Wow, two semi-political posts in a row. For a non-partisan blog that is a lot.
But once again, it would be impossible to ignore this elephant in the room.
Optimistic at best presumptuous at worse, President Obama’s recent Nobel Peace Prize award really pushes the envelope of credibilty.
I am pretty much in 100% agreement with two of my favorite bloggers on this one so I will link to their posts.
DovBear nails it (as nearly always) and is most worried that the Nobel Peace Prize has been transformed into a political stunt.
Conversations in Klal writes about the real (wrong) lesson here, that we can be rewarded for promises with no results.
My thoughts are along the same lines as both.
First, is this prize even worth anything anymore?
Isn’t a mandatory annual award cheapened by the fact that it must be awarded yearly with no regard for it being deserved? Doesn’t sound very meaningful to me.
My proposal is that when someone earns the award, give it to them. But don’t force-feed the public a manufactered awardee purely for the sake of awarding the prize. If no-one wins, no-one gets the prize.
Second, I am really concerned with the lesson being taught. Prizes must be earned. I wrote about this a while back when I wrote about a great cartoon in the New Yorker. It is symptomatic of our generation that we reward prematurely and place people on pedestals before they have climbed atop the pedestal on their own.
We should allow things to progress organically and give projects time to breath and develop.
Patience is a virtue. It is time to put patience back in our society.
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