Not everything that hurts is insight, but insight always hurts.
Not everything that hurts is insight, but insight always hurts.
―
Atrona Grizel
Humans used to
write with machines. Now humans make machines write. And… machines cannot
write.
―
Atrona Grizel
I learned early
that ordinary expressions of affection could not be trusted, so I elevated care
beyond reach to protect it from corruption. Love is no longer a simple “I love
you”; love must be noble, or it is not love at all.
―
Atrona Grizel
Why is the West
rich? Because it has sucked all the blood of the world and drawn it into
itself. The Western nations are the vampires of the world.
―
Atrona Grizel
I may reach a
deeper spiritual fulfillment with someone who is neither knowledgeable nor
intellectually sharp but who carries a pure and good heart—not naïve or foolish—than
with someone who merely satisfies me intellectually. For are not the most
innocent, that is, the most unspoiled, loves the most genuine ones? And are not
the most innocent found in those who think the least and feel the most? For
example, the poor woman right there, a housewife crushed under chores, who
would never even consider shouting or lashing out, who chooses politeness, even
if it may be out of fear, and who, despite her utter exhaustion, still feeds
her children with an unseen love and loyalty. I would prefer the engraved love
of her to the certificated love of a professor.
―
Atrona Grizel
When love
existed, being deprived of it would have been unbearable for me, so I rendered
love into something that does not exist. That way, I no longer had to endure
its absence. But now, whenever I encounter love, I feel as though I am
hallucinating.
―
Atrona Grizel
I want to free my
body from the world. It is enough for my consciousness to remain; the whole
issue is how my consciousness will continue to exist when it is literally
separated from my body. I wish I could be something like an algorithm living
inside someone’s screen.
―
Atrona Grizel
A relationship
into which “strategy” enters is no longer a relationship; it is a battlefield
without bloodshed—though sometimes even that occurs.
―
Atrona Grizel
If the world
cannot live with depth, then depth must learn to live without the world.
―
Atrona Grizel
Society exists to
prevent people from confronting existence directly. Noise, work, entertainment,
relationships, goals, ambitions, trends, crises, outrage cycles, and pleasures:
these are buffers against contemplation. If even a small number of people were
left alone long enough, without distraction, the social rhythm would
disintegrate. And society cannot allow that.
―
Atrona Grizel
Even though my
mother constantly advises me to “learn life,” in truth she herself has never
learned it, not even at this age. My father does everything; she only dealt
with housework because she has no courage to go outside. I cannot imagine her
going anywhere alone except to school. To a grocery store, for example. Because
she actually does not know human relationships. The only thing she knows is how
to perform. Sometimes the doorbell rings by mistake, and she always responds in
that mocking tone of voice. I do not know if this mocking tone is called
“modern social media celebrity diction,” but it is something that dominates the
emptiest people. Even when she says “you’ve come to the wrong place” to the man
who rang the bell by accident, there is utter artificiality in it, because
beneath every one of her actions lies hypocrisy, almost rancour. She is like
this within the family too. For example, if she did not want me to sleep with a
certain blanket, she would never say it directly; she would make up the lie
that the blanket had been washed, and so I can’t use it. If I had told her that
she is lying, she would have said that if I slept with another blanket, I would
get cold, but that because I didn’t understand this, she had to lie. That is,
according to her, she was only caring about me, and I, being a naïve young man
who did not know the value of this, was forcing her to lie. They are always
right in their own eyes, and therefore I have nothing left to say. I fully
exposed this mechanism of lying in her toward the end of my adolescence, and
now every time I know that when she says one thing, she means another. The most
painful part is that I was born from the womb of such a scoundrel. The society
I despise gave birth to me, literally. When the very reason I am here is simply
that some animals reproduced, what good is it if I grow up and try to oppose
society with my mind? Even my body is an invention of theirs, so much so that I
feel dirty even in my own body itself.
―
Atrona Grizel
As long as going
on vacation and “clearing one’s head” means moving away from cities, that
desire to rest the mind will always exist, because cities will continue to move
and churn within noise. Vacation is only a temporary comfort. Unless cities are
redesigned from the ground up to have the silence of a library, the result will
be nothing but exhausted societies.
―
Atrona Grizel
On New Year’s
Eve, I do not celebrate the new year but the birthday of the USSR, which was
born just one day earlier. It is an irony of history that such a boring world
was gifted with such a state that possessed an almost childlike wonder and
hope.
