Replacing violence and hostility

"This diagram of cosmic Continuance through Change might have meant something different – even as it kept its structure of boundaries reciprocally crossed and recrossed. It could have been about gifts rather than thefts. ... Both vengeance and gift exchange, as we saw earlier, are social strategies-with a strong tendency to last. ... Ceremonial gifting-and-returning begins with risk, in the hope that it will solidify into enduring trust. Time is taken after each gifting occasion. During that time the two sides are friends, until the next ceremony during which they will express and prove their friendly intentions again. Gift exchange replaces violence and hostility; it fits perfectly into the 'space' left by a vengeance mechanism because – structurally speaking – it is similar: it is a give and take between specific parties." (The Gift of Thanks, Margaret Visser, 2008; pages 350-351).