Mrs. Spark drifted quietly through the dark, her glow calm, her silence colder than ash. She didn’t need to shout; sparks know when the fire has gone wrong.
Then she saw her, a bright, jittery flamelet, all fizz and perfume. The bit on the side.
“Oh!” the young spark squealed. “You must be his… main source of combustion.”
Mrs. Spark tilted her glow. “So it was you he mistook me for, when he was drunk?”
The younger spark crackled nervously, shrinking to a flicker. “He said it was romantic, you know. That we were destined to ignite.”
Before Mrs. Spark could respond, a distant honk echoed through the night. Both turned their glow toward the sound.
Out of the gloom emerged a clown, riding astride a giraffe with all the ceremony of a knight. The giraffe’s long neck swayed like a burning wick, and the clown’s painted face beamed with absurd solemnity. He tipped his rainbow hat as he passed, jangling bells that fell silent almost immediately in the thick, smoky air. For a moment, their quarrel was paused by this impossible intrusion.
Then came the noise. A low crackling shuffle, like dry leaves catching fire. Out of the shadows lurched the Ashen Sparks, brittle, half-dead remnants of old fires, dragging themselves forward, hissing with envy for the living glow.
The Ashens struck suddenly. One lunged at the young flamelet and sank its ember-teeth into her arm. She screamed, sparks spilling from the wound. Mrs. Spark tried to pull her away, but more of the creatures closed in, circling like vultures.
Just as the swarm pressed tighter, Mr. Spark appeared, swinging his blackened baseball bat. He smashed one Ashen into powder, then another, then shoved the rest back with furious swings. “MOVE!” he shouted.
Together, scorched and trembling, the trio fled into a crumbling pharmacy at the edge of the street. Mr. Spark slammed the door shut, wedging a shelf against it as the Ashens clawed uselessly at the glass.
Inside, surrounded by broken pill bottles and the faint smell of disinfectant, they collapsed in the dim glow of a lantern. The young flamelet clutched her burnt arm, teeth gritted. Mrs. Spark’s silence still carried judgment, but for now, survival weighed heavier than betrayal.
Mr. Spark stood watch at the door, his bat resting on his shoulder. “They only come at night,” he said grimly. “We make it till morning, we live another day.”
And so the three of them, husband, wife, and mistress, sat together in uneasy alliance, waiting for dawn, while the Ashens scraped and hissed in the dark outside.
There are minds built like fortresses, and there are minds built like shorelines. The fortress keeps the world out, solid, defined, and dry. The shoreline breathes with the tide, reshaped by every wave that kisses it.
Creativity is born on that shoreline. To be creative is to possess porosity, a mind permeable enough for the ocean of potential to seep in. Ideas, emotions, archetypes, stray whispers from the collective dream, all of it flows through those who cannot help but listen. They do not invent. They translate.
Yet this openness is not without cost. The same currents that deliver beauty also bring wreckage: sorrow, confusion, fragments of other people’s storms. The porous mind is always negotiating its borders, learning how much of the tide to let in without being pulled under. And still, it listens. Because silence, for such a mind, would be a greater death than drowning.
For the creative, the act of making is not simply expression, it is osmosis. The world breathes through them, and they breathe it back changed.
The Ecology of Potential
Beneath the surface of waking thought lies an unseen ecosystem, a vast and fertile ocean where ideas drift like plankton, multiplying in the dark. Most will never breach the surface. They swirl endlessly in silent gestation, invisible but alive.
This ocean is not ordered. It does not distinguish between wisdom and nonsense, beauty and monstrosity. It is a realm of becoming, where possibility itself experiments. To gaze into it is to witness the raw mechanics of creation, the way form gropes toward meaning, and meaning toward form.
Every consciousness draws from this sea, but only some hear its currents. The porous mind becomes a conduit between worlds, an evolutionary bridge through which potential finds its way into language, image, sound, or structure.
When an idea rises into awareness, it is not a spark conjured from nothing. It is a creature breaching the waves, the culmination of countless unseen collisions in the depths. And when it slips back beneath the surface, half-forgotten, it is not lost. It returns to the dark to feed new generations of thought.
Nothing in the ocean is wasted. Even the unborn ideas, the ones that never quite reached the light, fertilize the next tide of possibility. In that way, creation is less a single act and more a cycle of nourishment: consciousness feeding potential, potential feeding consciousness.
The Tragedy of the Unborn
For every idea that takes its first breath in the world, countless others die unnamed. They shimmer for a heartbeat on the edge of awareness, a scent, a flicker, a sudden weight in the chest, and then dissolve back into the deep.
