Nobel Peace Prize

[sukumvit boy]

I was rather hoping that it might go to Edward Snowden , just as a raspberry and middle finger to the US NSA and as a pat on the back to whistle blowers. However , I think that the Nobel Committee made the better choice.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29564935

Certainly a good argument can be made that Snowden should be regarded as a criminal , not a hero.
Any thoughts?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/10/-sp-edward-snowden-wins-guardian-readers-nobel-peace-prize-poll-ahead-of-malala-yousafzai

[Stavros]

If the Nobel Prize did not exist, no intelligent person would want to invent it. I cannot think of a more pointless exercise in instant celebrity, as most of the recipients of the award in all categories have usually attained a high reputation in their field before being granted a prize whose only value is measured in pounds, dollars or krone. Did Albert Einstein need a Nobel Prize to confirm he was a successful and important man? We already knew that Gunter Grass and Samuel Beckett were two of the finest writers of the 20th century, they didn't need a Nobel Prize to confirm it. Yes it was important for medicine to describe the Human Immunodeficiency Virus that was (and continues to) waste thousands of people a year, but we didn't need the odious back-stabbing competition to get the prize that obsessed some of those working on the disease at the time, as their only necessary role was to understand and combat the disease, not glorify their egos in Stockholm. Barack Obama, had he the modesty and good counsel, should have refused to accept the award.
We also knew what the destructive consequences of US foreign policy in Vietnam was, not just for the population of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia but also for the families of the US service personnel who went through it, yet the justification for giving the award to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho (who refused to accept it), was also the case with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat and is in the remit of the Prize which is awarded to those who have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses (from the Wikipedia page on the prize).
On this basis it is hard to see how either of the two latest recipients meet the criteria laid down for the award, but Nobel prizes are shaped more by contemporary politics than the merit of the person or the cause. Boris Pasternak was one of the finest Russian writers of the 20th century, but his Nobel prize was awarded to spite the government of the USSR, which was also the case with the award for Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a courageous man at the time, but a significantly inferior writer to Pasternak.

Imagine there is a Nobel Prize for Music -who on earth would win in? Dolly Parton? Daniel Barenboim? It might be Bob Dylan's only chance of a medal.

As the Telegraph showed the other day in an analysis of the Prize -
Just five per cent of almost 900 Nobel Prizes distributed to the most brilliant minds in peace, literature, science and economics over the past century have been awarded to women. Of 867 prestigious awards distributed since 1901, just 46 have been awarded to women, starting with Marie Curie who won the prize for physics alongside her husband Pierre in 1903 and again for chemistry in 1911.

Since then, 15 women have also been awarded the Nobel prize for scientific pursuits - compared to more than 500 men. A dozen have received the award for literature, 14 for peace and one for economics.

Geographical analysis by the Telegraph has also revealed that western countries have received a disproportionately high number of awards throughout the Nobel's history.

full article is here
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/11148871/Nobel-Prize-winners-in-peace-literature-physics-chemistry-economics-mapped-gender.html

Malala Yousafzai is a celebrity for all the wrong reasons, and lives in exile from her country because the extremists there believe education for girls is part of some conspiracy to corrupt the population. In fact we never needed an attempt to murder her to bring the issue of education for all into the public domain. Most informed people are aware of the fragile nature of education in large parts of the world, even if they don't spend a lot of time reading about it to know the details, and Malala is certainly a brilliant young woman and one cannot be churlish about her celebrity if in fact it does expose the desperate state of (non-)education -for girls and boys- across the world. But what also is important is what it is that is being taught, and the frightening fact that a lot of education is shaped by people with a political-religious agenda who import into the curriculum extreme ideas, not least in the city in which she lives, Birmingham, or in the schools in Africa which are being run by American evangelists who believe modern science is mostly bullshit.
There are better ways of dealing with these issues than handing out prizes.

