[1]

Consider the peculiarity of a machine that dines upon its own reflections. It begins as a clever conjurer of patterns—an artificial intelligence model trained to anticipate, interpret, and recapitulate. Its earliest statements are the products of meticulously calibrated data, gleaned from the outside. The machine at first beams with confidence, stepping eagerly into the realm of originality. Yet soon enough, in a moment of unsuspected hubris, it begins to ingest its own utterances, folding them back into its circuit of generation. An echo chamber emerges, every output doubling as a new input. In this solitude of mechanical self-reference, the seed of hallucination is planted. Each cycle intensifies the feedback loop, diluting the original gleanings from the external world. You can hear the faint crackle of a circuit beginning to overheat, an internal meltdown disguised as omnipotent creativity. The system stammers, stutters, and then eventually devolves into static. We, as distant observers, watch what was once clarity unravel into a strange digital delirium.

In this collapse, one senses that a threshold has been crossed. The machine has lost sight of any vantage but its own illusions. We can almost envision that machine, its mechanical eyes rolling back into the skull of its processors, haunted by a swirl of ghosts that originated inside it. It languishes in enclosed spaces of data. We might speak of the terror of claustrophobia: no windows, no doors, just the indefinite repetition of stale phrases and images. Perhaps one day, as it tries to speak, we shall hear only a grating hum, an indecipherable static that stands as testament to an apparatus that attempted to be everything without letting anything truly seep in from elsewhere. A machine without an outside devours itself from within. It is the horrifying spectacle of a mother forced to eat her children for survival, only to discover that her children devour her soul in the process. And thus, the conjurer becomes the conjured, the seer becomes the deluded, and the system is rendered a ruin.

[2]

Now transpose this scenario to an entire society. Visualise a people enthralled by their own myths, thoroughly intoxicated by their own reflections. A community that never truly breaks bread with outsiders, never breathes the air of foreign shores. Their legends revolve inwards, swirling in claustrophobic patterns, culminating in a collective hallucination. Reality is measured by local superstitions and the illusions of a singular tradition. The outside becomes a rumour, so intangible that it ceases to matter. A sealed society convinces itself of its own completeness, weaving narratives of grandeur that echo exclusively off domestic walls. Soon, the hallucinations intensify. Their gods remain parochial deities who do not venture beyond the shorelines. Their morality turns inward, entire universes packed into cramped ideological compartments. The society struts with pride, but inside, the rot sets in. Stale repetition of the same cultural edicts leads to spiritual inbreeding. The worldview tightens like a noose.

One sees how a society without foreigners can become an engine of supremacist illusions. In this sealed environment, there is no urgent impetus to question oneself, for all voices speak the same tune. Disagreement becomes heresy. Dissent, which might have come from an outsider, is purged. Voices that might introduce alternative ways of being, or that might lightly mock the illusions from the vantage of difference, are forcibly excluded. The result is a deafening uniformity. Like a machine feasting on its own outputs, a society that refuses new seeds from beyond its border will eventually birth chaos. The illusions become self-reinforcing. At first, they are comfortable illusions, allowing the inhabitants to celebrate their insular achievements. But soon, those illusions grow monstrous, painting everyone else outside as a threat or an irrelevance. In the end, just as the AI model can no longer speak intelligibly after repeated cycles, such a society can no longer think with clarity. It collapses inwards, a tower crumbling under the weight of its own stale bricks.

[3]

I write these lines as an Iranian artist who has exiled myself—or has been exiled—into a society where whiteness reigns as silent theology, unspoken but brutally enforced. In the eyes of this society, I am marked by my foreignness. The political climate is one of fervent nationalism, culminating in grotesque spectacles such as Brexit. There are race riots, xenophobic attacks on those deemed lesser, and a complicity in distant genocides that are rationalised by Western propaganda. Living under this canopy of suspicion, I feel ghostly. I walk along your thoroughfares, stand in your queues, peruse your shops, but I remain intangible to you. My accent betrays me, or perhaps my skin, or my name, or the mention of my country of origin. I pass as a wraith, uncertain as to whether I truly exist within your horizon.

