In Passo del Tonale on the Italian Alps, it is almost fifteen years that while we, a group of friends from all over the world, are going on holydays together for ten days, we spend four days on “Tonalestate”, a summer symposium that takes its name from the place and the period of our reunion.

We are from different cultures and different ages so, what is our bond? It’s what we call “Compagnia”: the experience of a deep and lasting friendship thanks to that we can involve ourselves without being neither slaves nor masters in the cultural and social reality of our different countries where we work, study and live.

Like everyone we want peace, freedom and dignity, where there is no place for poverty, unfairness and war; we were able to confirm that only together, living in freedom and dignity, we can recognise, participate, value and promote forms of coexistence that are the aims of every single man. These aims have so many different ways of expression, but they remind of a single need: happiness and a complete realization of is own person.

Every year Tonalestate has a new topic. During the meeting, the topic is discussed on various levels that bring back to substance of personal experience and to personal participation with told words and proposed requests. So, this is not an academic, intellectual, ideological or advertising: it’s about a work which is aimed to the person (single one and together); work that opens to questions instead of imposing answers, that opens paths instead of closing them and wishes to make hope a possible virtue.

Tonalestate 2015 title is: “fiat voluntas mea” that means “thy will be done” . This sentence summarizes, with the strength of the Latin language, one of the features of the man of all time, since man is ready for anything in order to the “fiat voluntas mea” could become real.

The subtitle “The almightiness delirium” is the topic of this year and, to be honest, is very complex. Therefore, we try to advance in it starting from an evidence: man loves surplus, he feeds it, embrace it and in the end dives himself in it. He is attracted by a force, which can not resist and to which, however, is willing to give. Almost to a desired spell, he finds himself, therefore, in a whirlwind that fascinates him forcefully and urges him to defy its own history and the entire world just to walk into a time and space where happiness coincides with the power and possession.

Man surrenders, in this way, to the charm of the “original sin”, that is the charm of self-affirmation: this leads him, little by little, what we call almightiness delirium, that is, to convince itself of having a fatal force that makes it worthy of every privilege and that allows any type of action, that could be illegitimate, unfair or criminal. This is a evil that man feeds in the secret of his mind and heart, starting from simple and daily things to excruciating ones: the conquest of a man or a woman that attract him, a career that offers him fame and money, an area which is subject only to his will, to the conquest of the goods, the territories, the work of others, of life of entire peoples, of men, women and children, as well as animals and plants, of stars and planets, which will suffer the horrific consequences of this delirious acting. From such way, the man always comes out empty-handed, even when he believes that he had conquered the entire universe. He gets out from this petrified and tired, victim and executioner of his yearned happiness. If he succeeds, he may even regret it and seek refuge in the good things in bad taste, however, within him, the indomitable anxiety often has put roots too deep: night and day became a whisper where the almightiness delirium resumes foot, magnifies and then explodes, then sweeps and, in the end, bossy and invincible, drags in a vortex that will be imperative, once again, or excel or perish. From there the war, the eternal, terrible, gruesome child that Henry Rousseau painted in 1894 and which is the image of the poster of this year. While the pink clouds, the gentle and blue sky, the hills full of promise and the girl white dress remind us that it would still be nice to live in harmony and peace, here they are, taking away your breath, hurting us and intimidating the dead branches, the blackened falling leaves, the unrecognizable mad horse, the bodies, the crows, the sword, the strange toy that the tyrannical child brings like a flag and then the grin on his distorted face.

They are objects of intense immobility and we will identify ourselves with those tiny stones on which men and women, whose greed and ferocity have taken away their life, rest their painful, black hair.

War is cruel, causes death, stasis and winter, it is ruthless as the unhealthy and unstable Rousseau’s girl, that has teeth too white and too compact, a sign of how horrible is her apparent running and her tragic rejoice. The Rousseau’s framework invites us to cringe us, to stop for a moment, to become silence, to take a healthy distance from almightiness the delirium that broods in us. Rousseau’s framework tells us that our struggle should never be like that turbid little girl lonely ride who can not smile.

Unfortunately we have to recognize that, although they horrified us, are always them- the war, the ferocity and cruelty – the weapons with which we arm ourselves, hiding them behind many ideologies and many thoughts, so many fallacies and trifles , with which we justify the abuse of power, racism, inequality, the unequal distribution of goods, the excesses and the prison laws, our meanness, our impose ourselves and our evil. From there begin massacres, genocides, the absurdities and so much misery that we encounter in history and in our lives. And we must never forget that while naked kings win awards, the white killer wale sails free, undisturbed and solemn, in the South Seas.

Why man can only think about winning to not being won and possess to not be possessed? And why man thinks his past, his present and his future so often only with vanity? And why man reacts to Chandrà – this restless guest never sated with vulgar contempt – with highly damaging and painful challenges to a duel? Why not to choose other ways to investigate, search, hosting and dialogue with the infinite variety of the unknown that is present in the gentle progress of day and night?

Will there be a remedy to the almightiness delirium that generates, in and out of us, so much evil? We find solace in Percy Bysshe Shelley with his Prometheus Unbound, a drama that warns us from being like Jupiter, that is “all-powerful but no friends”. The story of Prometheus is told in a thousand ways in the literature of all times and Shelley chose an interpretation very appropriate to our topic: Prometheus is willing to persevere, to dialogue, to fight well, just to defeat the tyranny Jupiter (symbol of the almightiness delirium typical of political power), which flatters him in vain, because the Prometheus of Shelley is a man capable of resistance, is a brave man, with a free imagination, with a loving mind and heart. Even our imagination, our heart, our mind, if we allowed them to get out from the insane labyrinth where they often are locked up, they may be brave and free like the Prometheus of Shelley, and no more let themselves, therefore, drag more so easily by waves that take them now in the abyss of the arrogant almightiness arm, now in the womb of quiescent cowardice, now grumbling in a pot puffing releasing only smoke. But we must be very careful: if the Prometheus of Shelley is this hero hundred per cent positive, we must always be aware that man, for himself alone, tend to walk down, and it is easily ready to become a Prometheus unleashed, guilty of hubris, therefore enemy to himself and to his around. Unfortunately, we see it every day this insanely Prometheus is unleashed, ready to kill even those who love and those who love him, and we should not imitate.