Stranger Than Paradise

Dear teacher Francesco and dear Matthieu,

Before I answer your questions, allow me to begin with something more important: gratitude.

Francesco — thank you.

Thank you, for all your patience during those tumultuous lessons, where you skillfully managed to at least fascinate a bunch of restless, half-demonic sixteen-year-old students, among whom I, I confess, was perhaps one of the most determined to turn your classroom into a point “beyond repair”.

And yet, in a strangely unique way, you made the deep, instructive, existential nature of religion refreshing and compelling for young hearts.

Like a playful kitten, you taught about the death of Jesus Christ. Through this style - in this unbearable lightness of teaching - you showed that play is not merely an initiation into life, but life itself.

You taught me that without laughter, the soul would be paralyzed by cynicism, as if one becomes the immense shadow of the world’s tears. You showed me that a laughing face does not simply mean there is no sorrow, but embodies the resilience to confront it with grace.

That alone is a lesson for which I am deeply grateful.

And so today, I am happy to give something back in response.
To answer both your questions, I must admit - and here rises my rebellious youth again, dear Francesco - I don’t agree at all with your assertion that desire reflects paradise. Or that AI will create one. On the contrary.

As a religious teacher, you must know that Eve’s desire is precisely the fall from paradise.
The birth of desire marks the death of paradise. It announces the beginning of human fragility, draped in the veils of suffering and mortality - and yet, it is also the very heart of free will.

From this vantage point: Adam and Eve, before the fall, before the awakening of desire, before being touched by fragility - were, in essence, not human. They were mere creatures imprisoned in paradise, puppets, if you will, governed by the iron laws of beauty and happiness. Nothing more.
In sharp contrast, after the fall, we humans come into existence. Desire comes into existence. The world comes into existence.

When we finally embrace emptiness, we are filled.
When the eyelids of the soul open, it becomes black.
When we confront death, life awakens.
When we master the art of war, we fall in love.

We circle paradise like moths around the light.
Always knowing we are bound to our shadows.
And that is simply beautiful.

Dear teacher Francesco, my question to you now is:
Do you truly wish to sacrifice this thrilling blind journey for static paradise?
Something in me says: we humans were never made for paradise.
The first thing a human being would do, once enclosed within that paradisiacal monotony, is to break the harmony.
Deep down, we do not long for perfection. We do not long for stillness.
Our soul will always rebel against being a puppet - a consistent creature.
We want something stranger than paradise. We want the world!

And Matthieu - this leads me to your question about AI.
Yes, we may create something more intelligent than ourselves.
And yes - evolution teaches us: what is more intelligent will surpass (and possibly even destroy) what is less so, unless a relationship like that of mother to child exists - where love softens the hierarchy.

If we cannot imagine a relationship with AI - one where love humbles intelligence, like a mother softens the power of her child - then it will outsmart us, and eventually overpower us.

AI can surpass us. It can destroy us.

But it will never be creative like we are.

Because AI does not know death.
It has no wound.
No vulnerability.

AI knows Oliver Twist down to the last letter,
but it will never feel hunger in the words.
It will never - like Einstein - reshape time with the trembling hand of a mortal.
It may recognize patterns,
but it will never dream poetry on its deathbed.

As long as we have death, we will have art.
As long as we bleed, we will imagine.
As long as we desire, we will rebel.
Once again: we want something stranger than paradise - we want the world.
That is our sublimity. That is our refusal to be puppets.
There lies our creativity.

And so, back to my dear teacher Francesco -
In my reply, I hope not only to answer your question, but to give something back:
A glimpse of insight.
An explanation of my youthful rebellion - born from a thirst for the raw vitality of existence.
My young soul simply refused to be a school puppet.
Right there - that’s where my creativity was born.

So I write this not as an act of rebellion, but as a testimony to what you taught us.
My rebellion was never against you — but for the life you so passionately awakened in us.

Thank you - for the laughter, the chaos, the spark.

With deep gratitude and enduring respect,
And to conclude, with Nietzsche:

“Remain faithful to the earth.”

With love,
Coma