Only those who do not need victories are victorious.

 Only those who do not need victories are victorious.

― Atrona Grizel

Most will accept distortion if it brings relief. Because even if many people speak about authenticity and even brand it as “reclaiming one’s own life,” very few are actually willing to pay for it.

― Atrona Grizel

If you do not tell people to help, they will not attempt to help, and even when they do, they can rarely be of real help.

― Atrona Grizel

Suicide arises from the psyche’s belief that it itself is pain—that is, from a totalization. A person suffers, and becomes that pain; and because consciousness perceives itself as pain, it proceeds—rationally and logically—toward the option of suicide, thus putting an end to the pain, that is, to itself. This is precisely the critical point in preventing suicide: separating feelings from identity. As long as a person knows how to say not “I am pain” but “I am in pain,” they can live an entire lifetime—even if it is filled with pain—with acceptance, without inclining toward suicide.

― Atrona Grizel

Extreme individualism has a little-known constricting effect, observed only in souls rigidly bound to their own values—a condition well within the domain of ordinary souls, and one that noble souls may attempt to confront but cannot sustain: the inability to escape oneself. A person should have a right to privacy from themselves; one should not be able to observe oneself at all times. Yet in individuals with excessive self-awareness, such privacy does not exist. They are their own voyeur.

― Atrona Grizel

In modern life, people, especially those who have grown up within social media culture and possess capitalist identities, move around like animal herds. Through their clothing, especially items from famous brands, their accessories, particularly gold chains, and their behavior, even evident in the way they walk, they broadcast to their surroundings what kind of animal trash they are and signal that they belong to a primal group. Thus, when they enter places, for example a café they frequent, they signal to those around them that they are together, much like an animal marking its territory by urinating. Their entire world consists of this: others. In this way, they sink deeper into this mire and become incapable of thinking alternatively. These types feel an immediate need to adapt to whatever is trending on the internet, because their identities are external and their brains are structured around reward–punishment mechanisms aimed at instant pleasure. This means that when something becomes popular, they immediately feel the urge to imitate it, to appropriate it, and to be better than others at this popular thing. If they cannot, they count this as failure and lose their self-respect. I can never feel comfortable around such people, because even when they seem calm, I know they could instantly become enraged to the point of pulling out a weapon.bEven though they are adults, they carry minds that never left adolescence, so values that appear childish to those outside this social world seem genuinely “cool” to those inside it, because they are blinded to anything else. Capitalism made them this way: hollow egoism. Why do I say capitalism did this? Of course, it is not the only one responsible, since these types have existed throughout all periods of human history. Only the values differed; the structure remained the same. For example, the nobles who once sat at wine tables have turned into coarse types sitting in cafés in the modern era. In other words, while the root responsibility lies in the factory-production-based nature of the ordinary human, the responsibility in the modern world largely belongs to exhibitionist capitalism. As the simplest proof, these types who roam around with tattoos, torn jackets, motorcycles, who smoke, get drunk, and share their sexual moments on the internet could not have done these things in the Soviet Union under authoritarian socialism, because such a loose liberal culture could not exist there.

― Atrona Grizel

I would rather march than dance.

― Atrona Grizel

I did not open my eyes to a lifetime when I was born, but to an experiment. What awaited me was not a life, but a simulation, a temporary simulation I would enter and exit quickly. I cannot see myself fitting into a long life; I want it to be brief, concise, and essential. More than a desire, I believe this is structurally inevitable. Because I think I will live little, I work intensely during this short span of time that exists, because I want to extract everything I can from myself. I do not do this for reasons like leaving a legacy or feeling a “desire to be remembered”; I do it only to make this brief interval more bearable until I am gone. After I die, I will not care about what happens in the world, because I will not be able to.

― Atrona Grizel

I will not go to anyone, because there is no one who attracts me to that extent, and no one will come to me either, because there is no one who finds me that attractive. Neither side needs the other, and where there is no need, there is no connection. If there were no loneliness, there would be no connection. For at the core of all social relationships lies a fear of loneliness and the silent signing of an “anti-loneliness solidarity pact.” And if every emotional attachment is an alliance established to mitigate loneliness, as it necessarily is, even though its forms shift across circumstances, then it is an alliance I cannot place my trust in. Even if someone were to come to me, I would interpret it only as a form of dependency. At its core, it might even be an innocent curiosity, but in the end, is that not still a dependence on the external in search of stimulating novelty? The most independent one is the one who does nothing at all. But the inaction of others does not stem from independence; on the contrary, it arises from dependence, specifically their dependence on their friends.

― Atrona Grizel

If I grow tired of loneliness, if I want to escape it, then what? That would mean growing tired of myself, trying to escape myself, because I am solitude incarnate. But if that is so, then why do I remain? Of course I ask myself this question as well. I have no answer to it, so instead I change the shape of the question. That is to say: in fact, I am not even staying. I am not in the human world. I have long since abandoned life. I do not imagine a connection that would transform everything about me from top to bottom. In any case, that would be destructive, because I am not someone who would allow himself to be shaped by another. But as long as this does not exist, I see the future as completely empty. For example, what will happen later? I will go to school morning and evening, and I will not be able to do anything else. From home to school and from school to home. Because I will be both alone and invisible, that is, unreachable in my loneliness. Then school will probably be replaced by work, and this time it will be from home to work and from work to home. Nothing will change. I will live like this for years. Why? To survive physically. And yet, who cares whether I am living or not? Such a life would not need to exist at all. I could die tomorrow and literally nothing would change. There is no one in my life who says “I’m glad you’re here,” no one who would miss me if I were gone. Either I will withdraw my body from the world as I have my abstract self, or I will so thoroughly destroy my selfhood that I become incapable of feeling anything, soullessly moving from my room to the workplace and back again.

― Atrona Grizel

When I entered adulthood, I felt not as if my life were beginning, but as if it had ended, because I existed to live intensely for a short time. An inner world like this cannot be sustained over long periods. I will never be a grandfather in his seventies, for example. Can you even imagine that? Aggressive intellectuals and bohemian artists have almost always lived short lives. Most were isolated, marginal, and suicidal, because compressing such intensity into a small slice of time inevitably leads to that. Living a long life would feel like a betrayal of my essence, because it would dilute that intensity by spreading it over too much time. Yet I am that intensity itself, which means that the longer I live, the less I truly live in essence. I do not want to remain in the world for a long time. What would I do here? What could someone like me do in such a hell for decades? I want to stay here for at most a few decades, for example, to live only until the age of thirty. Aging would kill me more sordidly than death itself.

― Atrona Grizel