There is no deity other than the individual.

 There is no deity other than the individual.

― Atrona Grizel

Why did even the most famous people in the past have only a few well-known photographs, for example, in the 1800s? Because photographs were rare and expensive back then, and therefore they had high value. You could not have your photo taken morning and night in those days, because there wasn’t even the technology nor the money for it. And precisely for this reason, photographs from that era can leave such a powerful and nostalgic impression. Today, by contrast, pressing a single button is enough to take a photo. This is not convenience but simplicity and cheapness, because everything has been made easy. Everything is now possible, and as a result, nothing has any nobility left.

― Atrona Grizel

Anything that asks the person to disbelieve their own perception must be disqualified immediately, whether it is morality or religion.

― Atrona Grizel

My lack of love comes from loving too much.

― Atrona Grizel

The mind is not reflecting the world; the world is a reflection of the mind. The external world should be a mere raw material to be processed by the inner world.

― Atrona Grizel

People do not ask, “Am I authentic?” or “Is this coherent?” Instead, they ask, “What will they think?” or “Will this be accepted?” Thus, identity becomes an empty mirror. Those who do not internalize this machinery appear dangerous, arrogant, or mad. In reality, they are simply ungovernable.

― Atrona Grizel

At first, a person laments, “Why am I not like everyone else?” Later, they find a partner, and together they ask, “Why are we not like everyone else?”

― Atrona Grizel

The Soviet Union collapsed because it rejected integration, since “integration” in reality meant assimilation, and existing in an assimilated form was more humiliating than being destroyed while holding on to one’s own values.

― Atrona Grizel

I’m so alone that when a few people know me, I count myself as famous.

― Atrona Grizel

In relationships where sex is not an ornament but the destination, everything is arranged to seduce the other. If a person knows something, that knowledge is deployed erotically. Then, in order to keep this erotism “alive,” desire is rendered indirect through “calculated refusal,” and this maneuver of performance is renamed “flirting.” Soon, interests are added to the mix. Literature and philosophy, of all things, are reduced to instruments, mere props for the mutual magnetism of animals. Someone says, “Be my wildest poem,” and with that sentence even poetry is insulted. The other says, “I see the locked universe behind your eyes; open it for me,” and with that saying even thought itself is humiliated. Eventually, the affair ends as it began: bodies grappling in a bed, followed by separation, empty-handed. I know the type who go to cafés, sit there doing nothing, and hope that someone of the opposite sex will come over and “start” something. Both sides are there solely to have sex. Deep down, that is the only thing they feel and think about. But during the stage called “flirting,” they postpone this under the guise of what they call “the formality of strangers,” and they label it the “getting to know the other person” phase. I find people who attempt to build relationships through this coy, chirping performance fundamentally hypocritical. Not because they desire sex, but because they pretend they are capable of ignoring or procrastinating it. They are not. Yet they act as if sexuality were incidental, an accidental byproduct rather than the axis around which everything quietly rotates. Their gestures simulate innocence while their intentions are meticulously directional. What is most corrosive here is not lust itself but its camouflage. Desire, instead of being acknowledged and disciplined, is outsourced to the culture of “picking chicks up.” Poetry is asked to do the dirty work of the body. Philosophy is conscripted to flatter appetite. Language is hollowed out so instinct can pass as depth. This is not romance; it is primitive predation wearing a noble costume.

― Atrona Grizel

What should make a person think is how easily fools are able to form relationships. Why are intelligent people mostly alone? Why is there an archetype called the “solitary genius”? Because as depth increases, sociability decreases. Solitude is the honorary badge of noble minds for “outstanding achievement.”

― Atrona Grizel
I was only in my 10s when I had already figured out how the world works. According to this, the social world consisted of groups surrounded by rigid yet invisible walls. Some types are fond of dangerous pursuits like gambling and alcohol and end up in prison; some are addicted to pleasure and entertainment and do nothing but live day to day; some are irritable because they are dissatisfied and try to take revenge on others for it; some turn into workaholics who dedicate their lives to their careers and neglect their families; some define themselves entirely through romantic attachment and collapse the moment they are alone; some obsess over morality as a performance, policing others to avoid examining themselves; some hide their fear of death behind routines so rigid they resemble rituals, and so on. But what is certain is this: all of their fates can be predicted, because they are very mechanical. Since in the early stages of my adolescence I had only just begun to observe these dynamics, I was not aware of the social game, and naturally I wanted everyone to understand me, and when they did not, I was saddened. As the years passed, I learned that most people are simply completely irrelevant to me. Not even in a tragic sense, but as if we were created for entirely different worlds, and because of that, even being in contact with each other is actually wrong. Through this, I gained the ability to ignore people, because everyone began to fall into categories that had settled in my mind as a result of my observations, and none of them fit my category, because I was not even in a category. This justified my alienation, because being social is simply a fact that is structurally not even possible for me.

