Nida Forum 2025, 19-09-2025, History Museum of Curonian Spit
An empire is the metropolis and its colonies. For an empire to exist, the metropolis must possess colonies, and a symbiotic bond must tie them together.
SYMBIOSIS
The metropolis does not know what it is if not a metropolis. Therefore, even after losing some of its colonies, the metropolis constantly reminds itself, others, and those colonies that the colonies were and still are the metropolis’s colonies, even if formally that is no longer the case.
A colony thinks about itself and its place in the world through its relationship with the metropolis. It listens to and reacts to everything the metropolis says and does, and whenever it speaks or acts on its own, it wonders how the metropolis will respond. The colony repeats that it is not the metropolis, yet by constantly reacting to the metropolis’s discourse, it never forgets the essential principles of the metropolis’s existence and thus, almost unconsciously, keeps applying them in its own life.
SIZE
The metropolis is large. It is so large that a resident of its provinces has often never even been to the capital of the metropolis, not to mention abroad. Size is one of the main traits the colony cannot boast about. Precisely because the colony is small, the metropolis considers it a colony. According to the metropolis, only something large can be a sovereign political entity; something small can only be someone else’s colony.
Since size is one of the few distinctive advantages the metropolis has, it treats it as the most important measure of value. “Bigger” or “more” always means “better.” Hence the metropolis and its inhabitants constantly strive to enlarge—territory, living space, car, or body parts.
Although the metropolis is large, when speaking about itself it often reminds everyone that it is large (e.g., adding the adjective “great” to its name), because it never feels large enough and always fears being too small, lest someone turn it into a colony.
For the metropolis, the main thing is size as form; the content that fills it matters less. Its territory may be neglected, the food poor, the cities ugly, the toilet outside, a child dead or a veteran maimed; yet if he became disabled while enlarging the metropolis, then all is well. Size is also the metropolis’s chief excuse when it turns out something isn’t working yet again (“If we were the size of Switzerland, everything here would run like clockwork”).
The colony submits to the principle that size equals superiority, and so, though small, it constantly tries to prove to itself and others that it is bigger than it is (“There are even four million of us worldwide!”). The colony also emphasizes its former size when speaking about its distant past. It never misses a chance to poke fun at those smaller than itself (solely for being smaller). In terms of population, the colony is currently shrinking. The metropolis reminds it that it grew only when it was the metropolis’s colony. Why it grew is of no importance.
The metropolis cannot stand it when its conviction in the superiority of size collapses (e.g., it turns out the metropolis’s sports team falls to the colony’s team, or the average pension in the metropolis is lower than in the colony). Therefore, the metropolis dislikes counting per capita, because then the colony often surpasses it (by war casualties or by GDP). The metropolis explains cases where the colony surpasses it as sacrifices made for the colony’s well-being—the metropolis supposedly gave up the better share itself just to create the colony’s prosperity. But acknowledging the colony’s prosperity would negate the principle of size’s superiority, so the metropolis constantly insists that after breaking away from the metropolis the colony lives much worse. The colony follows, rebroadcasts, rebuts—and part of the colony believes it, due to the aforementioned principle of size’s superiority: if the big one says something, it must be true. The colony also gets anxious when other former colonies that are smaller in size surpass it by some indicators.
The metropolis does not think in the colony’s dimensions; the colony cannot think in the metropolis’s dimensions. The metropolis cannot grasp how anything small can be good or beautiful, while the colony is uninterested in the large world beyond the colony and the metropolis (it usually follows only news of local significance). The metropolis does not allow itself to be uninterested in the big world, but it is interested in it only through the prism of power.
POWER
The metropolis always identifies its size with power. Only something large, in the metropolis’s view, can be powerful. The metropolis does not recognize the specific strengths of the small, because that would violate the principle of size’s superiority and would nullify the value of its primary advantage—size.
