the peace prize

[baleanoptera]

Hey! The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama!

Congrats to all the Americans on my flist.

Comments

[meko00.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I hadn't access to any news media this afternoon as I was cooped up in the Humanities lab, so when someone told me I thought it was a joke. I still do. Really. It must be.

But I can kind of sympathise with the idea that a prize should be some sort of symbolical support and a guidance for future work, but really, saying that you want to change things isn't enough. It's like the well-known Cylon plan. Cynical, moi?

[baleanoptera.livejournal.com]

*g* Actually my first response upon hearing the news was: "You're kidding?" And while I've come to accept that they were definitely not kidding, I cannot shake the feeling that perhaps it was a bit premature. I mean, why not wait until next year, and then give him the prize?

Cynical, moi?

Hee. Perhaps, but considering how political the Peace Prize has become I think a bit of scepticism is a good thing. To be more specific, I think it is a great thing to have a prize that rewards people working for a better world, but I think that for such a prize to be really valuable it must strive to be as apolitical as possible. Selecting someone like Obama (regardless of how great a person he might be) will be divisive simply because he is a political figure, and a rather prominent at that. Having a peace prize that actually increases the heat in a debate just seems to bring too much irony to the playing field.

That said, I do rather like the idea of having a prize that works as guidance and a ideological parameter - I'm just weary of combining that guidance and ideology with a specific political stance.