Forcing asceticism upon societies is difficult, because human nature is precisely whatever is contrary to transcendence.
Forcing asceticism upon societies is difficult, because human nature is precisely whatever is contrary to transcendence.
― Atrona Grizel
Whether a civilization is capable or not depends on how centralized it is, because only the totalitarian ones can gather so uniformly around a single fire; in democracies, there is no such fire—and that is why they are made of useless ashes.
― Atrona Grizel
Even if they were far away, or even if I had never seen them since childhood, receiving news of a relative’s death would have comforted me greatly. The whole world would feel lighter. All my fears would vanish. My shames… my griefs… all would fade into the background. I would discover an unbearable strength within myself, but not in a defiant way—rather, in an accepting way that does not “tolerate” either. Having a deceased loved one is a kind of fortune. And if that person is someone very close and cherished, it is a greater fortune, and one must know how to channel the energy it brings. Even if I mourned, I would do so with pleasure, for death cannot annihilate anything; it merely reminds one of one thing: everything, including ceasing to exist, is insignificant. I wish there had been many more deaths around me. Only that could have brought me to spiritual tranquilly: living within a tragedy that is not tragic.
― Atrona Grizel
Anyone who wants to can find me. Yet the kind of people I want to find me are so few that they are almost nonexistent. Instead, what gathers around me are depressive, self-hating fools who fantasize about killing everyone—and that saddens me, because it reveals how I am perceived and what I am associated with: hatred of humanity. Yet that is not the case. I am not seeking to “hate” humanity; I am seeking an artistic and philosophical experience that goes beyond it. Such an experience can hardly be provided by the angry, lonely, reactive majority that occupies most of the solitary community. They possess only raw emotion, whereas I am searching for a masterful soul—one that knows how to refine that emotion and shape it into fascinating forms.
― Atrona Grizel
It is striking that most intellectuals have, in one way or another, avoided compulsory conscription—perhaps by injuring themselves; perhaps by falsely proving that they were homosexual; perhaps by claiming mental instability; perhaps by starving themselves and being disqualified by the authorities due to low body weight; perhaps simply by fleeing to another country. Those who stand out for their intelligence have never been associated with rifles and weapons, as the two are contradictory to one another. Why would someone who uses their mind waste themselves in such barbarity if they have a chance to escape? Governments must implement a special program to identify those who stand out for their intelligence and separate them from ordinary people who stand out only physically, or the conscription of artists and scientists into the army will pain me deeply forever...
― Atrona Grizel
I have witnessed dead lives. Tired souls. They wake up, eat in the dim light of the house, then lie down for a noon sleep, then wake up again to eat, then lie back down on the couch and sleep, then in the evening they get up again, watch television, play board games, and go into their night sleep. They were just… existing. Or rather, they were just... there. They had abandoned all their dreams. They had come to want nothing. They are so old that they no longer even have the energy to care about anything. And I feel much more understood and comforted beside these kinds of grandpas than I do beside psychologists, even if they do nothing at all.
― Atrona Grizel
What frightens states into refusing to abolish conscription is the prediction that, if it disappears, the army will suddenly weaken—because they assume that everyone would refuse military service if they were free to choose. Yet the reality they frequently overlook, or rather deliberately suppress, is this: if such a weakening would arise almost automatically merely because compulsion was removed, then what exists in that country is not devotion but pressure and conformity. States whose populations are genuinely nationalistic could raise enormous numbers of soldiers even if their armies were composed entirely of volunteers. Forced conscription itself is already a sign of anxiety born from a certain kind of decay.
― Atrona Grizel
Even Hitler was once completely alone among millions of people, in an era characterized by uncertainty and chaos, and yet he refused to turn his solitude—his sense of being different even from those who are “different”—into a “mark of shame.” That story feels very familiar to me. Yet the point at which we diverge is this: he directed his radicalization toward ideology, toward politics, whereas I directed mine toward metaphysics, toward philosophy. Just as he became an extreme nationalist of Germany and refused to see Jews as human beings, I, in contrast, am an extreme defender of my own inner world, and I see society and the people within it as nothing more than a kind of hollow cloud of mist.
― Atrona Grizel
I am a partisan. A Yugoslav partisan? Similar. But I am not fighting against a government; I am fighting against existence itself. Yet they share something in common… both are fascist. Just as the Nazis labeled those who were “socially unnecessary” as “asocial” and sent them to camps, existence has likewise branded me as “undesirable” and dispatched me into this world.
― Atrona Grizel
We should carry a button with us at all times. A switch. A switch for what? Something like a euthanasia device. The most absolute way of having the right to die. You press it anytime and anywhere, and within milliseconds you are gone—without pain, without effort. If I had such a device, I do not think I would still be capable of fearing anything, and that is precisely why the existence of such a free, portable death machine would be necessary.
― Atrona Grizel
People’s opinions do not determine whether anything is true. At its simplest, when I speak of “solitude,” a hermit may see it as spiritual elevation. For a poet, it is emotional fuel. For the angry, an insult. For the shy, a trap. For someone social, whose identity depends on the collective, it will be perceived almost as an eternal enemy. In other words, everyone evaluates things according to their own value system and life experience, which is far from an absolute truth, because such an inherent reality does not exist. This also shows that opinions are not inherently valuable—they can be dismissed, since none of them represents anything essential except the person who holds them. Put differently, when someone expresses opinions, it rarely concerns the thing itself; it speaks more about the individual. I want to put a piece of writing forward as a kind of experiment. Let it stand among everyone for years. Naturally, only certain people will take interest and agree with what is written, because one cannot appeal to everyone; one attracts only those who resemble oneself. And this means that neither criticism nor admiration should concern the individual, including this text itself. When someone says, “I don’t agree with this. You are wrong on this matter,” they usually speak in a tone that wants to change me or blame me. Yet it could have been stated simply, like this: “I don’t agree with you. That’s it.” And even that would not concern me, because I will not allow the reality of others to have the authority to interpret my own reality. I want to say to someone who’s shouting at me, threatening me because of what I wrote, “You can’t do this!” exactly this: “Ah… okay.”
― Atrona Grizel
Sometimes when I look out the window, all the buildings appear like miniatures. As if I were inside a toy city. People resemble thin brick-like rods. It feels as though, if I were to jump down to the street beside them, I would fall not several meters but only a few centimeters. The physical world shrinks and contracts in my perception to that extent. The secret of this strange illusion may be the result of having no connection to the outside world other than the light emitted by a computer screen.
― Atrona Grizel
Whether one accepts an award or not is entirely a personal matter, because it serves no aim unless the individual assigns it a meaning of their own. I can write fiercely against society and still accept awards from publishers for those very writings. This is not hypocrisy; perhaps it is simply not valuing the matter enough to bother rejecting it. If I were to stubbornly refuse such awards, it would suggest that I take the society I set on fire far too seriously. But no… I accept the award… and that is all. I know I will never anchor my identity to it anyway. And what anyone thinks about this is of no concern to me.
― Atrona Grizel
As people grow up, their acceptance of the world “as it is” usually comes through socialization—and this is precisely what society calls adulthood. Among adults, there exists an unspoken, artificial state of acceptance. They sometimes even laugh at pain—supposedly because they have “already suffered so much.” Yet it is precisely for this reason that they cannot move beyond the limits of their thinking, because they end up legitimizing the world simply for having once been loved within it. Although I experienced far more of the same pains, precisely because I endured them entirely alone rather than alongside others, I entered the world not by welcoming it but by rejecting it. And so, I never entered it at all.
― Atrona Grizel