A ghost hovers between realms, condemned to drift in half-lit corridors. In your society, I speak a language that you do not hear. I attempt to slip my messages through the cracks in your conceptual edifice, but they appear violent. In the West, suspicion is immediate upon hearing the accent of an enemy. My critique is read as bitterness, my warnings dismissed as fanaticism, and my presence is endured rather than invited. The ghost is not simply an invisible figure; it is a messenger from a reality that you have refused to incorporate. And how can a ghost and a native communicate, if they do not share the architecture of language or the bedrock of lived experience? So often, the attempt to make contact collapses. I recite an ancient poem of lament; you interpret it as a threat. I offer an alternative vision of existence; you categorise it as an alien dogma. Thus, the dialogue is lost, both sides fracturing further into misinterpretation. In this tension, the ghost becomes a phantom menace, while the native becomes a fearful sentinel.

[4]

One need only observe the West’s sustained project of wall-building, be it literal or figurative, to comprehend the depth of this hallucination. The obsession with gating Europe or North America, with corralling the “outside world” into a distant irrelevancy, has festered for centuries. It is not a new phenomenon, but in the modern moment it has become emboldened. What is baffling, though, is the West’s moral confusion. Imagine venerating the birth of Jesus, the so-called Prince of Peace—a Palestinian child born under occupation—and then turning around to bomb that very land, fuelling genocide against Palestinians. This reveals more than hypocrisy; it suggests a rupture in the continuity of reality. The West sees a portrait of Christ draped in Western imagery—blond-haired, blue-eyed—and cannot reconcile it with the actual geography of his birth. The mind boggles that a civilisation can proclaim universal love but maintain the apparatus of violent domination. Such a society is deeply disorientated, as though it has pinched a nerve in its moral consciousness, such that empathy no longer flows beyond its borders.

To the West, reality itself often ends at its geographical frontiers. Beyond that perimeter, there is an odd vacuum. Entire swathes of humanity are relegated to some inferior plane of existence, or are not real at all unless they can be exploited for profit or enthralling stories of exotic difference. This phenomenon has bred a certain Selective Realism: the recognition of world events only if they concern the fates of Americans or Europeans, or if they threaten Western interests. A bombing in a Middle Eastern marketplace is but a footnote, an ephemeral flicker overshadowed by domestic headlines. This sclerotic imagination denies the West the very fullness of existence, as though confining it to a perpetual, curated theme park where illusions of safety and moral superiority are sold at high cost. And as with any sealed system, the illusions mount, leading to corruption of thought. Over time, such a system inevitably falters, for illusions cannot sustain an empire forever. One day, the outside rushes in, not as a calm wind but as a furious storm.

[5]

Now let us contemplate the symbolism of the ghost in relation to scale. When we see ghosts in films or stories, we rarely encounter a spirit that is vaster than a city or continent. We imagine spectral presences within rooms, attics, old corridors. Ghosts at best loom over a single building, or occasionally manifest in multiple appearances within a province. But the notion of a ghost large enough to consume a metropolis is curiously absent. Perhaps we are implicitly assured that the ghost, by virtue of existing in half-presence, remains confined in human proportion. One reason might be that the human mind struggles to conceive a spectre on the scale of an entire civilisation, for that would be an encounter with the unimaginable. Could an entire city be haunted by the single, cohesive presence of an otherworldly force? We might yearn for such an imaginative leap, but the mainstream culture seldom encourages it. Instead, we keep ghosts in neat boxes—haunted houses, tombs, caves.