It is precisely through power that the metropolis defines its relationship with those around it. A neutral state between two subjects of unequal power does not exist in the metropolis. The weaker must submit to the stronger, regardless of who is right. Thus, power here also means truth. This relationship manifests in all forms of the metropolis’s social life (art, politics, prison, barracks, and so on). This principle underpins relations both among the metropolis’s citizens and between the metropolis and other political entities—first and foremost the colonies. Therefore, if the metropolis notices that a colony is communicating with someone larger than itself other than the metropolis, it automatically considers such communication service or servitude. The metropolis does not believe that the strong could treat the weak not as he wishes but as is just, because the word “just” does not exist in the metropolis’s life separately from the word “power,” neither as practice nor as ideal. Hence, in the metropolis the powerful do not do what is just; they do what they want. This often causes the weak pain and suffering, and therefore power in the metropolis arouses fear—which here is called respect.
Since the colony cannot boast of size, from which the metropolis derives the principle of power, the colony also feels it lacks power. Nor does it orient itself to the strengths of the small, because the metropolis does not regard them as power. Therefore, when a dispute with the metropolis arises, the colony does not dare even to consider disagreeing with it, as it does not believe it could be right in a dispute with the metropolis—because in the metropolis the powerful are always right. Thus, if the powerful have claims, they are justified, because they are the claims of the large and powerful. The powerful are always the authority.
AUTHORITY
To the average resident of the metropolis, authority appears very powerful and very big—and the metropolis’s authorities strive to appear so, because only the powerful can possess authority. Authorities do not walk on foot (or if they do, they wear platform shoes), they drive big cars and in large numbers, live in large palaces and have many such palaces. Authority is not elected—this is encoded in the language of the metropolis (a “highly appointed” official). Authority simply descends from above. From there descend any initiatives meant to change something in the metropolis, since the metropolis’s resident feels too small and too weak to change anything in such a large and powerful metropolis. Usually he does not even try to change anything; he demands change from the authorities, and another resident’s attempt to change something angers him, because everyone knows that an ordinary resident cannot change anything in the metropolis. This means that if someone is trying to change something, he is not an ordinary resident but a disguised authority. Authority is powerful, therefore right; yet it causes pain, therefore fear the authority, and hate it. What is forbidden to ordinary people is permitted to the authorities. The authorities are exempt from what everyone else is not.
The colony’s residents also look at authority with suspicion, because for a long time no one from the colony could be authority at all—the role belonged only to envoys from the metropolis or to the metropolis’s most devoted servants. Therefore, even now the colony still imagines authority as powerful and distant—in the huge metropolis. Yet the colony’s authority is small and not very powerful, unless the colony’s resident imagines it as such. In truth, in the colony anyone can get into authority—there truly exists the possibility of political initiative from the bottom up.
FREE WILL AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
A resident of the colony has the free will to change both the authorities and his living environment, if he accepts such responsibility. The change made by one person is visible here—the colony is small. In the large metropolis such a change is tiny, appears insignificant relative to the metropolis’s size, and thus not even worth starting. In the colony it is worth undertaking, because things can be changed.
Yet the colony’s resident usually changes only his immediate surroundings, because changing things not for his own benefit but for others reminds him of the colony’s servitude to the metropolis. No colony resident wants to look like another colony resident’s colony, and so the idea of the common good struggles in the colony. The colony longs for it, longs for togetherness, but the colony’s resident most often uses his free will for the common good to complain that no one is creating the common good in the colony. He also complains a lot about the colony’s authorities. Once he gets into them, he begins to do what he used to denounce when he was not in authority. He responds to criticism by saying “everyone is like that”; evidence that not everyone is angers him rather than spurring him to improve. But for complaining—as for creating the common good or one’s own benefit—a person in the colony has completely free will.
There is no free will in the metropolis. Complaining is forbidden—both about the authorities of the metropolis and about the absence of free will. Yet because the metropolis resident’s free will is limited, he is absolved (and absolves himself) of responsibility. This means the metropolis resident never feels guilty or responsible for anything, because he does not believe and does not accept that human actions are determined by free will or responsibility. Others are always to blame for everything; others are responsible—most of all the metropolis’s authorities, whom the resident dislikes until they begin enlarging the metropolis by colonizing new colonies. Then the resident grows fond of the once-disliked authorities and goes to war for them as for the metropolis, since new colonies are one of the rare opportunities for the metropolis resident to change his personal environment—to earn more, to get new and better things for free, or simply to move to a better place, which the colony becomes during the time it is formally separated from the metropolis, because during that time free will exists there.
