If anarchy is everyone devouring one another, authority is everyone devouring one another “legally.”
If anarchy is everyone devouring one another, authority is everyone devouring one another “legally.”
― Atrona Grizel
I don't understand what you understand, but I understand that you don't understand.
― Atrona Grizel
Rosa Luxemburg: “Those who do not move do not notice their chains.” Yes. This can also be expressed in the following way, for every movement is born from thought, and to move does not mean to walk but to think: “The person who does not think does not realize that they do not think.”
― Atrona Grizel
The feeling of thinking, in just a few days, about more things than others do not even think about in an entire lifetime...
― Atrona Grizel
The way to better understand the inner face of a country, contrary to what Camus said, is simply to go to the nearest coffeehouse and absorb the conversation topics there, even if only for a few minutes. What a person who does this will come to realize is the following: gossip is a universal phenomenon; the only thing that changes is the domain toward which it is directed, but it itself never changes. Therefore, the task that falls to the observer of a society is simply to analyze its gossip.
― Atrona Grizel
A person kept under pressure and restriction for long periods inevitably grows accustomed to it and, when finally brought into the daylight, freezes in astonishment like a rabbit caught in a flashlight beam. The Sun is the enemy of those who have conquered the world of darkness and traversed numerous inner abysses.
― Atrona Grizel
To rise, one must climb not mountains but the mind, because it is the only true “mountain.”
― Atrona Grizel
To be able to be ruthless, one must either step outside of time or be imprisoned in the present moment. In the first case there is a refusal to see; in the second, blindness.
― Atrona Grizel
I need childlike spirits—not ones who will grant the world “reality,” but ones who will accept it as a dream and eagerly devote themselves to living within that reverie.
― Atrona Grizel
Everything that lives makes noise... and noise is irrational... and no species more noisy than humans has ever been seen. The existence of humans means the absence of reason.
― Atrona Grizel
My way of taking revenge on the world: listening to music at full volume at midnight...
― Atrona Grizel
I do not understand how people feel they have truly “acquired” something simply by buying it. They did not design it. They did not produce it. They did not place it there. Yet, through a few pieces of paper money, ownership of that thing is transferred to them, and consumers genuinely believe this. Whereas there are only two possibilities: either the object buys the person rather than the person buying the object, or nothing can truly possess anything.
― Atrona Grizel
By all evidence, it is impossible for a nonconformist to have a place in society, because society itself signifies conformity and is built upon it, and this shows—despite all those mottos about “embracing differences”—that difference is fundamentally irreconcilable with communities. Of course, there are smaller communities separate from general society that diverge from dominant values, and these are called “subcultures,” but even there the situation remains the same: since they are built upon a group mentality, because they all come together for a common cause, those who are truly different will not be able to find a place for themselves in such spaces either. So how can those ordinary ones remain attached so easily? Simple: because they have no attachment to themselves, they cling to society like parasites, drawing identity from it, and then, mistaking that identity for their own, they begin to worship it.
― Atrona Grizel
The fundamental cause of alienation from society stems more from the structure of society than from the structure of the individual. Such a society presents social attachment as a virtue, and whoever does not possess it is automatically cast outside of it. Yet if a society were simply to render this attachment irrelevant—if people came together not emotionally but intellectually—alienation might not disappear, but it would lose its importance. If, because of my alienation, I remain fundamentally distant from every form of life activity, the reason is that modernity functions as an emotional exploiter and simply pushes aside those who are not thriving within it. Those who remain inside society must constantly appear happy in order to preserve their position, and this inevitably leads to the draining of the inner world. That, in turn, inevitably causes the visionary to become even more alienated from society, which, in a cyclical motion, leads society to consist increasingly of sheep-minded people—a blind herd rolling downward off a cliff. In that case—within sick societies governed by norms that exclude intelligence itself and value only concepts such as love and respect, which are currencies that can be dispensed easily through artificiality, allowing social actors to secure a place within society while honest and free spirits who refuse to anesthetize their intelligence instead hover above it—the best course is to recognize that this herd will continue moving in this way toward its own collapse, to liquidate culture, and to make alienation from others a form of familiarity with oneself.
― Atrona Grizel
There is always something better and worse, greater and smaller than anything one can conceive, because the universe is governed by boundlessness. In such a condition, not being satisfied with what one has and longing for something else seems no more absurd than desiring what one already has and remaining loyal to that very desire.
― Atrona Grizel
Human beings are compelled to see one another as objects—if nothing else, as objects of happiness, but inevitably as objects of something. Otherwise, sociality does not occur. One must bind the person to physicality in order to enter into a relationship with them, and this in itself is actually a form of dehumanization. This is why even the closest and most intimate relationships arise from the brain associating the other party with something—for example, like a mouse placed before a button that produces pleasure, which keeps pressing it continuously and reduces happiness to the button itself.