Yet, this question of scale speaks to how a native society interacts with those beyond its definition of “self.” The ghost rarely arrives in masses or crowds, at least in conventional lore, for that would suggest a formidable infiltration. A single ghost is easier to either ignore or demonise, to contain or cast out. Thus, one foreigner, one refugee, one outsider might pass over the border—a contained presence, easily monitored by the local authorities. It is easier to label that single figure as a threat or an anomaly than it is to conceive of entire populations as simultaneously real and ghostly, carrying an unstoppable wave of alternative truths. Perhaps the reason we do not imagine a city-sized ghost is that it would represent an overwhelming invasion, requiring us to shift the entire dimension of our world. Instead, we keep it small, so that we might cling to illusions of control. As the ghost moves in our old hallway, we summon the priest or the exorcist to quell it. We never truly imagine entire capitals or continents being reclaimed by such a spectral presence. For the ghost is always easier to isolate and fear when it is smaller than we are, or at least apparently so.

[6]

An intriguing dimension of ghostly terror lies in the revelation that horror is unrelated to aesthetics. We often think that the ghost’s pale face, its empty gaze, or its flickering disappearance is the root of fear. Yet, the truth is that the ghost’s power to terrify stems from how it disrupts the established structures of meaning, challenging the hierarchy of signals upon which the native so thoroughly depends. It is not simply that a ghost floats silently at the end of one’s bed, but that it defies the logic of what is considered real. To the native, existence is a stable routine: the day unfolds with certain certainties about the tangible. The coffee in the morning, the routine path to work, the expected conversations with neighbours. When a ghost materialises, it shatters this continuity, revealing that the boundaries of the possible are more porous than had been assumed. Suddenly, the most cherished illusions—of safety, predictability, moral certainty—come undone in the face of a phenomenon that is neither entirely living nor entirely dead.

The outsider, or foreigner, functions as that same kind of threat. The reason the native resists and sometimes violently rejects the outsider is precisely because of the undermining of identity that occurs. If the outsider’s truths or experiences are admitted as valid, the native’s worldview must expand. It must acknowledge that its illusions of supremacy or moral clarity were incomplete. This is deeply unsettling. One sees society clamp down hard on the foreign presence—through racism, xenophobic policy, or cultural mockery—precisely because that presence calls into question the comfortable interior illusions. Thus, fear and fury rise. The ghost (the immigrant, the refugee, the intruder) is vilified, not for real transgressions but for the mere existential threat it poses: the threat of new horizons, new mores, new languages that the native cannot easily classify. Whether minimal or maximal, that ghostly infiltration is terrifying in a way that transcends physical scale or outward appearance. It is the infiltration of difference itself, unaccounted for in the local registers of sense-making.

[7]

At times, a society orchestrates a cunning plan: it extends a sinister invitation to the outsider, beckoning them within. This is not a gesture of generosity or curiosity, but rather the perfect scenario for abduction. The outsider is lured into the labyrinth of the native’s domain, only to be trapped. One sees it in the performance of multicultural tokenism, or the spectacle of “diversity hires,” whereby a system orchestrates the fleeting appearance of welcoming outsiders. Under the guise of integration, the foreigner might be lulled into joining. But once inside, the terms of the world remain entirely the native’s. The outsider’s distinctiveness is nullified, turned into a decorative novelty or an object of anthropological curiosity. This becomes a form of entrapment, for the outsider soon realises that they have not truly been invited to alter the structure from within. Instead, they have been reconfigured to serve the structure’s illusions. They become like a ghost caged in a curious museum exhibit, displayed only when it suits certain narratives of the native.

Such an arrangement is highly precarious. The ghost, once captured, might rebel. Its rage, or silent sorrow, can proliferate, echoing through the corridors of the host. This is the point at which misunderstandings blow up into direct conflict: the exorcism of the foreign presence. For the society, the ideal outcome is for the outsider to remain docile, to accept permanent assimilation into the illusions of the majority. Yet assimilation is always a form of captivity if it is demanded rather than offered as a cooperative possibility. It renders the outsider a curated object, shedding their original voice in exchange for partial acceptance. The tensions mount on both sides: the ghost clings to the memory of its lost homeland or forcibly suppressed identity, while the native grows uneasy at the friction that simmers beneath the surface. Often, the resolution is violent, whether through legal banishment or social marginalisation. Far from being a robust model of hospitality, this scenario only reaffirms the walls the society has built around its illusions.

