The Best Essays Of 2005 - Page 4

9. James McManus' Please Stand By While the Age of Miracles Is Briefly Suspended"(Esquire): Blending the personal with the public, the social with the ethical, James chronicles the debates around stem cell research and cloning, while expressing his personal griefs.

Whatever epoch we live in, we all have to face getting caught at the worst possible point on the curve of medical progress: My cowgirl's campfire is visible on the horizon, yet I am accorded the honor of being the very last hombre to succumb to Syndrome X. "Remember when people had heart attacks?" some lucky duck in 2050 may guffaw, clutching her chest in mock agony. "I mean, can you imagine?" This fortunate woman would be exactly as human as any victim of plague or polio, and a lot more human, in my view, than the cretin with the club. However long it may seem to us now, her life span will still seem to her the way Nabokov and Beckett imagined it in the middle of the twentieth century: as a brief crack of light between two infinities of darkness.

10. Paschal Nee's “The changing role of business in society: why the emperor has no clothes.”(Ashridge, PDF no longer online): The runner-up in the 2005 Ashridge Best European MBA Essay Award, this essay examines the contradictions between businesses' claims to social responsibility and the reality of their behavior in society. Rather than a litany of failures, the author delves into the causes of social irresponsibility and possible futures.

The shareholder view of the corporation (i.e. that the corporation exists solely to generate a return for its shareholders) could be driving socially irresponsible actions by that corporation’s employees. While a stakeholder view of the corporation, where managers take the interests of multiple stakeholders into account, has become popular, the dominant legal framework is still that management have a fiduciary duty to generate shareholder return. Within this context, employees will increasingly be pressured to disregard whatever personal values they might hold in favour of actions that are generate shareholder return regardless of the social esponsibility of those actions."

These selections barely touch the surface of the finest writing this year. One has refrained from choosing any of the excellent pieces from blogcritics, but you are welcome to name your favorites. Reading is a community-driven habit, and we must fight against the 'culture of the image'.

Article Author: Aaman Lamba

Aaman Lamba is a Blogcritics editor, as well as the Publisher of Desicritics.org, a Blogcritics network site covering media, politics, culture, sports and more with a global South Asian focus

Visit Aaman Lamba's author page — Aaman Lamba's Blog