―
Atrona Grizel
In my dark
periods, those who helped me were not people, but my ally North Korea. We
recognize each other: we live in a siege mentality that is hostile to the herd
mentality.
―
Atrona Grizel
If my outward
appearance changed, people’s behavior would change as well. Most simply, if I
had a more shy and sad face, they would immediately and openly start harassing
me. But instead, because I have a harsher and more detached face, I think they
simply ignore me. This is like loving someone just because they are wearing a
beautiful garment and mistaking love for the clothes as love for the person.
―
Atrona Grizel
I developed my
worldview in an age where the question “Did you write this with artificial
intelligence?” became widespread as an insult, and thus I witnessed the
difference between the time before it and the time after it. One thing caught
my attention: that normalization cycle that has always existed throughout
history. People’s speech suddenly shifts in this direction because they speak
according to the age they live in, because they do not carry their own language
within themselves. When I was a child, “artificial intelligence writing” was
not a common thing, but now this situation is normalized simply because
everyone does it. Young people see this as an “adventure.” Older people
probably see it as yet another hypocritical transformation in lives that have
lasted decades, because they know very well how people instantly adapt to
circumstances and condemn the past, and perhaps this is why they are more
conservative. But rather than defending conservatism here, I am only drawing
attention to the social decay beneath what is called “progress,” because change
necessarily requires betraying oneself, and since this change is not internal
but externally imposed, it is a betrayal for absolutely nothing.
―
Atrona Grizel
Zen and New Age,
once grounded in silence and contemplation, become enemies of them when
marketized and turned into fashionable trends even in the hands of
“influencers.”
―
Atrona Grizel
To be intelligent
is, at its core, to have obsessions more pleasurable than eroticism.
―
Atrona Grizel
The main reason
thought causes pain lies not in thought itself, but in how thought is treated
by the world. A person who thinks will inevitably become alienated from people
by separating from the herd, because the masses do not think. And this lucid
person will begin to suffer deep crises in this loneliness, because they will
see that seeing means not being seen. Because they have done what is forbidden
by the social contract: they have thought. And the world will never forgive
those who think. Society succeeds too well at what it was designed to do:
eliminating depth. Therefore, there is actually nothing wrong with this
function.
―
Atrona Grizel
The state taxes
everything, even thought. And by doing this, it tries to take thought under
control, because it implies this: “You are a citizen who can think thanks to
the security environment I provide, so even if you think against me, it is me
who allows it.” This is, of course, trampling thought underfoot.
―
Atrona Grizel
People should not
have a right to social conformism, no matter the circumstances. I see clearly
that at the root of people’s mimicry lie many different situations, such as
familial unrest, relational unhappiness, and financial difficulties. Beneath
this, there is almost an innocent worry about survival. But even these are
actually excuses, because they adapt not only externally but both externally
and internally, and by doing so they sell their souls to society. As a result,
they do not even have to protect it, because they themselves become society.
They may appear outwardly compliant. For example, they may maintain a
relationship they do not love on the surface so it does not reach a dead end,
but inside they are not obliged to act as if they love it. They should not feel
guilty for not loving it. Yet many go to relationship therapists and look for
the “problem” within themselves because they want to become “normal.” I cannot
find money, I am not counted by anyone, and I am expelled from everywhere I
enter, but I still do not entrust my essence to anyone. Like the Jewish people
who were exiled again and again throughout history, I do not lose my self
despite all difficulties, because I am the leader not of communities, but of
myself.
―
Atrona Grizel
Existence is on
my side. Civilization is our antagonist. But at first, even existence itself
was my antagonist. Then I subjugated it and turned it into a kind of puppet
state that I continuously exploit.
―
Atrona Grizel
People’s advice
is generally nothing more than cultural propaganda. In an individualistic
culture, introversion is respected, while in a collectivist culture, it is
mocked. Accordingly, someone raised in the first culture will advise, “Go
deeper; you will find yourself there,” while someone from the second culture
will advise, “Don’t get so lost inside yourself; go outside a little and try to
smile.” In other words, both are actually defending something that is not even
their own, and they are not aware of it, because they are so accustomed to
their culture that they believe it is themselves who are speaking.
― Atrona Grizel