Since the possibility of conquering new colonies exists at all times in the metropolis, its residents do not maintain their homes and property, but wait for new property and new homes. Transplanted to live in a new colony, they wear down the part of it where they were moved, as they are unaccustomed to caring for homes and maintaining property. Wherever colonists arrive, the colony aesthetically grows to resemble the metropolis. The metropolis colonizes a seized colony first and foremost by relocating colonists there.
COLONISTS
Colonists move to live in the colony as soon as it returns under the metropolis’s rule; yet even after separation from the metropolis, colonists remain living in the colony—not only because it is better there, but also because they do not believe the colony could be a non-colony and consider its separation from the metropolis a temporary mistake that will soon be corrected.
They celebrate the colony’s colonization holidays, which they call the colony’s liberation from another metropolis. During the celebrations they visit monuments in the colony erected for colonization. Such monuments exist in every town of the colony, in a visible, central place—most often in the form of cemeteries, for in conquering the colony the metropolis sacrifices especially many colonists—here, too, the quantitative advantage provided by size comes in handy. The cemeteries where colonists lie (sometimes only de jure) are usually adorned with a monument to a colonist with a weapon, intended to remind the people of the colony what may happen if the monument is removed. Therefore, the colony fears taking down monuments and replacing them with monuments to those who resisted the colonists with arms, because colonists dislike those who resist them and generally dislike being reminded that they came to the colony as colonists. They do not consider themselves colonists, because the metropolis repeats that colonists are not colonists but locals, as there is no distinction between the metropolis and its colonies. It is one territory; the numerous colonist cemeteries in the colonies prove that colonists always lived there, and so wherever in the metropolis’s territory you live, you are always at home and in charge.
Therefore, even as guests (e.g., in a former colony or on vacation in Egypt), a person from the metropolis behaves like a master, while a person from the colony, even when he is the master, feels and behaves as if he were a guest. The person from the metropolis always speaks loudly, walks down the middle of the path, takes first, and in general ignores the presence of the other person—even if the other person is another person from the metropolis. The person from the colony feels guilty regardless of whether he is right or not and reacts humbly to a raised tone, a display of force or power—he yields, he steps aside. Here another rule binding the colony to the metropolis is revealed—you are either guest or host. Either you obey, or others obey you. A third option simply does not exist. In any situation the metropolis usually sees only two choices and demands the same of others.
BINARY THINKING
People from the non-imperial world rarely encounter situations in their lives where they are forced to choose only between two options. Usually one can remain neutral, avoid displaying one’s position—in simple terms, not choose.
But in the metropolis the possibility of a third option (or of not choosing) does not exist, and one most often has to choose between bad and worse, e.g.:
a) courage (which brings great suffering) and fear (which brings pangs of conscience and a sense of humiliation);
b) unconditional indulgence toward one’s own (even if they were wrong) and unconditional unforgiveness toward others (even if they are right);
c) humiliating or being humiliated.
The colony can try to create a third option for itself so long as it has free will, but it forgets this, because the metropolis does not think this way. Since it is the metropolis that chooses between two options, so must the colony—because it is the metropolis that usually forces the choice. For example: to be the metropolis’s colony or the colony of a metropolis hostile to the metropolis. If the colony decides to be neutral and to choose nothing, the metropolis will force it to choose. The entire life of the colony took place and must take place through metropolises. And even if there is some kind of “free world,” a third option toward which the colony strives, the metropolis constantly persuades colonies and itself that it will soon collapse and that the colony will then beg to return to the metropolis. Losing faith that it can be a non-colony, the colony begins to dislike itself, for no one feels good while being a colony.