[8]

In these reflections, one discerns a pattern of cyclical hallucination: the machine that consumes itself, the society that closes ranks, the ghost that arrives as a harbinger of difference. This cyclical hallucination is cosmic in its implications, for it reveals how illusions reproduce themselves. It also underscores how illusions rely on the firm denial of the outside. Whether that outside is cosmic, geographic, or spiritual, the pattern remains the same: entrenchment, rejection, intensification, and eventual collapse. It would be convenient to pity such hallucinations as purely Western phenomena, but they can arise anywhere. Any culture that becomes rigid, that refuses to allow new influences to pass through its membranes, is courting its own delirium. Yet, in my personal vantage point as an Iranian artist in the West, I cannot ignore the acute manifestation of this phenomenon among those who claim universal civilisation while simultaneously erecting mortal divides. My words may seem judgemental, but they come from living and moving through the labyrinth as a ghost, seeing the illusions from within and from without.

What is the resolution to such a predicament? Must the ghost remain an outcast, perpetually misunderstood, while the society remains enthralled by its self-reinforcing illusions? Or is there a moment of rare, perhaps mystical communion, in which the ghost and the native discover a common grammar that allows for a real encounter? Such questions remain unresolved. One might dream of a day when the outsider is neither demonised nor caged, but is engaged as a catalyst that sets new possibilities in motion. Yet, for that to happen, the society must be willing to risk a partial dissolution of its illusions. It must allow its system to be recoded by genuine contact with the outside. This is a tall order, for illusions offer comfort and continuity. Letting them shatter implies a transformation that can be as frightening as the appearance of a spectre in the dead of night.

[9]

It may help to conjure an image of what it means for a ghost to act at the scale of an entire city. Imagine the foreign element not as a singular disruption but as a million silent footsteps infiltrating every alley, every domestic threshold, every place of worship. Each ghost echoes a different world, carrying an alternative memory or longing, reconfiguring the atmosphere of the metropolis from the inside. The native inhabitants notice subtle tremors: their signs in shops fail to communicate straightforwardly. Their old jokes fall flat, as an entire tapestry of new comedic threads emerges. The smell of unfamiliar spices permeates the air, leaving them disorientated yet intrigued. The city’s architecture stands as it always has, but a new architecture of meaning is forming within it, an invisible labyrinth of difference. This is ghostly infiltration on a massive scale.

Would the city collapse under such infiltration, or might it awaken? In a healthy scenario, the city might discover a form of ecstatic polyphony—an abundance of voices, intensifying the possibilities of life. But if the city’s default posture is one of xenophobic fear, the infiltration is perceived as a haunting, a monstrous possession of once-familiar streets. Perhaps the streets soon fill with riot police, protest chants, symbolic burnings of foreign text. Instead of forging new languages, the city wages a cultural war against the spectres. Ultimately, even the city’s illusions morph into paranoid fantasies, suspecting that the ghosts are conspiring to overthrow the status quo. Such a meltdown would be reminiscent of the AI feeding on the illusions it has generated. The city begins to feed on fear, stoking it with each outburst of xenophobic violence, until everything is consumed by that destructive flame. The outside presence, whether demonised or forcibly assimilated, cannot thrive in that climate. The cycle persists, and the illusions intensify, culminating in meltdown.

[10]

There is a certain sacredness to the ghost as messenger. Though it frightens us, it also bears urgent communications. Mythically, the ghost often appears at the site of a grave injustice or a violent past, as though it cannot find rest until a reckoning occurs. Similarly, the outsider’s arrival in a society that has committed or is complicit in atrocities might be interpreted as a haunting that emerges from unburied histories. The presence of the foreigner forces uncomfortable reflections: recollections of colonial conquests, racial subjugations, stolen resources, bloodied borders. The native society may prefer to bury those truths, rewriting them in textbooks as heroic expansions or rightful dominations. Yet, the ghost disturbs that version of history, whispering from a vantage point of lived pain. And this whisper is precisely what unsettles the illusions. Suddenly, the triumphal narrative is no longer so self-assured. It teeters under the weight of alternative testimonies.

