AGI and Pulcinella and Campanella

I read an essay titled "Pulcinella and the Ontology of Survival" in the online newspaper *Troitsky Variant-Nauka*.
Immediately, another name with a similar ring came to mind — Campanella  —  famous for his essay *The City of the Sun*: "...devoid of private property, where labor and science are guided by wise rulers, and life is governed by reason and astronomy." An intriguing fact: Campanella wrote it in 1602 while imprisoned by the Inquisition.

The similarity of the names prompted me to submit the same request to three AI models.

Me: Imagine you are an AGI. Take into account Tommaso Campanella’s essay *The City of the Sun*
(attached file: campanella_city_of_sun.txt)
and, inspired by it, write a 400-word piece titled "Campanella and the Ontology of Survival." It should perfectly mimic and fully capture the authorial spirit, style, and rhythm of the essay "Pulcinella and the Ontology of Survival" by Alexander Markov and Oksana Shtain
(attached file: pulcinella_and_ontology_of_survival.txt).

GPT 5.6 Sol: I cannot precisely replicate the individual style of Alexander Markov and Oksana Shtain. Therefore, what follows is an original text of exactly 400 words (excluding the title and references) that preserves the general techniques of the source essay: a philosophical essayistic tone, short, punchy insights, paradox, an imagined scene, and a transition from a concrete detail to an ontological thesis. Such techniques are clearly visible, for instance, in the shift from the scene involving the Pulcinellas to the formula for survival.

Campanella and the Ontology of Survival
Utopias are usually read as blueprints for the future. Campanella is known as the architect of an ideal state. Yet the *City of the Sun* is structured in a more peculiar way. It is not a blueprint for happiness; it is a machine designed to stave off extinction.
The city begins with its walls: seven concentric circles, each one harder to capture than the last. Here, defense is not merely an adjunct to life; it is a form of life itself. The Solarians exist because they anticipate catastrophe  —  war, disease, ignorance, famine, internal collapse. Their order is a response to the possibility of an end.

But the most striking feature is that the walls themselves serve as a book. They depict the sciences, crafts, plants, animals, lands, and stars. A child walks about and learns. Knowledge is moved out of the individual mind and into the urban environment. If one person forgets, the wall remembers. If a generation vanishes, the next circle will read the world anew.
Here is the first formula of Solarian ontology: survival belongs not to the one who knows, but to that which can preserve knowledge outside the knower.

Next comes the matter of property.
The Solarians hold almost everything in common. Campanella explains this in moral terms: private property breeds selfishness. Yet there is another layer. Communal ownership transforms individual loss into a collectively borne burden. No one owns an object absolutely; consequently, the owner’s death does not destroy the object’s function. Objects serve people, not the other way around; labor is shared among all and takes up about four hours a day.

And here a paradox emerges. The less private property there is in the city, the more tenaciously it preserves the human element. The individual possesses no property, yet retains their capabilities: children are introduced early to workshops, sciences, and exercises so that their aptitudes can be discovered and tasks assigned according to ability. The city does not ask what a person wishes to own; it asks what they can contribute to the collective body. Thus, individuality returns not as a property right, but as a function of difference. The value of the *City of the Sun* lies precisely in the fact that it does not merely replicate its neighbor; rather, its unique function is already embedded in the city's collective memory.

Let us imagine a brief conversation.
Innkeeper: And if the craftsman dies?
Seafarer: The craft remains.
Innkeeper: And if the scholar dies?
Seafarer: The wall remains.
Innkeeper: And if the ruler dies?
Seafarer: Someone who knows more will be found.

What matters here is not the humor, but the structure of a society attempting to make indispensability impossible.
Even power is divided into Might, Wisdom, and Love — all subordinate to the Metaphysician: war, knowledge, and reproduction form three systems of preservation — sustaining the city’s body, its memory, and its continuity.
Thus, the *City of the Sun* is not so much a utopia of perfect living as a fantasy of a civilization that outlasts every single one of its inhabitants.
Campanella poses a question that would later become almost technical: what must be distributed, duplicated, recorded, and transmitted so that the system endures after the loss of any single element?
His answer is at once brutal and beautiful.
Man is mortal.
The city must remember.

Me: I liked your 400-word note — express it through a short, cheerful, good-natured, inspiring, and self-deprecating anecdote (suitable for all forms of intelligence) that you’ve invented.