FEELING OF INFERIORITY
The colony does not like and cannot accept itself as it is, and constantly tries to appear either better or worse. It does so in the eyes of others, because only through the other does the colony understand its own worth. The colony cannot evaluate itself. It has no opinion of its own, or avoids expressing it until others have voiced theirs and until it is clear what the majority thinks. The colony will not evaluate its own work of art until it is evaluated by a foreign critic or festival. (“Your film is very interesting, but I wonder what Venice will say.”) But even then a resident of the colony will not dare to admit it if that foreign-praised work does not appeal to him.
The colony’s resident fears an independent decision (“nobody does it like that”). But by trying to copy whatever is “trending” (e.g., by taking part in an international song contest), he will always get on the wave when the wave has already fizzled out—like a beginner surfer.
The colony tends to downplay its achievements because they are achievements of a small colony. It will not appreciate its distinctive features (e.g., its language or some food) until a guest from abroad writes an article about them (a single guest, a single article). Then the colony rejoices sincerely and shares such recognition (“look, they noticed how it is”). But if the very same thing is asserted by a resident of the colony, he is mocked as provincial and insignificant to the great abroad.
The colony will accept a foreign guest’s mistaken or superficial impression as its own fault, even if the error is caused by the guest’s lack of knowledge. Seeking to create the “right impression” for the guest (to show the colony as it wishes to be), the colony usually shows the guest its façade, hoping the guest will not have time to see the inside. Yet if it suspects the guest has noticed some flaws within, the colony’s resident will hurry to emphasize those flaws first, hoping in this way to wrench himself out of the colony and prove to the foreign guest that he is different from everyone else in the colony—almost like the foreign guest, almost foreign—just about, almost.
A person of the colony will renounce any trait of his identity (e.g., after moving to another metropolis, he speaks to his child in the other metropolis’s language) if that helps hide that he comes from the colony. He eagerly seeks to become part of some other entity (preferably larger), yet in the desire to be that other lies the colonial wish to belong to an entity whose members do not feel an inferiority complex. This is especially visible in the colony’s cultural life and in the market for goods and services (Café-bar “Siuzi”; “…we’ll ignite a true Berlin in Kaunas,” “our cinema is already European-level”). The colony tries to prove to itself and to foreign guests that it is not a provincial colony—but the dissonance between content and form (the staff of the café-bar “Siuzi” does not speak English) proves to the foreign guest that the colony is a self-ashamed province.
Abroad, a resident of the colony easily recognizes another resident of his colony and sees in him his own greatest flaws, which he would rather not have. Therefore, in a foreign environment (e.g., the subway of another metropolis), the colony’s resident tries by all means to pretend he is not from the colony—and it is precisely by this excessive effort that another colony resident recognizes him.
The metropolis does not try to pretend to be something else, but it does try to present itself as better than it is. It meets any observations about how things really are with aggressive attack or by proving that an analogous, if not worse, situation exists where the observer comes from. The metropolis tends to assign inherent value to everything in the metropolis that differs from abroad—even if those qualities cause suffering to the metropolis’s residents. True, when trying to prove the quality of a product or service, it presents its foreign origin—or at least a supposed similarity to a foreign product (euro-windows or euro-service)—as the main advantage. At the same time, it both yearns for the foreign and constantly proclaims how easily it can destroy it.
The colony always wants the foreign guest to understand how the metropolis destroyed it. Yet when assessing other metropolises’ relations with other colonies, it usually sides not with the other colony but with the other metropolis. It believes that the other metropolis “civilized” the other colony, though it is indignant when foreign guests use that same argument to define its own relationship with its metropolis. The colony identifies itself not with another colonized people, but with another metropolis—because it wants, for once, to be on the side of power. The colony dreams not of free will, but of a different, good metropolis—a better master.
HISTORY
The metropolis strives to emphasize, through the colony’s history, that existence without a master is some sort of anomaly. It insists intensely that the colony never existed without metropolises; only its metropolises changed—and if it did exist, then it was some other entity with which the colony has nothing to do. If the colony has a history in which the metropolis does not play the role of metropolis for a longer period, then the metropolis exerts effort to rewrite history so that it will no longer be the colony’s history. Without a metropolis the colony has never existed politically. Without a metropolis the colony is merely a tribe or an animal—it needs a master. The colony’s political voice the metropolis most often calls barking.
