The Nobel ‘Peace’ Prize. Why do we need it?

The Nobel Peace Prize.
Why do we need it?
Aren’t we homo sapiens(wise beings)?
Are we less than what we’re supposed to be?
Aren’t we a singular family beneath the sky!

Shedding some light on Nobel’s life

One of eight children, Alfred Nobel was a solitary man as an adult. He chose a simple life, secluded from society. Nobel never married and had few female friendships. His constant travel kept him distant from relatives. He is said to have described himself as a hermit and once wrote: “I am a misanthrope and yet utterly benevolent, have more than one screw loose yet am a super-idealist who digests philosophy more efficiently than food.” One day, he fell gravely ill and the only person who came to visit him was an employee—one of several events that led him to reflect on his life, on his legacy, and how he would be remembered.

Waging the Peace Prize

When Alfred died in 1896, Nobel left a fund in his will for the creation of the eponymous ‘Nobel Peace Prize‘ amongst others, first awarded in 1901. It included a grant for the person who accomplished “the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the promotion of peace congresses.”

These wordings were particularly poignant coming from a man who had perfected destruction. In the 1860s, the chemist experimented with controlled explosions for industrial purposes, fiddling with nitroglycerin and black powder (an early form of gunpowder), as he looked for a stable combination.

According to the 19th-century Austrian peace activist, novelist, and countess Bertha von Suttner, when she first met Nobel in 1876, the chemist told her he hoped to invent a material so explosive it would end war itself. In 1891, Nobel justified his 90 explosive and armaments factories to the peace activist, saying, “[T]he day that two army corps can mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilized nations will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops.”

Although, this could easily be any misanthrope’s dream,
but, back then, it turned out to be a gross miscalculation. Wars continued, and nations didn’t recoil. And later Nobel prize winners would relate to the scientist’s seeming misgivings about his life’s work.

“Nobel invented an explosive more powerful than any then known—an exceedingly effective means of destruction. To atone for this ‘accomplishment’ and to relieve his conscience, he instituted his award for the promotion of peace,” said 1921 physics Nobel prize winner Albert Einstein, speaking in 1945 after atom bombs that his work contributed to were dropped on Japan.

Double-faced Masters of War

The peace prize has also been the most controversial of all the Nobels. The controversy surrounding the peace prize stems in part from the ambiguity of the concept of peace. For example, the 1953 laureate was George C. Marshall, president of the Red Cross and founder of the Marshall Plan, for rebuilding Europe after World War II. However, Marshall had also been commander of U.S. military forces during the war and U.S. secretary of defense, a tacit admission that the use of force can be an important instrument of peace.

Masters of War as Bob Dylan once said.
Children we are, as they say, who do not understand.

‘The Alternative’ Solution

By contrast, the 1979 laureate, Mother Teresa, now known in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was not directly involved in brokering peace agreements between nations, instead having founded the Missionaries of Charity, a religious congregation that now boasts 5,800 members in over 100 countries. Upon receiving the prize, she was asked, “What can I do to promote world peace?” to which she responded, “Go home and love your family.”

And that’s just how easy the solution to all global ache is!

Conclusion

Yet, all of this leads me to a very notable point, which is that, the world, both before Nobel’s time and after, has been so sick in the mind and unconsciously driven, that it just never wants to introspect, but is ready to reduce the world to ashes and consume everything in the black-hole of its unending insecurities!


Well,
this even makes the question, “Why does the Nobel Peace Prize exist?” ignoble, for it isn’t even about this question anymore, it just never was.


The human world is pathetic, doomed to implode in the aftermath of its fictitious ideologies someday, which are no less than the atomic bomb itself!