Society is an insect colony.
Society is an insect colony.
―
Atrona Grizel
The moment I
leave the house and mingle among people, my inner world moves into the
background. What does this show? Simply that, by its very structure, society is
not a place of thought.
―
Atrona Grizel
Someone who
refuses to win is undefeatable.
―
Atrona Grizel
I have
experienced sensory overload and sensory starvation at the same time: noise
without love.
―
Atrona Grizel
My mother is the
USSR, and my brother is the DPRK, but I never had any father figure, because I
had to become my own father. The one who gave birth to me and loved me more
than herself is the Soviet Union; my reliable ally in the face of hardship is
North Korea. My father, however, does not exist, because that would have
required an external force to shape me, yet I bow only to myself.
―
Atrona Grizel
If it violates my
inner world, then I will violate the external world.
―
Atrona Grizel
My strength is my
silence; my revenge is my solitude.
―
Atrona Grizel
Even when someone
looks straight at my face and asks something, I still feel like saying, “Are
you asking me?” Because I’ve been ignored for so long that I’m convinced I
don’t physically exist, and naturally I can’t claim anything personally that’s
directed at me.
―
Atrona Grizel
There is a saying
that is thought at first glance to carry deep meanings: “If you bow your neck,
you lose your honour,” but when approached through a non-normative lens, its
superficiality is revealed. This saying grants an artificial social concept
such as “honour” to the physical motion of a simple pile of muscles and bones.
Yet it is not my actions that define me. The greatest mistake is to look at
whether someone bows their head or not in order to understand whether they are
obedient, because the inside and the outside do not have to be the same.
Whether or not I bow my head does not matter to me, because I already know
internally that I do not bow, and I do not feel the need for others to know
this; that is, to turn it into a kind of performance by expressing it, as the
person who is the author of this saying unconsciously encourages. History
brings to mind rulers who executed their diplomats for submitting to
circumstances and called it “preserving honour,” yet all I see in that is
obedience to social codes, nothing to do with any real matter of “pride.”
―
Atrona Grizel
My body is simply
the vehicle that carries my mind, that is, me.
― Atrona Grizel
The moment I see a newborn baby, although I know that most will inevitably be absorbed into the culture, I find myself thinking of the rare visionaries—the few who disappear simply because they are outnumbered by mediocrity—and I ask: “If they remain here, in what way will they decay? If they leave, how will they manage to escape?” Parents who bring a child into such a backward country must already be assimilated into this society. And since assimilation here requires a certain dullness of mind—either the gradual numbing of an existing intellect or being foolish from the very beginning—if their child happens to be born intelligent, I can foresee the entirety of that child’s future through my own experiences of estrangement. Just as the sun is a source of life for a plant, this country is, in the same way, a source of death for the brain. But if that mind refuses to die, its entire life becomes a war, for society keeps it under constant siege, demanding that it surrender and burn away its intelligence. Because on this soil, what is cultivated are conformist sheep—not solitary sages. In my darkest periods, when all my anger was directed at this country, I even imagined joining terrorist organizations that had taken up arms against it, simply for the sake of revenge. But of course, it is absurd to picture someone like me standing beside bearded, mustached, gun-wielding men who are either reactionary or dogmatic. That is even more repulsive, even laughable. So where does this total rage go? Into imagination. There, I envision the destruction of everything as I please—until neither the state nor those terrorists remain. And I do not know whether I should keep it a secret, but whenever I hear or read news of this country failing or suffering a defeat, it reflexively triggers an intense sense of joy and celebration within me. I am the enemy of the land whose food I eat. If I were excessively famous, such prominence would make me so conspicuous that I could even fall victim to assassination… and that would only confirm my thoughts about the backward mindset of this degenerate society.
―
Atrona Grizel
I cannot
understand how a car or a motorcycle can become a source of social acceptance;
it is as if I am not allowed into a place if I don’t carry a pen, but when I
bring a pen, I am accepted solely because of the pen. That is what this is
like. As a human being, I do not actually matter to them at all.
