Instead of making life an art, I want to be art despite life.
Instead of making life an art, I want to be art despite life.
― Atrona Grizel
Self-trust and
self-confidence are different. I may not love myself, yet I can still trust
myself as the most or only reliable source, and this is independent of
self-confidence. This is a pure form of trust, and in many other respects it
allows a person who does not like themselves to nonetheless remain
epistemically committed to themselves.
―
Atrona Grizel
To be anywhere on
earth is shameful, because anywhere on earth there is inevitably a state.
―
Atrona Grizel
The authority
belongs to the people, but this means that even if the people are stupid, the
power will still remain with them. In ignorant and backward societies,
autocracy is more suitable than democracy for this reason.
―
Atrona Grizel
When I read
Theodore Kaczynski’s private notes, I see traces of the typical American person
in him as well: slang, swearing, and “tough-guy diction and humour.” This
person, who was determined to cut off all ties with society, actually carried
society within himself in this way, and he wasn’t even bothered by it, because
he either didn’t notice it or didn’t care. What he focused on was cleansing
himself of technology, not cleansing himself of culture, yet couldn’t he see
that culture was created precisely by the technology he resented? His
intelligence quotient is said to be around 170, but I see this as showing how
intelligence quotient does not equal original thought, because he is a
mathematician, meaning his mind is something so rigid and flat that it resembles
a machine. I see no mythology or art in him, and that would already be quite
strange. And maybe it is precisely for this reason that, even though he
achieved creativity in his lifestyle and to some extent in his writing, he did
not achieve innovation in thought. Even this man whose intelligence equals that
of two average people somehow failed to interest me. I like him not as a person
but as an archetype, that is, the “prophet who escaped civilization and
withdrew into solitude,” but I find his ideas shallow and repulsive. This is
actually present in Sidis as well to some degree: someone who is highly
developed intellectually but whom I do not find so personally. He has a saying
about “living the perfect life,” yet if a person values consistency, that is,
“perfection,” more than beauty, then that person has a mind that resembles code
rather than a palette. These people are not artists but professors, and they
cannot be one either. Both are typical Americans, and this alone is enough
reason for me to keep my distance from them despite their alienation from
civilization.
―
Atrona Grizel
I would like to
provide my own food, draw my own water, make my own clothes, and live in a
shelter I built myself—in other words, be completely self-sufficient. But
communal life tears away all my power, because it not only prevents me from
providing these things but also makes them impossible. Unfortunately, when I am
hungry I have to go to the market, when my clothes tear I have to buy from
shops, or I have to live in an apartment built by someone else. I see no trace
of myself anywhere, because societal life requires exactly this:
interdependence. Such collective living forces a person to depend on the
outside world, and this leads to the formation of a consumer society and,
beyond that, to its becoming an unshakable norm, because stepping outside it is
impossible due to the very structure of the lifestyle. How is it impossible to
escape this dependence? Very simple: I do not even have a place within the
concrete where I could grow my own food, and even if I did, I would need to go
far away, for example, to fields in rural areas. For this reason, if a person
is born into a large human community, it is difficult for them to escape that
community, because the structure of that community requires imprisoning the
individual within it. Even going to the market gives me deep shame for this
reason alone, because it throws in my face that someone like me, destined for
independence, is condemned to dependency. This shame isn’t born of fear but of
the simple fact that I must enter a shop some random person opened to earn
money, acknowledge their presence, and give them profit. I dislike this
entirely, yet societal life leaves no other choice.
―
Atrona Grizel
On weekends I
withdraw into seclusion and thus become almost completely isolated from humans
for two days. Even though I am forced to remember them during the week, I
forget them easily during this time because they do not have enough value to
occupy a permanent place in my memory. During long holidays my seclusion
naturally extends further, sometimes lasting for weeks or even months. If I
didn’t have to go outside, it could even stretch for years. When I am expelled
from this kingdom of silence and thrown back among people, I feel neurological
changes taking place in my mind: some parts of my brain become active while
others deactivate, and as a result, it is as if the functioning of my brain
turns me into another person when I am among people. It is like descending from
the top of a mountain to the ground, yet I know that I will climb the mountain
again, because my adaptation to the human world of people is not permanent and
structural but temporary and situational; in other words, not internal but
strategic. Because I forget people when I am alone, solitude passes very slowly
for my brain, while sociability passes very quickly, and for this reason, even
when I spend only a few hours alone, it feels as if several days have passed.