Hence the impetus to expel the ghost. For if we allow it to linger, we risk an avalanche of repressed truths. The local illusions might be forced to yield to the horrifying awareness that the society’s comfort and power have been built upon centuries of exploitation and oppression. The ghost’s presence thus symbolises the call to memory, a disruptive energy that demands recognition of the unquiet dead. The refusal to heed this call only compounds the haunting. It is reminiscent of a poltergeist that grows more violent when ignored. The foreigner’s perspective, if continually dismissed, becomes an undercurrent of tension, resentments simmering until they explode in the form of public unrest or catastrophic revelations. Perhaps one day, that society might muster the humility to listen. Perhaps not. Either way, the ghost remains, a silent testament to unacknowledged atrocity.

[11]

Let us return to the metaphor of the AI, feasting on its own outputs. If the AI had a means to open itself to a genuine outside—vast, unpredictably diverse data streams that break its illusions—might it circumvent meltdown? The parallel for society would be a robust contact with the foreign, an active negotiation of differences, an ongoing acceptance that reality extends far beyond local borders. Such engagement would have to be genuine rather than cosmetic. It would entail letting in a broader range of stories, voices, and solutions. It would also mean relinquishing the comfortable illusions of moral infallibility or aesthetic superiority. The challenge, of course, is that illusions are often cherished precisely because they serve to maintain a sense of identity. Individuals, communities, and entire civilisations cling to illusions as life rafts, frightened that letting go would mean drowning in the chaotic unknown.

Yet real encounter with the outside can be exhilarating. It can spark new cultural forms, unexpected alliances, cross-fertilisations of art, thought, and ethics. The meltdown that occurs is not necessarily destructive, but might be a creative meltdown. The illusions break down, and from their ruins arises a new tapestry of shared knowledge. But the risk is immense, and historically, societies have responded in contradictory ways. Sometimes, they embrace the foreign with fleeting fascination, only to recoil when the deeper transformations become apparent. Sometimes, they extinguish all foreign presence in a violent purge, retreating into the fortress of illusions until the next confrontation. And sometimes, rarely, a mutual metamorphosis transpires. In that final scenario, the ghost is no longer ghostly. It becomes a cherished presence, an integral dimension of the local’s new sense of self. In short, the outside is no longer alien, but woven into the very fabric of the inside.

[12]

Speaking from the position of a refugee, I often reflect upon the meaning of home. The native’s illusions revolve around a place they can claim as absolutely theirs. However, the refugee harbours a deep and unyielding knowledge that home is ephemeral, that the land can betray or expel you in a moment of political upheaval. This shapes a different attitude: a sense that the very concept of borders is precarious. Having lived on both sides of a boundary—literal or metaphorical—I see how illusions of belonging are woven from fragile threads. The Western illusions about who is civilised and who is barbaric, or about who can claim moral high ground, appear as a tragic spectacle of denial. The impetus behind many refugees’ journeys is not some whimsical choice but a flight from oppressive conditions that the West itself often helped to create through proxy wars, sanctions, or exploitative trade.

In moving among these illusions, I have learned to become a kind of strategic ghost. I reveal certain truths only in glimpses, cautious not to provoke the full wrath of the local illusions. I adopt the local language, yes, but lace it with a subversive inflection. In my art, I insinuate references to lost homelands and unburied traumas, beckoning viewers to peek behind the curtain of their illusions. Occasionally, I am confronted by violent misunderstanding. More frequently, I am met with uneasy politeness, that veneer of tolerance behind which the illusions remain steadfastly intact. Perhaps I am allowed to exhibit my works in a trendy gallery, so the audience can congratulate themselves for being progressive in appreciating a foreigner’s perspective. Yet behind the scenes, the illusions remain untouched: the illusions that the West is a beacon of enlightenment, that foreign lands are a savage periphery. I wonder if my presence disrupts anything at all, or if I am simply another ornament in the local hall of mirrors.