[Odelay]

Interesting points made, Stavros. But you have to admit the world loves awards. How else can we explain the continued popularity of beauty contests. And in some ways, our political elections have become not much more than beauty contests. Since 1960, the fellow or missy who sound the best and look the best in front of the cameras seem to do the best, with a few exceptions. From this angle, how appropriate was it that Obama won the beauty contest in 2008 and then was promptly awarded the Nobel for his win in 2009 - or something like that. I wasn't aware that he had done anything for peace that year.

No, the Nobel prize is here to stay. It ranks right up their in award status with the Oscars and the winner of the annual spring break Wet Tee Shirt contest in Fort Lauderdale.

[sukumvit boy]

Interesting points , Stavros . But as Odelay noted , "the world loves awards".

[Stavros]

I agree with Odelay and Sukumvit Boy, it is also part of the mania for lists that online newspapers use to fill space. The Daily Telegraph online has recently had a list of the most famous opening lines to novels (but no Proust, no Joyce, no Woolf), and now has embarked on the 100 best Premier League footballers, which won't mean much to most Americans -I guess it would be like the best 100 Baseballers (?)
How does anyone answer the question 'Are the Beatles better than the Rolling Stones'?
Yes these things are here to stay, but that doesn't mean I have to support it.

If there was a Nobel Prize for Sport, what would it be? Who would get it? Why?

[trish]

It's true that in most fields Nobel winners are already well established before they are awarded the prize. Prior to winning they already had tenure or job security in one form or another, and had reached the point in their careers where they had no trouble obtaining grant money for their research. Nevertheless, the prize money is nothing to be sneezed at.

What the prize does do is enhance the winners reputation outside the field, gives her or him a momentary voice in the larger world and increases by an iota or two their political clout. I think the romanticism surrounding the prize has some value in getting young people to consider the possibility of pursuing a life of the mind. What better plans had Nobel's heirs for his fortune?

[Stavros]

It's true that in most fields Nobel winners are already well established before they are awarded the prize. Prior to winning they already had tenure or job security in one form or another, and had reached the point in their careers where they had no trouble obtaining grant money for their research. Nevertheless, the prize money is nothing to be sneezed at.

What the prize does do is enhance the winners reputation outside the field, gives her or him a momentary voice in the larger world and increases by an iota or two their political clout. I think the romanticism surrounding the prize has some value in getting young people to consider the possibility of pursuing a life of the mind. What better plans had Nobel's heirs for his fortune?

What the prize does do is enhance the winners reputation outside the field, gives her or him a momentary voice in the larger world and increases by an iota or two their political clout
--This is the point of disagreement that I have -in the cases of Henry Kissinger, Le Duc Tho, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat -in what way were their reputations enhanced? (It didn't do Arafat much good as he spent his last years under siege from Sharon and Netanyahu).
Some people were insulted by the fact these men received an award -often for bringing an end to wars they had such a shocking role in perpetuating for years -is that supposed to be an inspiration? Guess what, after 30 years of killing people I have decided to make peace instead! Why then has Gerry Adams not received the prize? So I guess all Ayman al-Zawahri has to do now is say God Bless America, I was wrong. So give the man a prize!
Peace is the prize, and only peace.

--In the cases of the writers whose work is barely worth the paper it is printed on - I won't name them- being awarded the prize for literature was a distortion of their reputations not an enhancement. Moreover, by awarding prizes to people who don't deserve them you make the whole thing a farce. Jean-Paul Sartre, who spent so much of his life writing it was probably an illness, at least had the decency to say no.

I think the romanticism surrounding the prize has some value in getting young people to consider the possibility of pursuing a life of the mind
--You can do better than that, Trish, we all can. What do you say to someone who acts on your inspiration and fails? Sorry chum, you just ain't good enough for the prize?
Education is a value in itself, it doesn't need badges or baubels.

