Human history can be seen as a catalog of cold-hearted murders, mindless blood-feuds, appalling massacres, and devastating wars. Creatively and intellectually there is no other species that has ever come close to equaling humanity’s achievements, but nor is any other species as suicidally prone to internecine conflict. We are the only species on the planet whose ingrained habit of conflict and perpetual warfare constitutes the chief threat to our own survival. But, with developments in forensic science and modern psychology, and with raised education levels throughout the world, might it soon be possible to reign in humanity’s homicidal habits? Falling violent crime statistics in every part of the world seem to indicate that something along those lines might indeed be happening.
Colin Wilson is one of the most prolific writers on criminology and the human condition. His first book, The Outsider (1956), was an instant best seller and still influences the study of sociology today. In An End to Murder, the Wilsons assess whether human beings are in reality as cruel and violent as is generally believed. The book explores the possibility that humankind is on the verge of a fundamental change: that we are about to become truly civilized. The historical scope ranges widely, from fifteenth-century Baron Gilles de Rais, “Bluebeard”, the first known and possibly most prolific serial killer in history, to Victorian domestic murder and the invention of psychiatry and Sherlock Holmes and the invention of forensic science; from the fifteenth-century Taiping Rebellion in China, in which up to 36 million died, to the First and Second World Wars and more recent genocides and instances of “ethnic cleansing”, and contemporary terrorism.
As well as offering an overview of violence throughout our history—from the first hominids to the twenty-first century, touching on key moments of change and also indicating where things have not changed since the Stone Age—the authors explore the latest psychological, forensic, and social attempts to understand and curb modern human violence.