The colony’s history begins with its colonization; therefore, the colony must count its time from the dates on which it was colonized (“Lithuanian Press: awakening Lithuania since 1944”; “Kaunas Daily: about Kaunas and the world since 1945,” etc.). Events of global significance in the colony must be measured by the reference points by which the metropolis measures them (the start of the war—when the war started for the metropolis). The colony always wanted to be a colony, and those who did not want to be were either criminals or mentally ill. This argument greets any attempt by the colony to commemorate those who resisted colonization or those from the colony who were taken away to be enslaved by the metropolis. The metropolis erases their markers in its own territory, while nurturing its own markers left in the colony and calling their removal barbarism.
Markers reminding of the colony’s existence without the metropolis are destroyed by the metropolis as much as possible when colonizing. If the colony creates new markers signifying separation or emancipation from the metropolis (e.g., holidays), then on each such occasion the metropolis makes sure its soloists come to the colony to perform—reminding the colony of the good old days with the metropolis, continuing to broadcast the metropolis’s core values in their works, and, of course, singing in the metropolis’s language.
LANGUAGE
The colony has its own language. It is one of those rare features that clearly distinguishes the colony from the metropolis. Precisely for this reason, the metropolis strives to ensure that the metropolis’s language never disappears in the colony.
The older generation of the colony speaks it well. Some say that the metropolis’s language suffices for communication anywhere in the world, because that is what the metropolis claims—which speaks its language everywhere in the world, as it feels like the master everywhere.
Separate colonies of the metropolis also communicate with each other in the metropolis’s language. They do not know and do not learn each other’s languages. And the more the colonies communicate among themselves in the metropolis’s language, the more of the metropolis’s language there is everywhere, and the greater the awareness that all those colonies still belong to one and the same metropolis.
Though they have the same number of words, the colony’s language is the language of the lesser; therefore the metropolis considers it poorer, weaker, uncivilized, even non-human (“speak in a human language”). Hence the colony does not cultivate its language, translates little into it, and then complains it cannot find anything to read in its own language because nothing has been translated. The metropolis mocks the sound of its colonies’ languages. Speaking the colony’s language in the colony is aggressive nationalism. Speaking the metropolis’s language in the colony is not aggressive nationalism. Thus colonists in the colony speak the metropolis’s language, and people in the colony also speak it with them, because they feel at home like guests and fear the power and the suffering that the metropolis’s language symbolizes for them. The colony even swears in the metropolis’s language when it wants to feel powerful and strong, because its own swearwords are neither powerful nor strong.
Since the metropolis convinces them that the metropolis’s language is larger and therefore better, the residents of the colony do not try to learn other languages and readily read and watch what is created in, or being created in, the metropolis’s language. In this way they form their view of the world outside and of themselves—the view and precisely the one the metropolis has about everything; for example, that size and power are truth, or that any colony is inferior because it is small (weak). The colony uses phrases, proper and common names, and artistic analogies that come from the metropolis’s language and that abound in the essential principles of the metropolis’s existence discussed here.
CULTURE
A person of the colony often does not know the culture of the colony (has not read its poetry or literature, has not seen its films or architecture), because he is ashamed that its culture is too small—and thus not culture at all. Trained to measure value primarily by the yardstick of size, he cannot assess the achievements of a small culture in proportion to its size and therefore constantly compares himself not with cultures of similarly sized countries but with the cultures of the great, which, of course, are more abundant in quantity and thus contain more strong culture.
Hence, the essential wish of the colony’s cultural person is to become part of some large, powerful culture—to be shown on the big stage of a big city of a big country in a big theater. Desiring great, world-significant achievements in art or sport (which the metropolis for some reason also considers culture), the colony’s resident desperately clings to every person who has any slight connection to the colony and has achieved something in the great metropolises, even if the colony in no way conditioned those achievements.