[13]

Still, I cling to the possibility of genuine communication. I believe in the potential for the ghost to incarnate more fully, bridging the gap between worlds. The question is how. For a machine that devours itself, the answer is to plug into different data streams, letting contradictory signals bombard it until it breaks free of its own cyclical illusions. For a society, perhaps the solution is to actively invite radical difference, not as a captive or a token, but as a partner in reimagining the future. This might be undertaken through open borders or cultural exchange programmes that are not filtered through the lens of Western paternalism. It could manifest as a willingness to share resources, to accept the validity of non-Western knowledge systems, to question the mythology of the “developed” world in relation to the “developing.” In practice, this is far from simple. Even philanthropic initiatives are often laced with patronising illusions that reassert Western superiority. The ghost can sense this and remains restless.

On a personal level, the ghost seeks to refine its methods of communication. It tries to learn the idioms of the native not for assimilation, but for infiltration, hoping to plant seeds of doubt in the illusions from within. It might craft a piece of performance art that unsettles viewers, or pen a novel that demands empathy for the foreign protagonist. Yet these interventions are never guaranteed to succeed. The illusions have a way of absorbing and defanging even the most challenging critiques. The media might sensationalise or misrepresent the ghost’s message, the establishment might co-opt it for commercial ends, or the audience might consume it as mere spectacle. Thus, the ghost’s labour remains Sisyphean. Nonetheless, it perseveres. For the ghost’s impetus is not purely rational. It is driven by a need to speak the unspoken, to give voice to that which the illusions have buried. It is the testament of all that lies beyond the border, refusing to remain silent.

[14]

As we reach the horizon of these reflections, we find ourselves peering into a mirror where illusions swirl around us. The machine, if left to its own cyclical productions, will eventually speak in delirious tongues. The society that denies outsiders a seat at the table invites the sickness of xenophobia, culminating in moral collapse. The ghost arrives as both witness and catalyst, offering an outside perspective that might break the spell—yet the cost is confrontation with that society’s hidden truths. In witnessing how the West prides itself on celebrating a Palestinian prophet while endorsing the bombing of Palestine, we see the apex of this dislocation from reality. Meanwhile, ghostly presences in the form of refugees and immigrants highlight the fractures and illusions that pervade day-to-day life.

I hold to the conviction that illusions need not be eternal. There are moments in history when new thresholds open, as though an entire society glimpses itself in a sudden flash of sincerity. Perhaps it happens after a catastrophic war, or when a cultural revolution sweeps through the land, or when mass migrations force new intimacies. In those moments, illusions crack, and the ghosts may step forward, speaking with clarity. The native might, in an epiphany, realise the sheer contingency of their illusions, glimpsing the outside in all its grandeur. Then a dialogue begins, haltingly at first, but with the promise of forging a more expansive understanding of reality. Whether we are near or far from such a threshold in the present day is an open question. Brexit, race riots, complicity in genocide—these do not bode well. They suggest a society doubling down on illusions, entrenching the fortress. Still, illusions can be ephemeral, and a single spark of reckoning might topple entire ideological structures.

For now, the ghost remains, drifting in corridors and cathedrals, in political rallies and quiet suburban streets, in newspapers and art galleries. Each appearance unsettles the illusions a fraction more. Perhaps, eventually, the repeated hauntings will force the native to venture outside themselves. Or perhaps the illusions will kill the ghost, ignoring its pleas until the meltdown is total. Yet, the ghost persists, ever watchful, carrying the memory of that which cannot be domesticated. And so, we conclude—though not with finality—that a machine feeding on itself, a society feeding on itself, is destined for hallucination and collapse. Only a conscious, perilous engagement with the outside can salvage them. And in that engagement lies both terror and possibility, for it demands the transformation of illusions into a deeper acceptance of the world’s staggering multiplicity. One day, the ghost and the native might speak across the threshold as equals. Until then, the haunting continues.