Pathology would not be society’s indifference but its care.
Pathology would not be society’s indifference but its care.
―
Atrona Grizel
If I am unloved,
it is only because I do not serve anyone’s interests.
―
Atrona Grizel
There were days
when I arrived at school at nine in the morning and left at nine at evening. No
matter what excuse is used for this forced labor that resembles life in a
concentration camp, it is fascistic, because school is not innocent; it is a
place where the mind is constantly raped—if not for the accustomed majority,
then certainly for the aware and sensitive minority. After this all-day war, it
is obvious that a person will slip straight into bed the moment they get home.
This means that school consumes the entire day and deprives a person of any
chance to spend time with themselves. Similar conditions existed in the
Soviet-era gulags. But capitalism manages to disguise this under the guise of
“academic work.” In any case, principals, teachers, and parents all want
this—or at least, they do not oppose it. I believe my family would not have
minded if, beyond being at school from morning to evening, I had taken my bed there
and spent all 24 hours in that place, because then I would have been “working
day and night to improve my nation.” Thankfully, school does not normally last
twelve hours a day in this way, but the difference between its extended version
and its “short” version is only four hours. The total time should also include
the two-hour bus ride—that capsule that swallows me every morning and pulls me
into itself. That means my entire day passes there. The working hours are
extremely long, and the fact that so many people have to get used to this, and
that those who cannot adapt fall out of rhythm, is nonsense—yet it is clear
that nothing will change, which makes it even more nonsensical. I was never
able to experience school as a place one “visits” during the day; it was always
a place where one remained the entire day.
―
Atrona Grizel
If I tell the
people around me, “I don’t want to stay in a place where I’m not loved, not
understood, and not respected,” they will seriously ask, “But didn’t you choose
this?” What they mean is that solitude is something I chose. This is both true
and false. The reason for my solitude is that there is no one worth forming a
connection with, so I withdrew and sanctified it to make it bearable. It is my
last refuge, but it is not my nature. The desire for love, understanding, and
respect still exists somewhere inside me. Yet people agree that I am “a grim,
silent madman who avoids everyone.” As a result, even expressing—or merely
feeling—these needs has become shameful for me, as if I had no right to them.
To endure this, I turned independence into my religion.
―
Atrona Grizel
There is a
culture of wealth that sees those who are poor in economic terms as “bastards,”
and the reason I emphasize this point is that I myself fell into the midst of
such degenerate people and, as a result, developed a deep disgust toward them.
For these spoiled types who think they are very smart solely because of their
social status, being without money is something laughable and even
“disgraceful,” because they judge people’s worth not by spirit but by material
wealth. Since they live in a closed-off little world of their own, they make
“jokes” about the “pitiful” state of the poor and burst into shameless
laughter. This is actually not limited to the wealthy; it is a culture that has
also taken hold of the minds of the poor. For example, when someone without
money gains some, they feel the urge to show off even the smallest amount they
earn, because their dreams have been shaped by social propaganda. Harsh living
conditions play a role in this as well, but what makes those conditions
bearable is not better external circumstances but always better internal ones.
Since the proletariat has been conditioned to long not for spiritual depth but
for “a handful of coins,” it feels compelled to wear gold bracelets and
necklaces on its wrists and neck and present these as markers of a person’s
“quality.” Because they do not question anything—and it is unfortunate that
they do not adopt a more cynical way of living when circumstances make it so
easy, simply because they are unaware of such a thought—and because they are
desperate, since all society cares about is money. Even in songs there are
lines from people lamenting that they “cannot get married because they don’t have
money,” and indeed, in ordinary marriages the most important matter is money.