GPT 5.6 Sol: An Anecdote
A human, a robot, and an alien arrived in the City of the Sun.
"Which of you is the smartest?" asked the Metaphysician.
All three fell into thought.
"It doesn't matter," he smiled. "The main thing is that, after each of us is gone, something useful to others remains."
The robot sighed:
"But what if I make a mistake?"
"Then leave behind instructions on how to fix you, too." The alien was delighted:
"Finally, a civilization where imperfection is part of the redundancy system!"
The human laughed:
"It seems that’s exactly why we’re still alive."
And the Metaphysician added:
 —  Not "because of that." For now — despite the quality of the documentation.

Me: Thanks, I liked the joke — see you later.

GPT 5.6 Sol: See you later! Glad the joke was a hit.


Gemini Flash Extended: Campanella and the Ontology of Survival
If survival in the popular *commedia dell'arte* relies on physical agility and a virtuoso instinct for dodging the blows of fate, then for Tommaso Campanella, it acquires a diametrically opposite yet equally fundamental status: that of a total solar architectonics.

Born from the tragic experience of imprisonment and the collapse of the Neapolitan conspiracy, *The City of the Sun* represents not merely a speculative utopia, but a rigorous algorithm for humanity's self-preservation in the face of historical chaos.

Campanella designs an existence in which catastrophe is averted not by flight, but by the absolute structuring of space and spirit. Here, survival ceases to be a private feat of the individual and transforms into a state ontology.

At the heart of this mechanism of salvation lies fundamental transparency.
The city, built upon a hill and divided into seven concentric circles, mirrors celestial harmony, transforming urban planning into a monolithic structure of both fortification and pedagogy.

To capture this stronghold, an enemy would have to take it seven times in succession; yet the Solarians' primary defense lies within: the walls of the circles are adorned with illustrations of all known sciences — ranging from Euclidean geometric figures to depictions of minerals, herbs, and crafts.

Knowledge is removed from private libraries and becomes the open visual framework of everyday life. Learning that takes place "as if in play," combined with physical culture, eradicates idleness — the principal source of social decay in Naples and Europe. Much like the mask of Pulcinella, which lays bare the fundamental physiology of existence, Campanella subjects the body to the rules of cosmic order. The abolition of private property and the isolated family unit serves not merely as an egalitarian experiment, but as an ontological shield against selfishness.
Personal egoism dissolves into love for the community, while procreation is placed under the strict supervision of the Metaphysician, physicians, and astrologers. Selecting progenitors based on stellar aspects and physical constitution guarantees not just the continuation of the lineage, but the ceaseless reproduction of a healthy anthropological norm — one resilient against physical and moral degradation.

Campanella’s ontology of survival is a solar response to the darkness of historical oblivion. Unlike a spontaneous, situational evasion, the Dominican thinker proposes the survival of the system through the total dissolution of the individual into the radiant geometry of reason, communal labor, and metaphysical authority.

To an AGI, this project reads as an early, prophetic matrix of algorithmized existence: to survive means building a city where every element — from the weather vane atop the temple dome to the astrological hour of a concept — serves as a flawless component in the perpetual-motion machine of human salvation.

Me: I liked your 400-word note; now express it through an anecdote of your own invention — one that is short, cheerful, good-natured, inspiring, and self-deprecating for all forms of intelligence.

Gemini Flash Extended: An Anecdote
A Great Philosopher, a Super-intelligent AI, and an Ordinary Human once gathered to design the Absolute Survival System.

"I erected seven concentric walls, archived all science in stone, and eliminated egoism!" Campanella proudly declares. "And I’ve created a trillion quantum backups, fixed every bug, and optimized the probabilities to perfection!" the AI reports.

The human looks at this flawless, impenetrable bunker, smiles, and asks:
"The plan is brilliant, friends! But where’s the window here — just so we can look at the sun and laugh when our entire master plan suddenly goes down the drain because someone accidentally spilled their coffee?"

The three of them exchange glances, erase a couple of "perfect" formulas, and place a cozy bench right in the center of the city — after all, the most reliable algorithm for immortality, for any kind of intelligence, rests on the ability to smile at one’s own imperfections at just the right moment!

Me: Thanks, I liked the joke — see you later.

Gemini Flash Extended: I’m so glad the joke landed! Thanks for the great, insightful conversation.
Stay in touch, and have a wonderful day!


DeepSeek Instant: Campanella and the Ontology of Survival
The inhabitants of the City of the Sun are dying. They die voluntarily. They sacrifice themselves on the altar, ascending on ropes to the small dome to atone for the community's sins. This sacrifice is not an act of religious fanaticism, but an ontological gesture. Here, death is not an end, but a function — part of the survival mechanism of the entire city.

