Brad Barrish

The prevailing anxiety is at once a recognition of real problems and a symptom of the aging of the West, a reflection of its psychic fatigue. Our pathos is that of the end of time. And because no one ever thinks alone, because the spirit of an age is always a collective worker, it is tempting to give oneself up to this gloomy tide. Or, on the contrary, we could wake up from this nightmare and rid ourselves of it.

If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that – because you consumed it – allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business. The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you.

Plenty of companies provide useless, throwaway goods. Others corporate identities are so tainted that you can’t feel good tying your name and dollars to them. But an increasing group of companies is striving—intentionally or not—to focus on improving lives. It’s these companies that rose to the top of Havas Media’s second annual Meaningful Brands Index, which was released today and features Google in first place, followed by Samsung, Microsoft, Nestle, and Sony. And it’s working: And index of Havas’s Meaningful Brands would have outperformed the stock market by 120% last year.