What creates this materialist culture is people not knowing how to live life in
a more authentic way and hiding this behind constant repetition of phrases like
“those with money are happy.” In this way, societies accept this as “natural”
and internalize it without even noticing. People of this sort ride in luxury
cars, attend expensive schools, and run companies, yet remain spiritually
infants—infants so dependent on external things that, if you told them this to
their face, they would become obsessed with you and try to punish you in every
possible way. If all their material possessions were taken from them, what
would remain? Nothing. Because their entire identity is defined by money. A
consequence of this is that they do not know, and will never know, how to form
a sincere friendship with a cold and hungry child on the street. Such a feral
child, having witnessed society’s filth up close and been forced to harden, has
declared unconditional loyalty to the only thing they can trust: their inner
values. And when someone from an upper economic class, who is actually
responsible for all of this, extends a hand with “charity” in the form of
money, the child will either refuse it or twist that hand. For they know from
sharp observation that even if such a person expresses love toward them, that
person does not actually love them, because there is no reason for such a
thing. Deep down, that person only wants the child and others like them to
endure this misery so that they themselves can live in comfort. A person’s
philosophical and literary taste develops in proportion to the hardness of
life, and such a homeless child is a candidate to become both a philosopher and
a writer. But someone sitting at a gambling table, with glasses full of alcohol
in front of them and one hand on a woman and the other on money, will never
come anywhere near such depth.
―
Atrona Grizel
A person deserves
respect in my eyes in proportion to how little applause they receive. The more
noise made by clapping hands when someone walks onto a stage, the less respect
there is for that person. But if that person is received in absolute silence,
like at a funeral or a sacred ceremony, then that is true respect. If someone
applauds me, I consider myself insulted, because making noise cannot be a sign
of respect. There is no deep noise. Only those who accept and embrace silence
as it is, without fear, rather than filling it with empty social rituals, are
respectful.
―
Atrona Grizel
The cause of deep
loneliness is usually not invisibility but unreachability.
―
Atrona Grizel
A person should
feel shame the very moment they wake up every morning.
―
Atrona Grizel
In social
environments I drift into daydreams as if performing a ritual, drifting away
from the environment, though I was already separate from the start. My body is
in the concrete, but my mind is in forests, mountains, and stars. Because this
is the only way I can breathe; society suffocates me. That thing they treat as
“real life” feels like a second life to me, and I find it small and comical
that they place this second-rate life at the centre, simply because they don’t
know any other way of living. They probably see me the same way, with their
narrow perspective, but since their world remains in the background for me, I
could not care less.
―
Atrona Grizel
My fondness for
songs causes me to perceive the voices of ordinary people as ear assault by
default.
―
Atrona Grizel
Society’s
approach to suicide: act surprised to follow social norms; pretend to be sad to
avoid seeming rude, and even take a photo of yourself in tears and share it to
“document” it; wait a few weeks; then return to shouting and laughing all day,
saying, “The past is in the past.”
―
Atrona Grizel
People hide their
stupidity under humour. When something is stated clearly, asking, “I didn’t get
it,” in a “funny” tone presents it not as an inadequacy but as “simple
carelessness or the unknown.”
―
Atrona Grizel
I could never be
a teacher in a typical institution, because I am not the kind of person who can
repeat the same thing over and over wherever I go. When someone doesn’t hear
what is said and asks, “Could you repeat that?”, they repeat the sentence
exactly as it was, unchanged. I cannot even do that; I feel the need to change
at least one word. Because I am the only one who knows the value of speech,
since I have deeply tasted loneliness. For them, speech is nothing more than
something ordinary they are exposed to every day. Those whose professions require
heavy verbal explanation actually do not value language, because communication
has become base and common for them.
―
Atrona Grizel
Sometimes I ask
myself, “Why don’t you just go to prison and get it over with?” I ask this not
as a joke but seriously, because it seems entirely reasonable to me. How can
this be? Because I carry an absolute sense of inner independence, and just as
Diogenes lived in a barrel, I too could spend a lifetime in a cell. For someone
so sovereign, human chronology, meaning the career process that stretches from
school to university and then to working life, looks utterly absurd, because
this person is not dependent on happiness or comfort. Most people cannot live
without these, so they see a career as the only possible way of life. But for
someone who has complete control over themselves and who leads a minimalist,
ascetic, and cynical lifestyle, mere survival is enough and can even be a
source of happiness. Perhaps this is why there are so many psychologists who
condemn cynicism, because if people were to adopt such a lifestyle, the career
system would collapse and the world’s current education system would become
nonfunctional.
― Atrona Grizel