It is not knowledge but intelligence that matters, for a clever person, even if ignorant, can acquire new knowledge, whereas a knowledgeable but stupid person, even if well-informed, cannot learn anything new.
It is not knowledge but intelligence that matters, for a clever person, even if ignorant, can acquire new knowledge, whereas a knowledgeable but stupid person, even if well-informed, cannot learn anything new.
― Atrona Grizel
The condition of a country can be understood even by focusing on what is discussed in temporary contexts where superficial relationships are inevitable—such as in elevators, queues, or at bus stops. These are environments where depth is possible but unlikely, where people default to what feels safest and most automatic. If the main themes of conversation are whether the weather is nice, asking “Where are you going?”, or requesting a lighter for a cigarette, then that society has become entirely concrete and practical; immediate sensory matters have taken over the central place in its topics, and consequently it has grown alienated from abstraction, and therefore from perception itself. I know that I haven’t joined queues simply to avoid some random person asking me, “Do you have a cigarette?” I know that in elevators, when the light of another floor turned on, I stopped the elevator there and descended the rest of the way by stairs just to avoid breathing the same air as that person. I know that I have never used bus stops from the start, walking everywhere instead, simply to avoid getting lost in the noise of people—just to escape this plague called “spontaneous conversation.” What is the thing called “small talk,” if not a heap of this unnecessary noise? What kind of depth do such conversations possess? And if they have no depth at all, why do they even exist? Because society is not merely opposed to depth—it is dependent on superficiality. Such a society lives in what can be touched, seen, or used, yet existence itself can neither be “touched,” “seen,” nor “used.” So what, then, is to happen? Should even the most ordinary and random person speak as though they were one of the philosophers of the century? That is, of course, impossible—but it is equally impossible to prevent oneself from desiring it, even while fully aware of that impossibility.
― Atrona Grizel
In my darkest periods, when anger, shame, and various other tormenting feelings overtake my being, and even walking cannot disperse the thoughts in my mind—because I instinctively refuse to allow such an insult—I take refuge in my computer. What do I do? It is not playing games. First, I put on music in the background—classical, or neoclassical, or whatever it may be. Then I type this into the search engine: “list of last words.” Before me appear the final statements—really spoken or merely alleged—of countless people who have died throughout human history. I read them all night long. And while doing so, my entire perspective on the world is turned upside down. I become childlike, because realizing so intensely the transience of life allows me to see everyone simply as a human being. The final words of a monk, a scientist, a poet, and a politician are presented side by side, and this intensely pluralistic setting offers me a feast for the mind. Each of them has their own values, their own beliefs, their own interests, their own unique ideal and identity to which they are devoted—and this makes them resemble children who do not quite understand what they have fallen into within this dream called life. I even feel the urge to embrace killers who faced the death sentence, because in the face of the desire within me to kill myself, even they seem to share a kind of brotherhood with me.
― Atrona Grizel
If I had only one thing to say to the souls who feel metaphysically exiled among humanity—alien to the culture they were born into, indifferent to the trends of their era—it would be this: “Do not stop. Not necessarily in the sense of constant motion; it may even be stillness. But whatever it is that fits you—do not stop within it. And if it carries you all the way to death, then step willingly into its embrace. For that would mean you are a child of nothingness, and death, your parent, will take you back home. Is it warm? No. Accurate."
― Atrona Grizel
If I were living a life of seclusion on a mountain, for example, or born into a warmer, nobler family… would I write such things? Would I write in this tone? Would I use these words? No. Even if that makes them unique to this specific life and therefore valuable in some sense, it also renders them entirely subjective—and therefore unreliable. Thus, I do not accept responsibility for anything I have written, because it is obvious: if I had lived a different life—if I had lived a “more suitable” life—my true voice would have spoken, as I would have been more whole with myself. But since the day I was born, I have been trapped in a life that was not mine. The voice that speaks is not my true self; it is the self on the defensive, and even that is not the self itself but its reflex projected outward. I believe that I have never truly written anything with my authentic voice, and beyond that, this voice has never even emerged. I am merely the formation of reactions, and only if the reactions vanish could I be myself. But now, since the reactions have become my very being, to reach myself, I would have to rid myself of myself, for any genuine emergence demands self-annihilation—a dissolution of all that the world has made of the person…
― Atrona Grizel
When I walk in high places—on the roofs of ten-story buildings, for example—the only thought that occupies me is how pleasant it would be to let myself fall. I mutter like a sleepwalker, “I can forget everything, I can forget everything, I can forget everything…” while staring into the void beside me. Yet if I were to turn this feeling into action, it would clearly be impulsive, because suicide is rarely something planned over a long period of time. More often than not, it is an accumulation of urgency. The brain is evolutionarily designed for survival, and it will do everything to achieve that end. But if, in order to survive, it must withdraw from life itself, then this would signal the collapse of nature’s final authority within the individual. If this authority were not so persistent, everyone would kill themselves one by one. It is because of this authority that people fear death, tremble at great heights, and shiver at the mere imagination of falling. Thus, what those who commit suicide essentially accomplish is the overthrow of this inner dictator. This is usually associated with irrational thinking; yet rather than simple irrationality, it may involve a deliberate narrowing of consciousness—that is, becoming unable to consider alternative possibilities or imagine a different future. These processes are often unconsciously driven, almost deterministic rather than merely accidental. The brain may intentionally impose this torture upon itself because it has come to believe that, in order to preserve itself, it must die; and so it attempts to convince the self that death is preferable. Since this is biologically aberrant, it ultimately results in the organism’s self-termination.
― Atrona Grizel