What new goal does John set for the Hill People after he returns home?

When John returns from the Place of the Gods, he tells his father all about his journey and is anxious to tell the other Hill people. His father, however, convinces him that there is a reason why they were kept ignorant of the city and the Dead Places all those years.  He says that too much knowledge could be destructive. John thinks that “perhaps in the old days, they ate knowledge too fast.”  In order to avoid what happened in the past, John introduces the knowledge he has learned slowly.  He says, “It is not for the metal alone we go to the Dead Places now—there are the books and the writings.”  John realizes that a society must advance slowly and deliberately in order to survive, and his goal is that his people discover the truth on their own through the books and artifacts they collect in the Dead Places.