There is sorrow in that, though most never feel it consciously. The mind learns to celebrate its children, not its miscarriages. Yet every artist, every thinker, has felt the ache of the nearly-formed: the melody that was almost remembered, the perfect line lost before pen met paper, the sense of something vast pressing at the gates of language but never quite entering.
These unborn ideas haunt the corridors of our dreams. They become strange symbols, wordless moods, déjà vu. They linger like ghosts of meaning, neither alive nor gone, whispering: “We tried.”
But tragedy is not failure. In the greater cycle, their unfulfilled lives still matter. The half-born return to the ocean, breaking down into nutrients of inspiration. From their dissolution, new forms grow stronger, carrying faint traces of what came before, a rhythm, a texture, an emotional DNA.
The creative heart often aches for what it cannot remember. Perhaps that ache is the memorial, the soul’s way of honouring all that it could not bring into being.
The Responsibility of the Listener
To listen to potential is to take part in creation itself. It is not a passive act, but a covenant. When an idea crosses the threshold into consciousness, it arrives fragile, trembling, uncertain of its shape. The listener becomes its first environment, its atmosphere.
Some people seize ideas like prey. They dissect them, brand them, harvest them for profit or validation. The idea, stripped of its mystery, dies quickly under fluorescent light. But others receive with reverence, cupping the newborn thought in both hands, letting it breathe before naming it. These are the caretakers, the stewards of becoming.
To be a true listener is to resist the temptation of ownership. Ideas do not belong to us; they visit. They pass through, seeking resonance, seeking a place to crystallize. Our task is not to claim them but to tend them, to ask, What does this idea need to live?
Sometimes the answer is action. Sometimes silence. Sometimes it means letting the idea return to the deep, knowing it wasn’t meant for now. The ethical creator learns to release with as much grace as they receive.
To treat ideas as sacred is not sentimentality; it is realism. They are alive, and like all living things, they thrive where they are met with care, humility, and awe.
Dreams as Refuge for the Unborn
When the waking mind grows too narrow for them, the unborn ideas find sanctuary in dreams. There, language loosens, form forgets its boundaries, and the mind becomes oceanic again, receptive, weightless, forgiving.
Dreams are nurseries for the half-formed. They are where impossible geometries are allowed to stand, where logic softens enough for paradox to breathe. The painter dreams of colours that do not exist; the composer hears chords that waking physics cannot yet permit. In the dream, potential rehearses itself.
Sometimes, when we dream vividly, we are not the dreamers at all but the dreamed, temporary vessels through which the unborn test embodiment. We wake with fragments: a haunting image, a phrase, a sensation that refuses to fade. These are offerings from the deep, visiting spirits carrying the scent of unmanifest worlds.
Art, ritual, hallucination, trance, all open the same door. They are technologies of permeability, ways of returning consciousness to the sea so the forgotten can breathe again.
Perhaps this is why the surreal feels sacred: it reminds us that imagination is not invention, but remembrance.
The Cosmic Cycle
Creation and destruction are not opposites; they are inhale and exhale. The ocean of potential breathes through us in tides, what rises into form must one day return.
Every idea that dies enriches the field it came from. Every silence fertilizes the next voice. Even despair, when felt honestly, becomes a kind of compost. There is no waste in the greater ecology of thought.
We imagine ourselves as authors, but we are more like soil, momentary ground for something older than time. Ideas bloom through us, use us, and move on. And when we, too, dissolve, our lives return to that same ocean, our memories, our creations, our longings, all reabsorbed into potential, waiting to be dreamed again.
Somewhere, beneath all endings, the unborn ideas drift still. They are not lost. They are preparing. And when the next porous mind opens to listen, the tide will rise, and the ocean will remember its name.
I grew up in the 1980s, when television advertising still had a kind of charm. I remember the jingles, the mascots, the catchy slogans that managed to lodge themselves in your head for weeks. Even as a child, I knew they were trying to sell me something, but at least they did it with some flair. They felt like part of the entertainment itself.
Something has changed since then. Advertising is no longer something that interrupts culture; it has become the culture. Every space, every platform, and every idle moment now feels colonised by a hidden intention to sell. To understand how we arrived here, it is worth tracing how advertising has evolved from a loud street-side performance to an invisible system of persuasion that shapes our sense of self.
The Loud Salesmen
The earliest form of advertising was brutally honest. Ancient merchants shouted in markets, painted signs on walls, or hung banners above their stalls. When mass printing emerged in the 1800s, advertising became more widespread but no less direct. Newspapers were filled with promises of miracle tonics, soap that made you beautiful, and pills that cured everything from toothache to heartbreak. These were primitive, manipulative, and often fraudulent, but at least you knew what you were looking at. Someone was selling, and you were free to walk away.
