We have just concluded an intense year for us all at Pressenza: a year of great change, growth and learning. And, as at the end of every year, we take the opportunity to analyse, reflect and project.

My eyes have landed on the text of a chat by Silo – the Argentinian spiritual guide and founder of the Humanist Movement – that I not only had the pleasure to hear in person when ten years ago he gave it, but that we have also just recently published in an electronic format with the publisher Multimage.

I wanted to re-read it thinking about the forthcoming withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, but also reflecting over the holidays about the relationship with my son, or about the incomprehensible tragedies that fill the pages of the newspapers (father kills mother and children and then commits suicide) without going beyond the cliché responses of sudden madness or social malaise.

We, who for years have not been listened to, have been publishing now for quite a while an integrated vision of the world; the attention of each one of us in our particular field; a care for our Mother Earth as a blue home transporting us through space; the valuing of diversity; the affirmation of the right of every human being to travel, live and work where and how they want, with the only caveat being that they don’t harm others; the profound conviction that wars and all forms of violence don’t resolve anything.

We are implementing this in Pressenza trying to include all those critiques and every proposal that goes in this sense, in the direction of humanisation, of creating consciousness, of nonviolence. In this light we are grateful to all of you who, no matter in how big or small a way, every day or once in a while, collaborate in this totally voluntary, disinterested, utopian and generous project.

So, to end the last year and to reflect on what will come, I would like to propose that you read these few paragraphs of that chat by Silo that I mentioned above, which sounds a bit like a reflexion but is also an announcement, a hope for a better world that we’re all urgently yearning for.

“Something needs to be done,” is what you hear everywhere. Very well then, I will tell you what must be done, but nothing will come of it because no one will listen.

I say that at the international level, all who are invading territories of others should withdraw immediately and comply with the resolutions and recommendations of the United Nations.

I say that at the internal level of each nation, an effort must be made to make law and justice function, as imperfect as they may be, before making laws tougher and enacting repressive measures that play into the very hands of those who now obstruct law and justice.

I say that at the domestic level people should practice what they preach and leave behind the hypocritical rhetoric that poisons the new generations.

I say that at the personal level everyone should strive to make what they think coincide with they feel and what they do, shaping a coherent life and escaping the contradiction that generates violence.

But nothing of what is said will be listened to. Nonetheless, events themselves will succeed in making the invaders retreat; will cause the tough guys to be repudiated by the people, who will demand the simple observance of the law; will result in children rejecting the hypocrisy of their parents; and cause each person to reproach the contradiction that they generate in themselves and in those around them.

We are at the end of a dark period in history and nothing will ever be the same as before. Little by little, the dawning of a new day will come. Cultures will begin to understand one another; the peoples will experience a growing yearning for progress for all, understanding that progress for the few ends up being progress for none. Yes, there will be peace, and out of necessity it will be understood that the outline of a universal human nation is taking shape.