RIP RBG

The notorious RBG is with us no more. May she be with the angels.

I find the news depressing. For this reason. This was a brilliant women; a woman of herculean determination, drive, and physical courage. She dedicated her life to a cause, the cause of left-wing judicial activism. She died still thinking of that cause, and not of her own imminent destination. Her dying wish, I hear, was that the vacancy not be filled by Donald Trump.

And it all looks to me like a useless, hollow life. Because the cause to which she committed it was wrong, and fairly obviously wrong. In fact, the sum total of her efforts made things worse.

And isn’t this true of most of us? Even the most brilliant of us? What is the point of all the talents we have, and all the efforts we make, if we begin from faulty premises? Isn’t it essential that we first make sure we have that right? Yet few of us seem to seriously think about those premises.

And nothing in our society, and our educational system, encourages any more any such introspection, at any level and at any point. Rather, they are discouraged. We are all in some all-fired rush to fill up time and go nowhere.

No doubt Ginsberg thought she had the right direction, and the right answers. It seems to me obvious that she did not, and I think it should have been obvious to her too that she should have doubted. For she could see that others as intelligent and committed were working as hard as she was on the other side, in case after case. And really, in order to get where she was, she had to refuse herself the time necessary to think such fundamental things through. Too busy throughout getting into that law school, getting that next credential, arguing that next case. Maybe also getting that nice house in that prestigious neighbourhood.

All for nothing, and less than nothing.

In case you, gentle reader, despair, and suppose there are no fundamental answers to be found, indeed there are, and they are closer than your own outgoing breath.

Seek the True.

Seek the Good.

Seek the Beautiful.