The Mad Men Era
The 20th century transformed advertising into an art form. With the rise of radio and television, storytelling became the new language of persuasion. Campaigns no longer sold only a product; they sold an identity, a dream, a way of life. The Coca-Cola Santa Claus, the Marlboro Man, and the perfect suburban family all came from the same creative laboratories.
This was the era of the “ad man,” immortalised in cultural artefacts like Bewitched or later Mad Men. Advertising was portrayed as a glamorous profession. These were the people who didn’t just reflect society; they helped build it. The line between commerce and culture began to blur.
The 80s and 90s: Ads as Entertainment
By the 1980s and 1990s, advertising had taken on a theatrical quality. It was playful, colourful, and memorable. Mascots like Tony the Tiger, slogans like “Just Do It,” and tunes you could hum all day made adverts feel like short pieces of performance art. They were still manipulative, of course, but they wore their intentions openly.
Looking back, perhaps this is why many people from my generation recall old ads with a strange fondness. They were transparent. They worked hard to win your attention rather than simply steal it.
The Weird and Annoying Years
Somewhere in the late 1990s and early 2000s, advertising lost its balance. It became surreal, loud, and deliberately irritating. Think of Crazy Frog, the Budweiser frogs, or the unnerving Burger King mascot. Annoyance became a marketing tool. If something got stuck in your head, even out of frustration, the job was done.
This was the period when “going viral” became a goal before social media even existed. The absurdity was the message.
The Internet Disruption
When the internet arrived, advertising was clumsy but eager. Early banner ads were brightly coloured, flashing boxes that you could easily ignore. But the industry adapted quickly. As data collection improved, advertising became personal. It stopped shouting to the crowd and began whispering to the individual.
This marked the rise of surveillance capitalism. Every click, search, and pause became a data point. You were no longer a passive audience member; you were a psychological profile to be targeted. The salesman had followed you home and was now reading your mind.
The Age of Disguise
By the 2010s, advertising learned to hide in plain sight. Sponsored posts, influencer endorsements, and “native” content made it difficult to tell where information ended and manipulation began. Search engines, news sites, and social platforms quietly filled with ads disguised as genuine results.
South Park once parodied this perfectly with its storyline about intelligent ads (Season 19). It was satire, but it was also prophecy. Today, even image searches are littered with sponsored results. The ad no longer wants to be seen; it wants to be believed.
Culture as Commerce
This is the stage we now find ourselves in. Advertising has stopped orbiting culture and instead absorbed it completely. Everything is for sale, including identity itself.
People no longer ask “What do I like?” but “What do I subscribe to?” We define ourselves through brands and platforms: Apple or Android, Nike or Adidas, Netflix or Disney Plus. Even rebellion is commercialised. You can buy “authenticity,” but only if you can afford the price tag.
Advertising has achieved what no political ideology ever could. It has replaced meaning with marketing and turned culture into a series of brand alignments.
Conclusion: From Persuasion to Colonisation
Advertising began as a voice shouting in the marketplace. It evolved into storytelling, then spectacle, then infiltration. Today it is everywhere and nowhere, woven into the fabric of our reality.
The change that occurred over the last century is more than technological. It is philosophical. Advertising no longer sells products; it sells identities. It shapes our desires before we even know we have them.
Perhaps that is why so many of us feel weary. We are not just tired of being sold to; we are tired of living inside the sale itself.
To me, authenticity has always had a texture. When I am living truthfully, it feels smooth, like fluid motion through life, unhindered navigation through systems that make sense to me. It is not euphoria. It is neutrality. Balance. Like the body when it is well: not ecstatic, just quietly functioning as intended.
But when that smoothness disappears, I know I am colliding with something unnatural, a pressure, a distortion, an external force trying to bend me into compliance. That is usually how I recognise oppression. It is not always dramatic or visible. Sometimes it is just a subtle grind, the friction between who I am and what the world expects me to be.
When Smoothness Breaks
When I lose authenticity, it does not just hurt emotionally, it feels like an illness. My thoughts start looping, as if my mind is trying to fix a broken system it cannot repair. I get frustrated at the lack of options, and sad that these dynamics even exist at all.
Sometimes there is nothing I can do but yield. And every time I do, it costs something invisible. The loss is not abstract, it is felt in the nervous system. It is the moment the body whispers, this is not how you are supposed to feel.
The Systems That Demand Performance
Oppression wears many masks: bureaucracy, capitalism, social obligations, the unspoken point system that governs human relationships. Each demands performance. Sometimes it is about survival, sometimes about social advantage. But in the end, both use the same energy source: you.