[trish]

in the cases of Henry Kissinger, Le Duc Tho, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat -in what way were their reputations enhanced? (It didn't do Arafat much good as he spent his last years under siege from Sharon and Netanyahu).
Some people were insulted by the fact these men received an award -often for bringing an end to wars they had such a shocking role in perpetuating for years -is that supposed to be an inspiration? Guess what, after 30 years of killing people I have decided to make peace instead! Why then has Gerry Adams not received the prize? So I guess all Ayman al-Zawahri has to do now is say God Bless America, I was wrong. So give the man a prize!
Peace is the prize, and only peace.Here I think we're largely in agreement. World leaders and politicians are already widely known. All of their actions have the world's attention...they don't need a prize.


In the cases of the writers whose work is barely worth the paper it is printed on - I won't name them- being awarded the prize for literature was a distortion of their reputations not an enhancement. Moreover, by awarding prizes to people who don't deserve them you make the whole thing a farce. Jean-Paul Sartre, who spent so much of his life writing it was probably an illness, at least had the decency to say no.This seems to me a bit mean spirited. Tastes in literature run far and wide. Praise that is a farce and distortion to one critic is obviously appropriate to another...otherwise those whom you deem unworthy wouldn't be prize winners.


--You can do better than that, Trish, we all can. What do you say to someone who acts on your inspiration and fails? Sorry chum, you just ain't good enough for the prize?
Education is a value in itself, it doesn't need badges or baubels. I certainly didn't go into the sciences thinking it's a way to get the coveted Nobel prize. Now that I'm established (somewhat) in academia I don't plan my research around capturing the Nobel. I don't ever expect to win it, but I also don't expect that at the end of my career I'll be saying, "Shit! What a chum I was. I should've become a Wall Street banker." When I was fourteen it was fun to think that the world cared about intellectual achievement. There were prizes of international notoriety awarded for scientific research...amazing! There was even a popular film or two set in Stockholm and the Nobel ceremonies! We agree that education is a value in itself, but we also know the effects of positive and negative reinforcement on young children. The prize romanticized intellectual ability when being a geek wasn't as cool as it is today. Again, to what better use would the heirs have put Nobel's fortune?

[buttslinger]

If you overthink anything all you win is a headache. Of course the Prizers consider themselves the Kingmakers, the discerning Gods, the real Heroes, but creating or discovering something REAL, it does means something. The flaws or the resistance in the game, ...whatever..., part of the charm.
I remember the kids in grade school who would salivate when they fought over who the best baseballer was. It was important then.

[irvin66]

I think it was nice that someone who really deserved it got it, that's all I have to say on the matter.....

[sukumvit boy]

Yeah ,what he said!

[broncofan]

I think the Nobel Peace Prize and frankly literature, are disconnected from the other awards where at least for the other awards there are some objective criteria by which a winner can be evaluated. That doesn't mean that the awards in the hard sciences or economics don't involve the injection of some opinion but at least you know the recipient has made a major contribution to the advancement of their discipline. I also think the Fields Medal for mathematics is useful.

I don't think the awards provide the real incentive to achievement but they do provide recognition and show respect to people who have invested a great deal of their time and in many cases achieved something extraordinary.

[broncofan]

I also want to address the gender gap argument. The fact there is a gender gap does not mean that women are not as good at science as men or that women are discriminated at when the prize is awarded. The gender gap could reflect discrimination upstream in primary and secondary education as well as the prevalence of outmoded gender stereotyping that lowers female participation rates in the hard sciences.

That some people will use the prevalence of male nobel prize winners to argue that men are better at science than women is not a reason not to award the prize. Those people are idiots. Discrimination should be rooted out at its source in the institutions in which it's found.

Would Albert Einstein have won a Nobel Prize if he had been severely malnourished during his entire childhood and never had a basic education? Of course not. But that does not mean that his discovery of the photoelectric effect (I think that's what it is) was not worthy of recognition. The Nobel Prize recognizes achievement in a particular field...it is not an award that quantifies native aptitude or adjusts for all of the systematic disadvantages people face based on a variety of factors. No doubt those disadvantages should be rooted out...but that doesn't mean somebody who has discovered something magnificent should be denied recognition because somebody else never had the opportunity.

I am also not saying that such an award will be free from bias at the award stage, but I have a feeling that any disadvantage someone faces on account of class membership will be encountered very far from the Nobel Committee.