― Atrona Grizel
If I were
conscripted into the army, I would not listen to any commanders’ orders—not
because I am lazy or act on whims, but because I am structurally incapable of
obeying orders. Within me there is no impulse to submit to anything external,
because I do not see anything as superior enough to deserve my obedience. In
truth, all existence exists merely because I exist; everything is, in a sense,
created solely by me. I do not recall a single instance in which I felt
inferior beside someone “socially superior” to me, because from the vast
metaphysical dimension I inhabit, the entire social world appears like the game
of a small, pitiable creature. Yet the state, almost comically, even defines
“disobedience to superiors” as an official crime—as if obedience were wisdom
itself. It portrays rebellion as childishness, and thus docile masses emerge
who do not even perceive this prison as a prison but continue living happily
within it. The state labels revolt as “inexperience and immaturity,” and mass
society adopts this view because it is an extension of the state. Especially in
fascistic regimes, the state shapes the people as it wishes, and thus the
people become inseparable from the state. Even if this might falsely appear as
"unity," it is in fact assimilation, because in such a case there is
no such thing as “the people” anymore. Many societies today, including those
that are formally democratic on paper, have in reality submitted to the
dominance of this kind of authoritarian value system. The state dictates social
roles, and all its legitimacy rests on these social values. What makes a
president “authoritative” is not existential depth, but simply the fact that
they were elected by the people—merely the outcome of a bureaucratic procedure.
This allows a person who may be existentially empty—indeed, they usually are,
because almost all politicians who genuinely believe in their roles lack a distinct
inner world—to command an entire country. The same applies to the military. A
commander displays the audacity to give me orders solely as a result of this
bureaucratic procedure, and if I do not comply, he slaps me in the face. Yet
this impudence is so slap-worthy that it deserves to be beaten out of him. No
one can give me orders, because the only source that defines orders as orders
is my inner world, not society. Social roles are nothing more than makeup—at
best decorations; they do not reflect a real individual. The commander’s
absurdity lies in the fact that he demands that I take this made-up persona
seriously and, moreover, that I “prove” this seriousness by shouting. He knows
that if I do not do this, all his legitimacy will instantly extinguish itself,
because all his "legitimacy" depends on the obedience of the
obedient; therefore, there is no inherent ontological legitimacy but simply
social parasitism feeding on others' beliefs.
― Atrona
Grizel
To be an observer
of life makes it possible to live many lives, because the participant is a
captive of a single life, whereas the non-participant can test and experience
lives one by one and thus live hundreds of lives precisely because they inhabit
none of them.
― Atrona
Grizel
This society is a
tired society, and tired societies do not concern themselves with thought. The
only thing that matters to them is to catch their breath after struggling all
day, to rest for a brief, anesthetized moment, and to repeat the same ritual
the next day—endlessly, mechanically, without rupture. In such a place, thought
cannot grow. Working hours are excessively long, almost servile, and layered
over this is an excessive bureaucracy: schools care about nothing beyond
grades, workplaces about nothing beyond “function,” and courts are occupied by
judges who merely parrot the constitution regardless of what you say. The only
reason philosophers are known here is either because they were superficially
encountered on social media or because they were mentioned monotonously—often
incorrectly—in schools, creating mere name-recognition without understanding.
No one here ever acquires deep knowledge of philosophers, because even
“philosophers” in this place are institutionalized. Their sole concern is to
give interviews and make money, because the same thing dominates everything:
everyone is struggling to survive. Everything is subordinated to survival. A
society filled with such people will inevitably seek salvation in pleasure and
comfort, because no permanent solution exists, and this binds people
desperately to temporary gratifications: shopping, alcohol, sex, vacations.