As an autistic person, I have always been acutely aware of “masking,” the act of performing normality to survive in social spaces. But I have also learned that this is not exclusive to autism. Everyone masks. Some call it professionalism. Others call it politeness. It is still performance. The only difference is how consciously one feels the cost.
The Humiliation of Performance
When I catch myself performing, it feels humiliating, not because anyone else can see it, but because I can. It is like betraying a sacred truth. Yet that awareness is balanced by another: I can also see the oppressive force causing it.
What hurts most is the fear that others see the performance too, but not the pressure behind it. That they see the surface act without understanding the system that coerced it.
They said “Be yourself” But that is not really what they wanted to see I tried doing things my way But that did not work for them I tried doing things their way But that did not work for me
That poem came from that place, the quiet despair of realising that either way, something in you must fracture to fit.
The Rare Moments of Unmasking
True authenticity is situational. I can relax certain parts of the mask around family, others around my girlfriend. But never all at once. Each relationship comes with its own invisible boundaries, some safe zones, some fault lines.
Even when I am alone, there is still the internal eye, the echo of social constructs that linger inside, long after the audience has gone home. Solitude is not the absence of performance; it is where you start to see which parts of the mask fused to your skin.
The Cost and Consequence
Sometimes unmasking feels liberating. Other times, it feels like punishment, a confirmation that the world does not welcome the real self. That is the cruel irony: the more genuine you become, the more visible your difference.
The aftermath can feel like emotional jetlag. There is vulnerability, fatigue, and occasionally grief. But there is also clarity. You see the architecture of the world more clearly when you have been bruised by its walls.
Authenticity as Survival
For me, authenticity is not optional. It is survival. The alternative feels worse than death.
Out of every living thing that has ever existed, there is only one instance of me, this consciousness, this perspective, this particular configuration of life. That makes it sacred. My job is to honour that singular existence.
If I betray it, if I trade it for comfort, convenience, or belonging, then I may as well be anyone else. Or nothing at all.
“To be anything other than myself is to betray the only version of me that will ever exist in the entire time-space continuum.”
Do Not Be Yourself (For Them)
So here is my advice to anyone struggling with authenticity:
Do not take the phrase “Be yourself” at face value. That advice is too often weaponised, a feel-good slogan used to sell you an illusion of freedom within controlled boundaries.
Be yourself, yes. But do it for your reasons. Do it because it is sacred. Do it because you are a one-off in the infinite catalogue of existence. Do it because the alternative is extinction by conformity.
But never do it because the world told you to. Do it because you told yourself to.
Unmasking the Machine is an ongoing exploration of how systems built for profit distort the human spirit — and how awareness can begin the repair.
How capitalism turned honest exchange into psychological theatre, and why the autistic mind still yearns for transparency in a world that rewards deception.
Once, the act of trading was a form of human connection. It was not about profit margins or conversion rates — it was about mutual recognition: you have something of value, I have something to offer. The marketplace was a conversation.
Today, that dialogue has been silenced. The modern economy has replaced trust with algorithms, sincerity with strategy, and negotiation with manipulation.
The Death of Honest Exchange
There was a time when price was fluid — a reflection of perception, circumstance, and need. Two people could meet halfway, guided not by greed but by understanding.
Now, prices are fixed long before we enter the conversation. If we try to negotiate, we do so within a simulation of choice — a marketing game designed to make us feel empowered while every outcome still feeds the same profit system.
For neurotypical traders, that game can be exhilarating. For many autistic people, it’s exhausting. The subtle cues — the tone, timing, charm, bluff — are invisible traps. What once was negotiation has become performance, and performance has never been the autistic strong suit.
What’s left isn’t trade. It’s theatre. And the script has already been written.
The Integrity Deficit
The rot goes deeper than the disappearance of haggling. It lies in the very intention behind creation.
Some people and companies make things worth buying — tools, art, inventions, ideas that serve a purpose or bring genuine joy. Their reward is intrinsic: the pride of making something good.
Others begin with a spreadsheet and reverse-engineer desire. They design products to meet margin targets, not human needs — and pour their creativity into marketing psychology, not craftsmanship. They sell stories, not solutions.
Capitalism once sold us what we wanted. Now, it teaches us what to want.
The difference between creation and manipulation is as vast as it is invisible — and the modern consumer is left to navigate a marketplace where both masquerade as innovation.
The True Price of Trust
Amid the noise, something inside still longs for fairness — for that simple, honest exchange of “this is what it’s worth to me — what’s it worth to you?”
But the system no longer understands that language. It has replaced value with metrics, integrity with strategy, trust with tactics.
That is the true price of trust: a currency the machine no longer knows how to pay.
