You can't define your morality by criminal law. Ok? The 'criminal threshold' (my term, as far as I know) delineates the minimum standard of behaviour we will tolerate as a civilization. Crimes - such as fraud, arson, assault - are unacceptable behaviours, and our social contract is such that we will not turn a blind eye to their committal or let individuals decide for themselves when they may be justified. They are simply not done, or at least, we try to make sure they are not done. One is not a 'good person' because one does not commit crimes or, to broaden the scope, violate the law of the land. It's not like everything below the criminal threshold is heinous and everything above is saintly. You can't think that way. A moral person strives to bring about the most good and live in adherence with correct principals. There are many acts that, while legal, are all the same immoral. Test yourself. Test your morality. Do you live according to princip
This post was written before the protests and killing in Charlottesville (and subsequent fallout). I thought it important for the reader to know that this is not a reaction. If I'm going to write a blog called “On Morality”, I think it's only fair for the readers that I lay out what I mean by “morality”. So here it is: morality is the understanding of what is right and what is wrong, and the behaviours mandated by that understanding. This isn't a definition that I pulled from a dictionary, or one employed by any authority on the subject. This is my definition, formed out of my cognitive ruminations, subject to change, open to interpretation. (One of my firmly-held beliefs, reflected in the URL of this blog, is there is a lot of knowledge and understanding to be gained by sitting and pondering.) Allow me to shift gears abruptly. What I really sat down to write about was the use of the word “hate”. Or rather, the overuse , as I see it, of that word.