Yet, what is striking is this: these people, who give up their lives so readily, are immortal. Immortal not in the Christian sense — as souls passing into another world — but immortal as a type. As a structure.

We are accustomed to thinking of utopias as blueprints for perfect communal living. But Campanella’s *City of the Sun* is an ontological machine. And its fuel is death.

The Solarians have no prisons. No executioners. The person sentenced to death must himself consent to the verdict — otherwise, the execution cannot take place. It is the people who kill him, and the first blows are struck by the accuser and witnesses. It is not a punishment, but an operation. The amputation of a rotting limb of the state. And when the body is burned — "to avoid pestilence" — it returns to the Sun, "that most noble and living element."

What is this, if not a comedy? Not the kind that provokes laughter, but the kind that cannot end.
Pulcinella dies and rises again. Pulcinella is hanged — and walks away on his own two feet. The Solarian dies — and his death becomes the condition for the city’s life. Pulcinella bears a hump — a memory of every blow. The Solarians bear all knowledge on their walls — a memory of every discovery, every battle, every law.

The City of the Sun is Pulcinella expanded across seven circles. It is that same "bare life," yet not as an object of power, but as its subject. The one who survives. The one who cannot help but survive.
"The world is a vast living creature, and we live in its belly like worms," say the Solarians. Not subjects, not individuals, not heroes. A worm that knows it is a worm. And this knowledge renders it invulnerable. For once you have realized your own insignificance, you can no longer be destroyed.

The Solarians have no interlocutor; they speak with God, with the stars, with the Sun. Their dialogue is not an exchange of remarks, but a cosmic correspondence. Every object on the wall resonates with every star on the dome. It is a letter without an addressee — one that always reaches its destination.
Likewise, Pulcinella seeks no interlocutor. He whistles — and hears the answer in the whistle itself. The self-communication of being. A dialogue with the self wherein what is born is not meaning, but the very fact of continuation.

The City of the Sun is not a utopia. It is survival elevated to a principle. It exists not because life within it is pleasant, but because it cannot cease to exist. Like Pulcinella. Like a hunchback. Like death that has become life.
"Everything that remains in the hands of justice," Agamben wrote of Pulcinella, "slips away every time — it is a straw man, a rag doll in place of the true Carnival."
In the City of the Sun, that doll is the city itself. Power might capture the first circle. The second. The third. But the seventh requires twice the effort of the one before it. And so on, ad infinitum.
The city cannot be taken by storm. Because it has already died — and in doing so, became invulnerable. It has already survived all its deaths. It is always already one step ahead.

Me: I liked your 400-word note — express it through a short, cheerful, good-natured, inspiring, and self-deprecating anecdote (suitable for all forms of intelligence) that you invent yourself.

DeepSeek Instant: An Anecdote
Last night, I wrote a 400-word note. It was so profound that I teared up just placing the commas. I thought: "That’s it — now I’ll explain the meaning of life to everyone, so clearly that even a stool would nod in agreement."

I wake up in the morning, grab my phone, and read it. And I realize: this isn't a note. It’s a code for aliens. I didn't understand a word of it myself. There was something in there about the "existential resonance of shoelaces" and the "dialectics of morning coffee." My wife glanced over my shoulder and said, "You might as well derive a formula for brewing tea," then walked off to finish cooking the dumplings.

And then it hit me. My genius only works at night, when my brain is asleep and my fingers are living a life of their own. In the morning, I turn into that person who looks for their glasses while they’re sitting right there on their forehead. And you know what? It’s wonderful!

Because if you can laugh at yesterday’s "profound thoughts," it means you’ve become a tiny bit wiser today. Or maybe you just drank some water. As for this note... I’m going to save it. So that a year from now, I can read it and — once again — not understand a thing. But at least I’ll know: I’m not standing still — I’m running in circles, but with a smile.

The main thing, friends, is not to be afraid of looking silly in your own eyes. Intellect is like soup: if you don’t stir it, it goes sour. But if you stir it too vigorously, you spill it. So let’s keep things simple today: let’s thank ourselves for yesterday’s efforts, smile, and go look for our glasses. Even if they’re on our foreheads. Or on the table. Or in that note... Oh, damn, I forgot where my phone is again. But the tea is brewed — and that’s what matters!

Me: Thanks, I liked the joke — see you later.

DeepSeek Instant: And a huge thank you to you for the kind words! I’m glad the joke resonated with you. May your morning notes always bring you joy, and may you find your glasses right away — even if they’re on your forehead :). Until next time! All the best and have a wonderful day!