Monks are of two kinds: those who are beloved of God, and those who take God’s place; the first endures with acceptance, while the other retreats with pride.
Monks are of two kinds: those who are beloved of God, and those who take God’s place; the first endures with acceptance, while the other retreats with pride.
― Atrona Grizel
As one moves westward, alienation and arrogance increase; as one descends southward, movement and noise grow stronger; as one goes northward, vigor and discipline intensify; and as one travels eastward, tranquility and simplicity deepen.
― Atrona Grizel
Perhaps the first sensation I feel the moment I wake in the morning is that dense state of drowsiness that may not leave me for the entire day. Yet what leads me to think that this is artificial—that it is in fact a mechanism deliberately produced by my brain for some functional purpose—is this: even if I had just laid down the entire night without falling asleep at all, when the day ends and I return to my solitude, all my sleepiness disappears as if touched by a magician’s wand. The meaning of society is etched into my mind so deeply that even my neurons seem to produce an almost somatic reaction of disgust toward the superficiality around me, and they resort to every possible means to make it bearable—artificial sleeplessness being one of them. That is to say, the state of sleepiness in the day allows me to confront the ridiculous games of people through a more blurred perception and thus prevents me from grasping their full sharpness—and this, of course, proves useful against the constant noise of cavemen and cavewomen.
― Atrona Grizel
Those around me keep talking endlessly about careers. Meanwhile, I think every time: are these the people who will go to university? Really? Like suited-up orangutans? And how, pray tell, did they even make it through the stage before university? They spent their whole lives cheating on exams, because the education system is as empty as it is oppressive—one that makes cheating useful. Of course they will go to university, because with money and cheating, anything can be managed: they pay, get into the best schools, then copy from classmates and ensure complicit authorities look the other way, earn good grades, and ultimately obtain the diploma—just that piece of paper they bought while doing absolutely nothing. I suppose I have just sketched how an entire bureaucracy in this country came to be.
― Atrona Grizel
I would like to lock a Stoic in a box full of ignorant people for twenty-four hours and force them to endure that unceasing noise. If they complained even for a moment, I would mock and insult them as if they had no right to do so. Stoicism, in a sense, is detached from social reality—especially when one considers a routine in which a person is trapped among people who do not respect them, has no one they love around them, endures constant social nonsense, and where even the smallest expression of frustration leads to trouble. Practicing Stoicism in a controlled, privileged environment is not the same as surviving unrelenting societal hostility with no support. Respected, surrounded by advisors, and secure in power, Marcus Aurelius was certainly living in spiritual luxury.
― Atrona Grizel
I once had an incident in middle school: the teacher said, in a tone that accused me and made me feel small, and loud enough for the whole class to hear, that she would ban my computer. Only mine. Had anyone ever seen something like that before? I had never witnessed such a thing in any school in any year, yet somehow it found me—because I have a sick family, and there are teachers who mistake that family’s pathology for healthiness and submit to it. The conversation probably went something like this: my mother, with her usual exaggerated and artificial manner, told the teacher that I never studied and spent all my time playing games on my computer. And the teacher, having no real access to the internal reality of the family—no source other than those words—automatically accepted it as the truth. What a humiliation it was that the teacher even came to my house and took the computer from there. All of it was nothing but a piece of theater performed in the name of “teaching a child a lesson.” The people around me were the kind who spent their days playing those war and violence games. They did not study either, but because they cheated on exams and because their families did not monitor even the rhythm of their breathing, the teachers never went that far with them. But I was the only child in my family, and because the family itself was mentally troubled, they had nothing else to focus on, so they turned their attention entirely toward me, which resulted not in affection but oppression. I remained silent, because I knew I did not even have the right to object. I was a child, after all, wasn’t I? Families understood. Children were supposed to listen. Everything happens because of that social rule. Only children are expected to obey—yet in truth only children are honest. But of course the world does not belong to the honest; it belongs to lying adults. Otherwise I would not have lived through such things, nor would I have carried the fear that if I resisted, I might be thrown out into the street.
― Atrona Grizel
One thing that has always struck me about schools is this: authority figures outwardly forbid swearing without realizing—or admitting—that it is the norm in this culture’s speech. A student who curses in the presence of a teacher, for example, is punished. The teacher may even say something like, “How can you say that so naturally, as if you’re always swearing?” In other words, they are so detached from the students that they fail to see that many young people speak as if curse words were simply punctuation at the end of nearly every sentence. This happens because an unwritten role-play exists: while students swear constantly among themselves, they do so very rarely in front of teachers, thereby creating the impression that politeness prevails. Yet among themselves they freely utter whatever filth comes to mind, because that is their real language. Since a teacher cannot spend an entire day in a classroom disguised as a student, they can never reach the true form of this language. Teenagers are never merely “adolescents” in the presence of adults with whom they are not as intimate as they are with their own peers or family. And when adults catch a young person swearing, they imagine they have punished only an occasional outburst, and through this supposed contribution to the “civility of society," they feel a sense of worth. But if they had the ability to become invisible and sit in an average classroom all day, they would likely be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of curse words that are otherwise hidden from the “official” figures.