― Atrona Grizel
If I think differently, there is a single primary reason for it: instead of soothing and dismissing my dissatisfaction, I pursued it relentlessly and claimed it as my own, and in doing so I pushed wide open the door to a magical possibility that most people never unlock in their entire lives: that the world, and everything within it, may be flawed and unjust.
― Atrona Grizel
When I see human drivers, human cashiers, human doctors, human teachers, or human soldiers, the only thing I recognize is not a natural “work culture,” but the fact that I am still living in a backward age.
― Atrona Grizel
“When I meet someone new, I first evaluate them by looking at the shape, color, and brand of their shoes.” Yes. Shoes. Cave dwellers wandering barefoot would have been stunned by this criterion of choosing partners. They might have selected each other based on the freshness and size of the leaf used as underwear around the groin. Then it continues: “If they weigh 100 grams more, I won’t date them. Such a person would feel like a child next to me. And their height must be at least 100 centimeters taller than mine. Short people have no right to speak.” Weight and height. There is something called the dieting wars. When they fail to keep up with their monthly “plans,” they suddenly begin to despise their own bodies, because deep down they know even those who love them only love those bodies. “This weekend I’ll dye my hair. I’ve dyed it pink before. Then it turned yellow. Then green. Now I’ll make it blue, because that’s how I feel, because my happiness depends entirely on my hair style. It will symbolize my desire to escape into the skies. Then I’ll go buy mascara and blush from my usual place in the mall. You can’t even imagine how many likes I’ll get when people see me like this on social media.” Makeup. There is even a saying that advises washing a spouse thoroughly before marriage, because faces are no longer recognizable. They resemble manufactured creatures now, and their attraction to this artificiality can be heard even in their tone of voice when they discuss these “highly engaging” topics. Then clothing begins: “Which one do you think I should buy? Tight or loose? Shiny or plain? Cheap or expensive?” And while shopping for clothes, gossip never disappears: “Did you see their latest post? Everyone is talking about their breakup. It was obvious this would happen. They could never stay together anyway. They’re both idiots. They didn’t know how to be cold sometimes and warm at other times. They didn’t know jealousy and control tactics. They hadn’t even listened to a single relationship advice video from any influencer online. They were too permissive. Too loyal. In other words, too naive—and they learned the world’s reality.” When such conversations occur, I flee if I can; but if I hear them, it is because I am forced to hear them, because I cannot escape them. If it were in my power, I would have long since left society, but since that is impossible, I have been trying for years to hold on to life in this cesspit. Meanwhile, of course, their entire focus remains on the concrete and the sensory. A vast universe rests above them, still unexplored, and they seem content with that. They talk: “I’ll take my car to the repair shop. Then I’ll buy a new motorcycle. I’ll have girls on the back. When the car comes out of repair, we’ll fill it with prostitutes, have fun for nights, get drunk, and run from the police.” Vehicles. They need to drive something, don’t they? Not driving would mean excessive immobility, and that would be too “boring.” Silence must be destroyed. But something feels missing: what will they eat and drink? So it continues: “I have a friend who sells me electronic cigarettes at a cheap price. There’s methamphetamine, heroin, and all kinds of alcohol. He has built a network around it. That’s how he makes a living. If you want, I can bring some for you too, but you have to pay. After all, this is a world of profit. After blowing smoke and listening to tough-guy songs, we can go to the beach and gossip about people in our class a bit. We will talk about how stupid they are. How comically they walk, how comically they look, and how comically they sit. They’re so funny. Then we will laugh endlessly. Then we will stuff ourselves with pizza and hamburgers. But not satisfied, we will go from shop to shop, eating something new at each restaurant. Did you try the new dish that came out recently? They say it’s an elite meal. Celebrities are always eating it. We shouldn’t fall behind. We should try it too and show that we like it, then report our experience to our friends immediately.” They also need to end the day. They need to clear their minds. They work so hard, they have so much pain. So again, something must be done: “In the evening we’ll go to the nightclub. I’ve arranged a woman. She will offer her body to us. She will dance in front of us, restless and glittering. And we will show off with our gold necklaces and our muscular arms shaped by protein powders. We will win her heart by displaying the brands we use. We will fully take her over by telling her we’ve been with hundreds of women in the past, encouraging and provoking her at the same time, and after sleeping with her we will leave, forget it all, and move on to the next woman.” The summary of an entire youth culture is above…
― Atrona Grizel