Essays

The SMH ran part 2 of an NY Times opinion piece tagging the best essays of 2010.

Part 1 explained the awards.

It was in the second part that I found the interesting reference to Lawrence Rosen's interesting article on corruption.

It advances the thesis that one of the difficulties we in the West have with the way other societies are organised rests on different definitions of the word "corruption". We take it to mean acting outside the law or moral bounds.

From Rosen's investigation he suggests the real world definition is;

Corruption is the failure to share any largess you have received with those with whom you have formed ties of dependence.

Think about that a bit. It fits.

The purpose of this post though is to bemoan the poor state of the essay in Australia. Quadrant under Windshuttle has become unreadable, most of the Left stuff makes too many assumptions about the leftist bias of the reader. (I regard myself as left but don't identify with most of the essayist crowd).

Suggestions welcome for the real "Sydney" awards for best Australian essays of 2010.

Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est