Anyone who is subjected to punishment—whoever they may be or wherever they may be—faces it for this reason alone: they do not have the money to evade it.
Anyone who is subjected to punishment—whoever they may be or wherever they may be—faces it for this reason alone: they do not have the money to evade it.
― Atrona Grizel
Those who draw inspiration while in physical motion—who think more “clearly” while walking rather than lying down—are, more often than not, captives of bodily sensations.
― Atrona Grizel
While my peers were dreaming of romantic love, even at the age of twelve I was imagining something else entirely: organizing as a class, founding a student rights club, and carrying out acts like boycotting both the school and the law. I was becoming aware of the world I inhabited in a sociological and political sense, rather than a socio-emotional one. What was I supposed to do with love itself? I did not want to experience love—I wanted to reshape the very concept of it. Because I lived in my mind, not in my body—certainly not in my groin. This, of course, could not go unpunished.
― Atrona Grizel
In a society composed of people who, when you visit their home, have already prepared food out of “politeness” and insist—“for your own good”—if you refuse, such as in many Balkan or Caucasian communities, you simply cannot explain something like “Dhutanga.” In fact, the Buddhist ascetic’s mistake begins the moment he or she accepts such a "luxurious" invitation in the first place.
― Atrona Grizel
Any subject is immediately converted into money and thereby stripped of its substance. A philosophical quote becomes the symbol of a fashion brand. A slogan taken from a sociological theory is printed on a T-shirt and sold online, or shallow online games inspired by trends are created and circulated. Who actually produces these unnecessary commodities? Do they even derive any pleasure from it? I have witnessed so many pointless products that it seemed as if they were being made automatically—without consciousness—solely for profit. Imagine something like Marx’s image being transformed into a gilded portrait purely for economic reasons and sold as a commodity.
― Atrona Grizel
The sickness of humans is preferable to the functionality of robots.
― Atrona Grizel
The elderly possess a peculiar advantage: knowing they will not remain here much longer, they merely laugh at troubles that would otherwise devour the nights of a young person—because they have grown indifferent to events themselves. The young, however, are denied such a privilege. They know they might die within a few years, not that they inevitably will. And since they are treated according to their age, society, in a quiet and indirect way, actually encourages this depth of worry within them.
― Atrona Grizel
Seeing a few people smiling, I always find millions who are perpetually sulking rising in my mind, and I come to understand that the source of this smile is not happiness but rather an alienation from that mass: how can they laugh while the whole world is crying? They must all be a certain kind of social murderers.
― Atrona Grizel
I did not kill humans; I killed humanity itself.
― Atrona Grizel
Everything in this miserable country is deteriorating. There is still an authority that governs through primitive institutions left over from the Stone Age—structures fundamentally at odds with the inner nature of human beings—and the police and the military stand ready to defend it. Students’ only real dream, quite understandably, is to escape from school; and even if they happen to like school, those places are nothing more than centers of indoctrination where the concept of “nationality” is drilled in, where the national anthem is recited every morning and evening, and where even at the very top of the classroom the country’s flag and the picture of its founder are displayed. Anyone who expresses a different opinion is excluded, even subjected to mob harassment, and this pressure extends beyond the social realm into the legal one. Through charges such as “insulting the president,” “alienating the public,” or “discouraging people from military service,” countless instruments of coercion are used to persecute individuals, because there is no respect for thought—only polarization in its place. Everywhere, everything is excessively expensive unless one joins the ruling party and lives off its patronage, which merely allows hollow individuals to rise to the upper ranks. The entire lives of ordinary people amount to an extension of the state, because whatever happens to the state is reflected directly onto them; in this sense, it renders them, inevitably, somewhat like pitiable children. They keep laughing every day. How is it that they can look at one another without their faces flushing with shame? This is not resilience—it is disgrace. What is the secret of this shamelessness? They assume responsibility for nothing. They are weary of life. Those who protest are mocked as well, accused of having “not endured deeper suffering.” It seems to me that the absence of protests stems from the fact that this society has grown accustomed to pain. And even when uprisings do occur, this same society is often so simple and small in spirit that they arise mostly from peer pressure or the search for social identity rather than from a willingness to die for an inner principle—because that would signal a more noble form of existence, and here there is scarcely a trace of it, due to cultural conditioning that has normalized ignorance. Everything is governed through the internet, and consequently even “protests” are carried out through hashtags; and precisely for that reason, people keep struggling within this cycle, because the ultimate revolution, in the final analysis, would come only through the complete abolition of the internet and the boycott of the state itself.