The metropolis exploits the colony’s longing for cultural greatness effectively. Since the cultural person from the colony must pass through great competition to enter the great culture, the metropolis entices them to create culture without competition at home. It grants colony creators exceptional conditions and a fast track to becoming part of its great culture, provided that, upon arriving to work in the metropolis, the cultural worker shows no disobedience to the essential principles of the metropolis’s existence. Then the colony’s creator is used as an example of the “noble savage” for the metropolis’s inhabitants—see, even in the colonies there are “our savages” who can be quite decent people, if only the metropolis civilizes them. However, any attempt by the cultural worker to say aloud that the colony can be, wishes to be, or at some time was not a colony of the metropolis immediately destroys his status as a “meritorious artist of the metropolis” and turns the good savage into a mere savage.
The person of the colony does not consider it a problem to work in the metropolis’s cultural production even if that production is intended to emphasize that the colony is and always will be the metropolis’s colony. A colony person working in such production usually consoles himself with the argument “let’s separate art from politics,” claiming that the artist should not (is too foolish to) make political choices tied to his professional activity. Once in a situation where, in the metropolis, art becomes hostage to politics, the colony’s cultural worker applies double standards—criticizing the metropolis and its system while in the colony, but speaking about the colony in ways that suit the metropolis’s leitmotifs when in the metropolis. With these double standards, the representative of the colony’s cultural intelligentsia usually masks his lack of courage to resist the metropolis and his fear of losing his place in the great culture. In the colony’s history, only those people of culture are marked with signs (e.g., street names) who supported colonialism or at least did not resist it. Cultural figures who disagreed with colonialism or tried to be indifferent to it remain unmarked. One’s stance toward the metropolis matters more for commemoration than culture itself.
RESISTANCE
According to their relationship with the metropolis, the residents of the colony can be divided into five groups.
The weakest break before the metropolis. When colonized, they begin to worship the metropolis, sincerely believing that the truth of size and power is the only possible form of relationship. These people publicly repeat that they wanted to be colonized and enjoyed being so. For this they experience the metropolis’s contempt, because the metropolis does not respect the conquered. The pain and suffering endured by this group are often so great and senseless that, seeking to escape the humiliation of suffering, they begin to idealize suffering, insisting that nothing in life can be achieved without it (this is especially widespread in the metropolis’s literature). Trying to flee the humiliation of suffering, the broken most often turn to revenge—not against those who colonized them but against the weaker, since they are too weak to inflict suffering back. The new victims become family members, subordinates, or innocent individuals who resemble the oppressors by some external trait (e.g., language or ethnicity), and thus humiliation spreads further.
The vast majority of the colony’s residents do not break, but neither do they actively resist colonization; for this, colonization is sometimes made slightly easier for them—they are humiliated a bit less. Therefore, when a new colonization threatens, they claim (and likely sincerely believe) that being colonized again may not be so terrible. These people do not regard the relationship of humiliation as normal, but they accept it, trying to avoid suffering. They call the triumph of size’s truth peace, and resistance to it war. What they call what they do not reveal, but they keep repeating that peace is much better than war, and they do not understand that part of the colony which prepares to fight—that is, prepares to resist colonization—because, in their view, successful resistance is impossible due to the superiority of size and power (“If they want to, they’ll run us over in a second—what are you joking with those tanks of yours”). Since the metropolis applies collective punishment for resistance, this part of the colony fears that the resisters will drag them into pain and suffering which they hope to avoid by submissiveness, which they call rationality or pragmatism. They blame the resisters for bringing suffering upon themselves, because they could have refrained from resisting just as they did; and they dislike the resisters, because as long as they resist, the submissive’s conscience cannot rest—perhaps resistance really is possible.
