but because they reject death,
or at least because they do not approve death. Because life is not a choice; it
is the only alternative for those who are not captivated by the charm of death.
―
Atrona Grizel
When someone
shares their secrets out of nowhere, it surprises the person. Why? Because this
person is a “stranger.” This, in fact, means everyone is nothing but a fraud
hiding themselves.
―
Atrona Grizel
At the root of
the deepest understanding lies not being able to “understand” anything.
―
Atrona Grizel
I have been
living alone for years. One night I heard a creak in the attic. I went up to
see what it was. And bodiless shadows greeted me.
―
Atrona Grizel
Those who preach
constant questioning are always those who know questioning only on paper.
―
Atrona Grizel
To put a dot, not
a comma, is to leave unfinished.
―
Atrona Grizel
People
assimilated into society are reactive because they lack the capacity to
generate philosophy. When they feel an emotion, instead of carrying it, they
immediately become it. For instance, if they are angry, their eyes roll back
and they see nothing. Or if they are sad, they fall into a permanent gloom.
Rather than experiencing pain, they become the pain itself. And when that
happens, because they usually view pain as something negative, they do
something to eliminate it: having become pain itself, they destroy themselves.
Because in them, feeling comes before analysis; they live without thinking and
so only think about something after they’ve experienced it—which, in most
cases, doesn’t even happen at all. They just live like plants, unconsciously.
My ability not to be swayed by any feeling is nothing more than this order
being reversed: analysis first, then feeling. I can narrate my own collapse
because I can look at myself from such a distance—not physically, not even
mentally, but existentially. Because in truth I am not at all important or
special. Accordingly, I am not trapped within myself. But contemporary people,
because of both the internal desire and the external pressure to be
“indispensable,” become trapped inside themselves.
― Atrona Grizel