― Atrona Grizel
The Earth is unbearably boring: there is no other civilization with which humanity communicates beyond the sky, nor does it possess countless satellites, nor does it sit beside fantastical cosmic structures, nor does it orbit a unique star. At every second I live, I feel as though I have been born into the dullest of all possibilities by falling onto this planet, because when I look up at the sky, there is only the Moon and the Sun. Nothing else. No other civilizations. No extraordinary cosmic nebulae I have ever seen or could even imagine. Even the Solar System planets themselves—aren't they all ordinary, except Jupiter? Thoughts come to me: just as two countries trade with each other on this world, I envision two civilizations on distant planets, at the farthest corners of the universe, trading and dedicating themselves together to exploring space. Perhaps they even discover other civilizations, their numbers growing to three, four, even more, and just as the tiny nations on Earth devour one another, they too begin to consume each other—but on a cosmic scale. Here, on the other hand, everything exists on a planetary scale. If a list of planets had been laid before me before my birth, I don’t think I would have chosen Earth. And yet, of course, an alien who has never seen any of this would likely find this place quite fascinating. But once accustomed, I believe they would prefer to leave it.
― Atrona Grizel
My distrust of socially driven people stems from the fact that they come from the same mold as fools who can be easily manipulated through wordplay and flashy displays of status. These ever-smiling, joking figures—the so-called “sources of entertainment” in any setting—have minds calibrated to the social world, and therefore they will value sociability itself. As a result, even when the substance of an argument is hollow, they will be swayed by rhetoric simply because it looks “impressive,” and thus they will follow the most senseless actions and even the most foolish leaders—right up to death, if necessary.
― Atrona Grizel
I cannot have a lover, because having one would mean desiring pleasure. Wanting comfort. Wanting someone to take refuge in. Yet that inevitably brings dependency, and dependency is the last thing I would ever want. When a lover says to me, “Will you hold me?” my response would be one of confusion, and precisely this: “If you had no one to hold, whom would you hold? So hold yourself, so that you never feel alone.” If she says, “Will you kiss me?” I would answer in a similar way: “What happens when you kiss? You feel pleasure. Yet you should be able to live without that pleasure, because if one day no one loves you anymore, you will collapse if you have remained dependent on them.” Or if she says, “Shall we have fun?” I would respond like this: “Fun… because you cannot live without it, can you? Boredom itself is a nightmare for you, because you do not know how to sit still where you are, and so, like a little child, you are always searching for a stimulus. Yet life does not inherently need amusement parks or beach parties to become interesting, and if it does, that implies dependency.” Or if she says openly, “Let’s have sex,” my reply would be: “To mate like animals? Biology made us enjoy it because it ensures reproduction, and that serves the interests of genes. But then you will want to do it again. And again. How far will that cycle go? You should be able to live without it—and if you obtain it in abundance, you become spoiled.” When she asks, “Then why am I living? Why are we even together?” I would answer only this: If you never rely on anyone, no one can abandon you. If you never crave pleasure, deprivation cannot wound you. If you never merge with another, you remain sovereign. In other words, such a relationship would be like this: two parallel individuals who never interfere with one another. And if I am not going to merge with her, then why would I need her at all? I wouldn’t, because to love means to submit. Why would I choose such a form of independence so fiercely, even if it extinguishes warmth? Because my needs were never met, of course. There was never someone who woke me each morning with a gentle “good morning,” who kissed me after a shower, who watched me with affection while I ate, or who lay beside me even as I slept. For as long as I can remember, I have been entirely alone, and that solitude taught me how to neglect myself. I have excessive pride, yet strangely it walks hand in hand with a disregard for my own well-being. That paradox drives me to insist on independence, while also allowing me to ignore the costs of that independence, since my own interests feel irrelevant to me. In other words… even the ability to have a lover can be a sign of having grown up within a certain comfort—of still remaining mentally inside the social world, and therefore still being able to see others as real enough to love. Yet when I remember that even dogs, when left alone for long periods, can refuse to eat as if in protest, my mind returns to those torturous, sleepless nights when countless possibilities of what might have happened invade my thoughts.
― Atrona Grizel
“You are on Earth; there is no remedy for that,” says Beckett. Yet what renders being in the planet “unsolvable” is the civilization that occupies it, not the planet itself. That is, it is not being on Earth, but being in the world that forms the blind knot.
― Atrona Grizel