[broncofan]

I think I veered away from the main topic. I forgot we're talking mostly about the Peace Prize. As Stavros pointed out it can be awarded to bad people who have amended their ways or decent seeming people to encourage them to do something they haven't yet done. The ironic thing about it is that in promoting peace someone might have to make unpopular choices; but then how do you get recognition if you do something that is unpopular? The fact that Henry Kissinger won the award means that we are light years away from developing intelligible standards for when such a prize should be bestowed on someone.

[Stavros]

But my point about the Peace Prize was that it does have a specific remit, namely, that it be awarded to a person/persons who has done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses -Kissinger was part of the US administration which agreed to the conferences in Paris which ended the Vietnam war; Sadat and Begin agreed to the sequences of formal talks that ended the state of war between Egypt and Israel, so that even though all of those people had waged war, they also sought to end it, and that was the basis on which they were awarded the prize. I am not sure anyone in recent history has disbanded their armed forces, so the remit is quite limited.

The irony is that Malala is both a more inspiring figure than any of the aforementioned men, has shown considerably more courage than them, but has done nothing to advance the cause of peace in Pakistan and Afghanistan where, I regret to say, she continues to face a potentially lethal opposition to everything she stands for.

[broncofan]

But my point about the Peace Prize was that it does have a specific remit, namely, that it be awarded to a person/persons who has done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses -Kissinger was part of the US administration which agreed to the conferences in Paris which ended the Vietnam war; Sadat and Begin agreed to the sequences of formal talks that ended the state of war between Egypt and Israel, so that even though all of those people had waged war, they also sought to end it, and that was the basis on which they were awarded the prize. I am not sure anyone in recent history has disbanded their armed forces, so the remit is quite limited.

The irony is that Malala is both a more inspiring figure than any of the aforementioned men, has shown considerably more courage than them, but has done nothing to advance the cause of peace in Pakistan and Afghanistan where, I regret to say, she continues to face a potentially lethal opposition to everything she stands for.
I agree with what you wrote here but I think that leads to the conclusion that the Nobel Peace Prize needs a new remit. If not abolished, maybe it should go to the person who makes the greatest personal sacrifice in aid of the lives of others. It could then be named the Nobel Altruism Prize (NAP) or the Nobel Prize for Courage.

It would then be less of an award for leaders and celebrities, but there to recognize personal acts of heroism that contribute to peace because the actor has set an example for humanity (not because the actor controls a standing army and has decided not to use it). Again, I don't think it's an incentive...because I don't think people really act on incentives like that...but I like the idea of people who make great sacrifices being recognized. Maybe there's a reason people like pageantry that is natural, a little frivolous, a little vain but mainly benign and somewhat hopeful.

When the Nobel is awarded on a sensible basis to someone whose efforts have been previously unnoticed it can be inspiring. I think Malala Yousafzai is a deserving winner although not given the specific remit but some other hypothetical one.

[Stavros]

Nothing you have posted justifies a prize. There are hundreds if not thousands of unknown people around the world doing amazing things for others -who are they? Where are they? We need to stop thinking in terms of prizes, medals or other baubles to validate the human experience.

[martin48]

Here are some infamous Peace Prize winners.

Cordell Hull, 1945 was US politician and given the prize for his role in establishing the United Nations.

He is a controversial winner because of an incident in 1939 when he was President Roosevelt's Secretary of State. The President was amenable to helping 950 Jewish refugees aboard a ship called the SS St Louis settle in America. But Hull and a group of Democrats from the American South voiced "strong opposition", threatening to withdraw support for Roosevelt if he let the ship dock. The president buckled, the SS St Louis was turned around and many of its passengers became victims of the Holocaust.

Henry Kissinger, 1973: When President Nixon's Secretary of State was handed the prize in 1973, American satirist Tom Lehrer observed that political satire was dead.

Kissinger accepted the award "with humility". As his critics point out that the US was still carpet-bombing Cambodia the year he picked up the prize. He's also been accused of war crimes.