There is no art and no philosophy, because, frankly, it is obvious that those
who specialize in these are usually materially comfortable; someone who feeds
on refuse will concern themselves with finding bread, not with poems and
theories. There are many people who, even in the dead of night, go to bars,
intoxicate themselves, and collapse there, fleeing from topics that terrify
them—such as mortality. When morning comes, they abandon themselves to the
noise of the day, and throughout the day they attempt to drown thought in
noise, and in the evening again in alcohol, pushing their thoughts aside as if
thought itself is subject to an unwritten national boycott.
―
Atrona Grizel
There are
countless programs to “integrate children into society,” because everyone is
the same, and being different from everyone, especially at an early age, is
quite difficult. For this reason, they dull this difference, whether willingly
or unwillingly, in order for the child’s “function” to remain operational. And
since the child does not yet have the strength to oppose it, an entire
worldview is shaped around humanity in this way, and this binds the child to
society. Those free minds which, at more advanced ages, fall into
dissatisfaction and purge the sterilized mentality created by this
indoctrination will be condemned to this freedom.
―
Atrona Grizel
If an intelligent
mind is left alone, it does not “collapse”; it creates its own universe and
becomes the god of that universe, because the two essential conditions for this
have been provided: solitude and intellect. But from that point on, it will
never descend again into the world that forced it to create such a separate
reality in the first place.
―
Atrona Grizel
I feel like a Jew
in Nazi Germany: I do not lose my essence, I persist in my views, I am firm in
my beliefs, I reinforce my difference by feeling chosen, and I see what is not
of me as inferior, while outside I am subjected to pressure, oppression, and
even genocide, being treated like an unwanted flea.
―
Atrona Grizel
People who are
not competent on their own tend to seek competence in others, and this makes
them vulnerable to propaganda, because what they accept as authority is not the
inner world, but the outer world.
―
Atrona Grizel
My inner world
can handle everything. I possess such self-sufficiency that I think I could
spend my entire life completely alone, as Theodore Kaczynski did in the
mountains of Montana, and moreover, be happy. But a voice inside me says, “You
could do this, but you should not,” because my solitude is not so much my nature
as it is my adaptation. I alone will know that, despite everything, I secretly
love people, almost as if I am violating the constitution that governs my inner
world, that I try to bury this love among hundreds of anti-human aphorisms, yet
by my very nature I cannot give it up, and in fact, I do not even want to give
it up.
―
Atrona Grizel
I have always
observed very carefully how people in cities live disconnected from one
another, how they are complete strangers even to the person standing right next
to them, and I have been consciously aware of this everywhere I have gone. As I
grew up, even if my mind began to produce rational arguments like “but everyone
cannot be in a relationship with everyone,” I could never emotionally digest
this, because my intuition always told me that there was something wrong with
this, and my intuitions are right. Yet as my age advanced and the amount of
time I spent among people increased, I experienced the unavoidable
normalization of this situation within myself to a certain extent. But I did
not internalize it; it only began to look “ordinary” in my eyes, that is all. I
never want to get used to this wrongness, because if I do, my end will be like
the others who see no mystery in society because they accept it as the default.
Society is not a legitimate thing, and I will not be an accomplice who treats
this outlaw as innocent. Society should be treated the way a genocidal regime
is treated: as something to be condemned. Because with its utter indifference,
is society not a monster that devours its own children? That is why I make an
almost conscious effort not to get used to it, even if the result is
“weirdness.”
―
Atrona Grizel
I have only one
relationship with people: endurance. I endure them everywhere and at all times.
They are like tiny ants whose existence I almost permit, but these ants have
entered every part of my body and are biting my skin. I endured all of these
bites from morning to night for years. Communal life demands that I abandon
myself, and if that does not happen, it tortures me in this way. But I
committed the “great crime” of abandoning this communal life entirely in my
head, and thus, being exiled from the species, I set out toward a divine
solitude.
―
Atrona Grizel
I did not
suppress anything of me; I only transformed them, to such an extent that they
became unrecognizable.
― Atrona Grizel