In the villages no one stands to greet a guest for that would indicate something was amiss. The words that are spoken and agreed upon in peace and fellowship under the tree of life will become incarnate. I have come to see that the root of much Northern violence, a failure to find peace, lies in its mistaken priority of seeking truth before peace. Truth is infinite, so it is beyond finite man to discover it absolutely. What happens to those who pursue it alone is that there ensues a struggle to impose their limited view of truth.
Power then becomes the means of deciding what is true.
In other words, violence is put to the defense of its antithesis and might becomes right. To avoid the ethos of violence, the elders do not ask, first of all, if any statement or position made public in the shade tree parliament is true. They first ask if it is complete, or whole. This then requires everyone to participate in making a certain view complete in a climate of peace. Peace is wholeness in most primitive cultures, and that is certainly still true in the remote African village.