― Atrona Grizel
Outside of writing, I have no means to express myself. I have no confidant. I have no friend. I never have. And even if circumstances allowed it, I cannot find relief through action, because I carry no behavioral impulsivity; I cannot commit murder to ease myself. Therefore, no one should complain that the page serves for me as a ledger of sin.
― Atrona Grizel
Waste is overwhelming—everywhere. So much energy is spent on unnecessary things... it is all for nothing but extravagance. Were circumstances different, people would not squander energy on trivialities, such as the glow of an ornate sign. In metropolises, if the energy wasted on advertising were redirected toward feeding those who struggle to find food, the gulf created by capitalism might be slightly narrowed. Yet, since it is the capitalist system itself that assigns such importance to these things, it naturally thinks only of profit, not of the environment or the poor. Even states have now become giant markets whose sole function is to satisfy consumers, and all the while, billions of planets beyond this sky vanish without ever being discovered, humanity lost in this excessively earthbound culture of life. How long will this continue—until resources are exhausted? Humans recognize the value of something only in its absence, for while it lies within reach, the mind lacks the faculty to appreciate it. But when the world has become completely uninhabitable, when it has truly turned into a literal hell, even mourning will no longer be possible.
― Atrona Grizel
I see a cluster of noise machines in the distance. They are approaching here as a crowd—a group of friends. The moment I notice them, I panic with a sense of anticipation: “That thing will happen again. They will suffocate me by bringing me down to their level again.” They come closer. Meanwhile, the uneasiness inside me intensifies in anticipation. Then they fully enter the space I am in, and the place—which had previously been as quiet as a library—suddenly turns into something like a disco, full of noise and clamor. The words “metaphysics,” “cosmology,” and “dimension” are automatically replaced by “car,” “sandwich,” and “lipstick.” My mind immediately shuts itself off and does not open again until this disaster passes. After some time spent in mere endurance, that cluster of machines moves on and disappears from sight again. Thus my mind opens itself again, as if looking at the sunlight from among the ruins, and freely continues its passion for questioning the universe beyond the world of the earthbound. What happened just now? Nothing… only an unstoppable tsunami wave predictably came and predictably passed.
― Atrona Grizel
There is a difference between the way young people walk and the way the elderly walk. The moment I focus on it, I notice it clearly, even if I cannot give it a precise name. After all, both are simply walking, are they not? But the elderly have already seen the world and have reached a point where they no longer care deeply about it, whereas the young are still open to the world because they remain in the stage of discovery. This difference reflects itself in their behavior and even in the way their feet touch the ground. And in this way of walking I sense inexperience—the outward expression of the idealism of a novice youth who has not yet lived through anything maddening. None of them carry the weight of the world. On none of their faces is there a trace of someone who has spent years in solitude. For, quite frankly, they care only about wandering and enjoying themselves, and the places they walk through are most likely connected to that. After all, even from this small detail of walking, one can sense the condition of a person’s inner world in such a way.
― Atrona Grizel
The state prevents me from being independent, and thus I am forced to eat its food and wear its clothes. Then, indirectly, it says: “I provide these things; you are alive thanks to me.” It forcibly sends me to school so that in the future I may become a form of labor that can be exploited. If I refuse these rules, it may even go so far as to strip me of my citizenship, because the state always tells the individual through its laws: “You owe this life to me.” Yet the individual clearly did not choose to be born within the state. Everyone who is born is given a name like the tag on a dog’s collar and is placed into files like products classified into sections. The state wishes to bind its people to itself, because the only way a state can survive is by absorbing and suppressing its population. In this way, cultures emerge. This can even be seen in the fact that a French person generally displays different traits from an English person, or a German from a Russian, because the principal factor behind these differences among people is the state itself. Each state must distinguish itself from others in order to preserve its identity, and it does this by creating a culture of its own and by eliminating most possible paths that would allow people to deviate from this dominant culture, through mechanisms such as psychiatry, prisons, or social norms that lead to the exclusion and dehumanization of those who do not conform. Nationalism is the defense of this culture, and thus slaves who were born into the state without any choice come to believe that they are free enough to defend their own servitude. It seems to me that nationalism and ignorance are directly proportional. As Schopenhauer said: a person who has nothing left to be proud of begins to take pride in their ethnicity. I have often imagined renouncing my citizenship simply to escape this cage altogether, even while remaining physically inside it, because the system of borders and governments does not allow me to flee to another country merely by walking there. Yet the state does not permit statelessness unless I accept another citizenship—that is, unless I remain within the mold of “nationality.” Even if I were to leave it, I could reach a point where I would be unable to meet even my most basic needs, because states, quite openly, care only about their own extensions, meaning the citizens bound to them. Beyond that, if I happen to be on the territory of another state while belonging to a nationality it does not desire, the people of that state—whose identity as an extension is entirely dependent on the state—can even lynch and kill me. Things called “humanity” or “cooperation” are illusions.
― Atrona Grizel