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.