― Atrona Grizel

When I entered adolescence, I witnessed how the pure and innocent beings of childhood turned into sex-obsessed “tough guys” who stub out one cigarette only to light another, and I never felt any trust in this, since nearly all of them are useless hedonists. In this way, I fundamentally exited the typical human chronology, that is, the “adult social world,” or rather, I never even entered it at all.

― Atrona Grizel
When liberal institutions try to liberate everything, they cease to be liberal and become totalitarian.

― Atrona Grizel

The main weapon of religions is not obedience, because at its root lies something even more fundamental: fear. In every major “holy” book it is written that God possesses “absolute power” and therefore can do “anything,” which also means that He will “punish” those who do not believe in Him. And so, these so-called “holy” books, which are essentially science-fiction novels, gather followers around themselves. When I was a child, fear was planted inside me too: the fear of hell. This was, of course, something inherited from tradition, and even without active indoctrination, because of the conservative and reactionary society one lives in, a child inevitably begins to feel this way. I believed in it until I even acquired the ability to question on my own. Then, when adolescence came, I began to revolt against God as well. At first I was very afraid, because it felt as though I was doing something forbidden and as though I were the only one doing it. But then I saw and fully internalized that absolutely nothing happened. I eliminated the last remaining crumbs of fear of God within me, and thus, by completely expelling Him from my inner world, I stopped feeling shame or guilt for any of my emotions, thoughts, and actions. That is how I became the owner of myself. In the past, religion’s moral values governed me; now my own moral values govern me. And the truth is this: there is no hell after death, because before death there already is a hell: being thrown into such a bigoted world that made me experience all this before I even had the chance to begin existing on my own terms. I can imagine how I look in their eyes now: “a monument of arrogance,” “a disgrace,” “shameless,” “immoral,” and so on. The irony is that the ones who say these things not only believe in but also actively defend and spread as “enlightenment” the superstitious notion that drinking water while standing or while eating is harmful, as if the human body were a rickety machine barely functioning and ready to collapse from a single swallow. If you are internally free and sovereign, you cannot explain anything to these people, because they are all slaves of invisible chains.

― Atrona Grizel

I saw beauty; the others simply saw slicked hair, full lips, and an attractive body. When I realized that even my tiniest pimple was an element taken into account by these types, I began to feel disgust at being seen by people at all, and I felt the urge to surround my body with a one-sided opaque glass. Because even when they look at a face, the only thing they see is millions of tiny “defective” parts waiting to be “fixed” with botox.

― Atrona Grizel

If I suddenly became a high-status emperor, I would condemn everyone around me to starvation, because I do not care about them at all. They would do the same. That is, if they came into that imperial position, they would immediately push me aside and leave me to starve, because they do not care about me either. Yet I am kept within such a mechanism that I have to see them every day. Beyond that, I am bound for a lifetime to some people purely because of blood ties. That is, purely because of “formal obligation.

― Atrona Grizel

Why do adults forget how to dream? Because in order to adapt to the world, one must become accustomed to disappointment. The world is not arranged in the way most people would choose, yet everyone is forced to live within it. I suppose very few people truly want to work in their natural state, but if they do not work, they cannot sustain themselves, and for this reason alone they keep working without pause. Would there be students who came to school if it weren’t compulsory? No. Would anyone go to work if people could make a living without working? No. If people could meet their needs without going outside, how many would go to markets? No one. Everyone moves because movement is mandatory, not because it is genuine. The world moves only because it is obligated to move.

― Atrona Grizel
Those who change their gender because of their sexual identity do not reach heaven by doing so, because they are seeking happiness in sexuality. This is a disgrace marketed under the guise of “human rights,” because a person should not be this dependent, not even on sexuality. One should be able to live without it. But because sexuality is excessively visible and everywhere in the modern world, they cannot endure this and end up hating their bodies. I, too, am disgusted by my body, but this does not stem from my sexual identity; it stems from my human identity, and even so, I do not resort to suicide, which is the only solution to this, because feeling that way does not mean I must act that way. I simply exist in a body I do not love, because I do not even need to love it anyway.

― Atrona Grizel