At its core, there are only two kinds of adults: those who have understood things and attempt to change them, and those who have understood things and leave them as they are.
At its core, there are only two kinds of adults: those who have understood things and attempt to change them, and those who have understood things and leave them as they are.
― Atrona Grizel
Rebellion presupposes captivity. One who has not been enslaved does not rebel. Therefore, rebellion itself is less an act of defiance against bondage than a clear sign of bondage, for only those dependent on the world rise against it. Only those who have fallen under the governance of external conditions nourish anger and desire for revenge toward them. To the elevated spirit, however, the world cannot truly reach. Even if it wished to, it would fail to touch such a person. The best response such a being can give to the world is a cold indifference. These spiritual hermits, who treat society as mere background noise, why would they ever eat each other to “liberate” it?
― Atrona Grizel
It could even be said that a person’s entire personality is shaped by how they respond to pain, because it determines everything. Those who try to escape it become excessively social and extroverted types. Those who try to suppress it turn into alcoholics and sleepers. Those who want to pass it on to others become bullies and killers. Those who try to eliminate it become dependent on antidepressants and engage in self-harm. And those who choose to use it become philosophers and artists. But, of course, almost every noteworthy philosopher and artist has already passed through these previous categories before, and that is precisely how they ended up here…
― Atrona Grizel
I am someone who can withstand the harshest pains and the deepest loneliness, yet cannot tolerate even the slightest human nonsense.
― Atrona Grizel
The path for a person to become capable of doing anything, in truth, rests on a single thing: eliminating every form of guilt and shame. Not even bravery, but boundlessness.
― Atrona Grizel
I know that everything that lives is actually dead, because lifeless things do not lose their life; only the living return to lifelessness, and thus they become as if they had never lived. A chair does not die, and therefore it is permanent. But a living being, because it is mortal, is no different from being dead.
― Atrona Grizel
Society is a prison, and schools are merely the preliminary confinement used to prepare students for life inside that larger prison.
― Atrona Grizel
To produce jobs on the scale of civilization, the jobs on the personal scale—namely all those school and career adventures designed merely to prepare a person to earn a salary—must be re-examined and, in most cases, abolished. Because as long as people work merely to survive, they will never work for the world or for the universe.
― Atrona Grizel
Existential awareness is often very low in warm, sociable societies because they are built upon closeness, and closeness means familiarity, and familiarity means predictability, and predictability means homogeneity—and that means the absence of difference, that is, the absence of thought. Even in societies where every day is uncertain—where people go to sleep at night fearing raids, where conflicts erupt in the streets and buildings collapse—there is far more possibility for different thinking. I cannot call this free thought, because these are thoughts that develop in times of scarcity, but they are certainly far from homogeneity. Because in a state of anarchy everyone is, in the fullest sense, on their own, and therefore each person is forced to create their own world, since there is no collective guidance. But since everything has been brought under control in the name of “humanity," everything has been stabilized to the point of monotony. In such an environment, a person will inevitably turn toward the outside world, because they will rarely learn how to live without that external sphere’s support. This also means that as social warmth increases, the group mentality beneath it grows in equal measure, because belonging requires alignment. It further suggests that the more nationalist and conservative a society is, the more homogeneous it becomes, and therefore the less contemplative it tends to be.
― Atrona Grizel
Social conformity is biological, and this often means the instinctual sacrifice of truth in favor of belonging. Because a lone primate on the savannah was not a philosopher; it was simply a prey. If Homo sapiens were not an animal of herd mentality, then by now everyone would have slipped out of the species called Homo sapiens, and the world would have been conquered by the Neanderthals. A world composed of Neanderthals might have been more solitary and therefore more noble, and that might have allowed one to breathe; but the current world—superficial and excessively positive to the same degree—drives me only toward evolutionary nihilism.
― Atrona Grizel
The reason foolish societies sink into stupidity and cannot escape from it is that, in such places, intelligent people can rarely find a place within the culture or high positions—and as an even more radical option, they abandon those societies altogether, leaving only the fools behind. In this way, an entire society turns into an echo chamber of ignorance, hearing nothing but its own noise.
― Atrona Grizel
I pick on a person. For a long time. They say nothing. Precisely because of that, I pick on them even more. But the reason I do this is not because I see them as weak or pathetic; on the contrary, it is the discomfort I feel from their complete lack of response. I am talking here about my provocations toward ordinary people, and such people are not anger-free Buddhist monks purified by deep spiritual insight. They certainly do get angry at such things—but they do not show it, because they do not know how to communicate. I have been provoking a person I live under the same roof with for years, and not once have they confronted me and spoken to me directly. Each time, they simply told me to stop, and I continued—and they kept repeating the same thing. One day I provoked them—they told me to stop. The next day I provoked them again—they told me to stop again. A week later—the same response. A month later—the same. Even a year later—still the same. It was as if you fed an input into a machine and this was the output you always received. These are miserable creatures who simply do not know how to speak, and the reason I provoke them is to mock this trait of theirs in my own way, because I know they are people who will never talk about anything unless real harm occurs—people who are, in essence, incapable of communication, no matter how adult they look.
― Atrona Grizel
To imagine a person who has many friends, relatives, and lovers first provokes jealousy in the ordinary mind. Yet the overlooked point is this: such a person is imprisoned within that social world—absorbed into it. For what human being can withdraw from friends, relatives, and lovers for a long time, choose solitude in order to think, without wounding them? Such people no longer even possess the option of being alone; therefore, their dependence on the pleasures and amusements of that social world becomes inevitable, because once someone has fallen into it, departure is rarely simple.
― Atrona Grizel
“Be a little compassionate. God is watching you from above.” From above? Even this expression reveals how profoundly earthly the perception of God remains—as if imagined like a kind of satellite orbiting this tiny planet. Yet for someone who has entered the void of space, there will no longer be any place that can be called “above.”
― Atrona Grizel