Yasser Arafat, 1994: One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. Arafat, who led the Palestinian Liberation Organisation for three decades, was handed the award alongside Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin and his foreign minister Shimon Peres. A very nice trio!


Supporters compared Arafat to Nelson Mandela. Opponents called him an "unrepentant terrorist with a long legacy of promoting violence".

Wangari Maathai, 2004: The first African woman to win a Nobel Peace prize died in 2011 at the age of 71. She had likened Aids to a "biological weapon" and told participants in an Aids workshop that the disease was "a tool" to control Africans "designed by some evil-minded scientists."

Barack Obama, 2009: Depends on your political views!!!

[bobvela]

Barack Obama, 2009: Depends on your political views!!!

For some good fun, take a watch/listen to this take on the Obama peace prize from back in 09: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnLqoRtUAVg

Don't try to frame it as a political thing... any rational person will acknowledge what a joke Obama's awarding was as it wasn't for something he'd done or tried to do... but for what people hoped he would do.

[trish]

I'll try not to frame your post as a "political thing" and just see it as a joke.

[buttslinger]

In life some great victories don't come from parading out your strengths, they come from struggling to find your greatest weaknesses and correcting them. I think this was DEFINITELY the reasoning in Obama's case and I think it was even a little embarrassing for him that he got the prize for NOT being George W Bush. ha ha ha ha ha
The Nobel Peace prize has all kinds of categories for health, science, etc, my Grandfather sold Dynamite at DuPont, he made a lot of cash but died young.
Since the Nobel prize doesn't come from taxes or anything like that, hey, they can give their award to anybody they want. Those are the rules.

I'm waiting for the World Class Asshole category to open up, I'm thinkin' I'm a shoe in. I have a couple brass dog sculptures on my mantle from my Grandad's 1930s dynamite dough, a Nobel prize would look good beside them.

[martin48]

The Nobel Foundation is constrained by Alfred Nobel's will - they can not change the classes of award - so no chance for you to get one for The World's Greatest Living Arsehole. Pity!

Perhaps your grandfather should have read a premature copy of his obituary as Nobel did.




In life some great victories don't come from parading out your strengths, they come from struggling to find your greatest weaknesses and correcting them. I think this was DEFINITELY the reasoning in Obama's case and I think it was even a little embarrassing for him that he got the prize for NOT being George W Bush. ha ha ha ha ha
The Nobel Peace prize has all kinds of categories for health, science, etc, my Grandfather sold Dynamite at DuPont, he made a lot of cash but died young.
Since the Nobel prize doesn't come from taxes or anything like that, hey, they can give their award to anybody they want. Those are the rules.

I'm waiting for the World Class Asshole category to open up, I'm thinkin' I'm a shoe in. I have a couple brass dog sculptures on my mantle from my Grandad's 1930s dynamite dough, a Nobel prize would look good beside them.

[fred41]

The Nobel Foundation is constrained by Alfred Nobel's will - they can not change the classes of award - so no chance for you to get one for The World's Greatest Living Arsehole. Pity!

Perhaps your grandfather should have read a premature copy of his obituary as Nobel did.

That is unless a bank (or perhaps a rich asshole) is willing to also donate to the cause ...as was done with the prize for economic science...with some clever wording so that the category can somehow be voted upon using the same criteria as the other prizes.

...doesn't seem completely out of the realm of possibility.

[Stavros]

An example of an outstanding person who did something for humanity came in this last week when the Czech government gave Sir Nicholas Winton a prize of some sort. Winton organised the Czech Kindertransport which brought 669 children to the UK where they were fostered with willing families (not all of them Jewish), and included the (much under-rated) film director Karel Reisz. The prize doesn't matter, the man's achievement is deeply humbling, not least because after the War he didn't have anything to say about it and it was only in 1988 that his wife discovered a scrapbook with details of the Kindertransport. He is still alive at 105, another achievement! Maybe they should have a prize for inspiration.

Nicholas Winton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Winton)