“Anger. Jealousy. Remorse. Those are emotions that don’t move you forward, they trap you.”
If you close your eyes and try not that very hard at all, it is possible to hear the voice of Yoda speaking these words. Well, if you rearrange the order of the words in the full sentence, anyway. Just as Yoda warned that fear, anger and hate are the path to suffering, so does Ginsburg here conclude that dark emotions lead only to dark places. In truth, these are words of advice handed down to Ginsburg from her mother, whom she paints as a portrait of particularly influential in creating the woman that she eventually became.
“The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.”
Ginsburg is quoted here from a speech she gave in 2018 which, in turn, quotes from a 1944 speech by noted American jurist named, against all odds, Learned Hand (although technically his first name was Billings). Ginsburg turns to Hand to enlarge upon her own commitment to opening possibilities and expanding horizons of all factions of the population. This particular centerpiece of Hand’s philosophy speaks directly to Ginsburg’s personal experiences as well as the political abstractions to which she devoted her attention. Liberty is an idea filled with wonderful potential in the abstract, but liberty in its abstract goodness is constantly at odds with individuals who are insistent that their view of liberty is the right one and only one and whose minds are impossible to change. Hand will go on to address the issue of applying liberty equally without bias and it has been exactly these biases which Ginsburg herself rebelled against in order to make it to the Supreme Court and which she railed against on behalf of others once she made it there.
“Something else I would say, whatever you do, whatever line of work you choose, always do something outside yourself. You’re a member of a community, you are blessed with having certain talents. You should use your education and your talent to help make things a little better for people who are not as fortunate as you are.”
This is a centerpiece of Ginsburg’s view of how the potential of America has been constantly corrupted by the reality. Selfishness is expressed in ways that are not often realized as selfishness. The lack of a willingness to act selflessly for the benefit of others is just as much as an act of selfishness as doing something wrong to help yourself. Perhaps a more appropriate term for what she is getting at here is not so much selfishness as self-centeredness. It does not take a leap of imagination to figure out the type of person that Ginsburg is directing this commentary toward: those of privilege who have reaped the benefits of all that society has given them and yet continue to take from others while presenting themselves as the sun around which the planets orbit.