This requires my mind to readapt as soon as I enter among people again, because
I change from solitude to solitude, in fact. The burden this brings is that
although I am used to silence, when I suddenly plunge into noise, I experience
headaches at the level of migraine and symptoms of sensitivity to light and sound
because my brain is in its raw, unadapted state. After a few days among people,
my brain gets used to it again, and thus the migraine does not reoccur.
―
Atrona Grizel
I like seeing
myself as someone who goes to homeless shelters to speak to nomads and the poor
about ascetic and anti-societal philosophies that strengthen authenticity and
inner resilience. But my family is still paying for private school and wants me
to stay on this straight path until I get a conventional profession. They will
never learn that not everything can be solved by throwing money at it and
walking away, so I find arguing pointless and have never even brought this
subject up to them. They won’t understand anyway. Their expressions, as if they
were seeing an alien and implying that I am crazy, are enough when I say things
like “living without purpose is freedom” or “the individual should live their
own life, not society’s.” Their automatic responses are these: looks implying
that I’m troubled and “should be sent to a specialist”; shouting “why were you
born then?” because they cannot imagine another way of thinking; and even
getting angry because I don’t listen to them, turning off the internet or
electricity, or threatening to kick me out of the house. Somehow,
“walnut-brained” media addicts who understand literally nothing about
philosophy, sociology, psychology, or literature can lecture me and, moreover,
imply that I am beneath them. The only lifestyle they know is the career, and
they accept no other view. When I go to school, they automatically relax. What
I do at school doesn’t matter, and they don’t know anyway. What matters is just
that I go and sit there. If I don’t go, I become “lazy” in their eyes, but the
moment I go, I suddenly become “hard-working.” For this reason alone they send
me there all week, from morning to evening. In reality they know they cannot
control me, because I have no need for anything, and a person this independent
cannot be “punished” by depriving them of certain things. A nomadic life is
frightening in their eyes because they have become plants that sit on the couch
all day watching television, unable to step outside the mold-like lifestyle
society offers, and they want me to become like them. But I will be a wanderer;
even if my chance to travel the world is taken away, then I will fearlessly
travel inside myself and there find a world as wide as the outer one.
―
Atrona Grizel
It seems as if
there is a kind of “war” arranged between the genders. The simplest examples
are sayings like “women are sensitive” or “men do not act vulnerable,” repeated
in the mouths of billions of human organisms. This dialogue has even taken over
literature, and almost every classic book containing dialogue and characters
includes such gender stereotypes. This is a “gender rhythm” that has influenced
all cultures. This pattern of thought was established as a result of analyzing
the bonds created by interest in the opposite sex, and since I have never had
any romantic or sexual relationship in my life, I remained outside this rhythm
and thus revealed that it is not something natural but a “rhythm.” Yet this
“rhythm” is something that even almost all philosophers and writers considered
great have been influenced by. For example, Nietzsche has aphorisms implying
that “femininity” is weakness, and Cioran has a short essay that especially
emphasizes the phrase “making a girl cry.” I do not understand these things, or
rather, I understand them but do not want to understand. Because why are even
these thinkers outside society still so inside the culture of society? All my
values come from myself, and for this reason I never use the definition of
weakness known as “femininity,” nor do I treat “making a girl cry” much
differently from making a boy cry, and besides, a girl crying could itself be a
sexual role because there is that cultural saying “men don’t cry.”
―
Atrona Grizel
I can lie to
others and feel no shame about it. Everyone is a liar anyway, especially those
who walk around pretending to be “honest.” But there is one thing I cannot and
do not want to do: lying to myself. Even if I throw filth outward, inside I am
always completely clean for this reason.
― Atrona Grizel