Francoise Hall – The History of my Writings

My research on why people kill each other started as a seven-year old girl, in a cellar, in Belgium, waiting for the next bomb to fall on her. This was World War II, and the bombs were alternatively German and Allied. The research was put on hold while, after the War, I emigrated with my family to Canada. In the United States, I became a physician, and practiced consecutively two specialties – public health in Puerto Rico, Peru and Chile, and child psychiatry in the United States (North Carolina and North Dakota) and New Zealand. Once I retired, the research continued full time, and these writings are the result. Unfortunately, the question, “Why do people kill each other?” must now be modernized to “Why do people kill life on the planet, both human and environmental?” There is, of course, not one answer, but these writings offer hints and directions as to where the answers might be found.

In a sad way, these writings also carry my apologies to future generations whose experience of living will be diminished because of our present massively destructive and irreversible actions. There is no forgiving for not considering our relationship to the planet as one of usufruct – the opportunity to use, enjoy and care for what is not our own, with the accompanying duty to leave it in even better than its original conditions.