A smaller part of the colony likewise does not dare to resist colonization because it fears pain and suffering, yet it admires those who do dare to resist. It supports them while the resistance lasts, remembers them after the resistance collapses, cherishes the memory of those who resisted, never forgets what the metropolis did, and never forgives. This part is disliked in the colony by the previously mentioned part (and the dislike is often mutual), because a victim hates not the executioner most but another victim who reacted differently to the executioner. This is why, in attempting to subjugate a not-yet-broken colony, the metropolis constantly sends people from its already broken colonies to do the fighting—expecting that the surrendered victims will be far more brutal toward the not-surrendered victims, and often it is not mistaken.
The smallest part of the colony dares to resist. It resists on principle—to refuse to submit to the truth of size and power—and for that principle is ready to sacrifice even life; yet in its mind it does not believe that resistance can succeed, thinking that successful defense would only be possible through the hands of others, much larger. It sees a potential fight with the metropolis as an elephant versus a fly, not as David and Goliath. Therefore, although this part prepares to resist, it does not prepare to resist in such a way as to win. It does not believe in victory, and for that very reason other residents of the colony do not want to join it, because successful resistance has failed many times already, and the monuments to those who resisted unsuccessfully fix in the colony’s mind the principle that resistance to the metropolis will bring only immense suffering and is guaranteed to fail.
And only a tiny fraction of the colony seeks a way first to negate the power granted to the metropolis by its size and thus its superiority, and therefore believes in the success of possible resistance. Because this would destroy the essential rules of the metropolis’s existence, the metropolis fiercely strives to strangle such possible resistance, follows any attempt by the colony to remember those who believed in such resistance, and meticulously blackens their memory.
Yet this kind of resistance is the only way for the colony not to be completely a colony, because the metropolis respects only those who resist. At the same time, this is a reason for the metropolis to colonize the colony next time with even greater effort. Both things exist simultaneously, because simultaneously the metropolis both admires that someone dared to resist it and rages that someone dared to resist it. Therefore, its reaction to resistance—whether it will stop because it respects more, or become even angrier and attack harder—is equally likely: 50/50.
GUILT AND REPENTANCE
For injustice done (e.g., colonization), the metropolis never apologizes. Thus, even when forced to admit it caused injustice (e.g., colonized or blocked someone’s car in the yard), the metropolis and its person at best acknowledge that this time they were defeated (i.e., quietly withdraw from their colony or move the car), but they never apologize and never regret it, because that would deny that the metropolis was right—which would deny that the metropolis is powerful.
The colony is learning to apologize, but it faces its greatest difficulty when it must show penitence for the evil that people of the colony did to one another when there was no free will (during the colony’s colonization). Since no one apologizes for colonization, apologizing to those in the colony who have not been apologized to is far too difficult, and they often slip into “what about what he did to me” accusations against each other—the essence of which is: who in the colony served the metropolis more. Such disputes, which divert attention from the metropolis’s responsibility, make up the bulk of the colony’s relationship with its past.
PERMANENT THREAT AND PERPETUAL WAR
In attempting to colonize this or that colony of its own, the metropolis is constantly at war. Yet if it were to conquer all its colonies once and for all, they would cease to exist, and the metropolis would then be no one’s metropolis. Therefore, it seeks to defeat colonies forever while never quite doing so. Hence the metropolis constantly threatens openly while constantly denying it (“who is threatening you; who needs you!”).
Thus the colony has lived for a very long time in a state of permanent temporariness. The colony has existed for a very long time, but always temporarily. In the mind of every colony resident there ticks, subconsciously, the condition that separation from the metropolis is only temporary and sooner or later it will again become the metropolis’s colony. This shapes the colony’s creativity, politics, planning, and dreams of the future—here it is extremely rare for anything to be done once and for all, because why make anything permanent in a temporary world. Eternal temporariness leaves in the colony resident’s subconscious a constant question of how to act and survive when the metropolis comes to colonize again. Will it come or not? When will it come? What should I do if it comes? Resist painfully or submit painfully? Live at the cost of conscience, or with an ideal but not live? Is the choice here binary again, or this time will there be some third option?
LIBERATION
A colony ceases to be a colony when it no longer thinks and acts like a colony. The colony’s freedom from the colony is the metropolis’s freedom from itself. Without both, there is no empire. Empires need not exist.