październik 2009 - What shall we reward?

What shall we reward?

A couple of days ago they announced the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace. Within minutes of the news, message boards all over the internet were flooded with posts asking 'What on earth?'

The most common sentiment appears to be that Barack Obama has not done very much yet, so it's a bit early to give him such a special award. After all, previous winners have included people who spent all their lives trying to bring peace to the world. There are also people who have their own reasons to dislike the US President. Among them are a large number of Poles who think he did the wrong thing by cancelling the missile defence shield.

On the other hand, Obama is one of only a handful of people who can do, rather than just say, something about nuclear disarmament. The USA and the USSR started the nuclear arms race, and now nine countries have atomic weapons (of which two are not democracies and one won't even admit it has them). If the bomb disappears at all, this year's Nobel winner may be the man who makes it happen.

Mind you, what is so special about the Nobel Peace Prize anyway? What did Mother Teresa ever do to bring peace anywhere in the world? Henry Kissinger has a lot of blood on his hands, and the war which he is supposed to have stopped ended quite some time after he was given the award for stopping it. F.W. DeKlerk ran the brutal apartheid regime in South Africa and Nelson Mandela's party put burning tyres round the heads of their opponents. Both got the award in the same year after they had stopped.

This is the modern way of rewarding people. Children in some British schools are given iPods and other goodies for not disrupting classrooms and for generally behaving themselves. In many countries where education is a luxury, the idea that you bribe people not to throw their futures away and not to ruin other people's schooling is truly bizarre.

Did your school have a 'Special Prize' on Sports Day for the person who came last, or a 'Tried The Hardest' medal for the worst person in some other competitive activity? There are versions of poker called 'Hi-Lo' where the best and worst hands each get half of the money on the table. Is this what today's prizes are based on? If so, here's a little inside knowledge from a novice poker player: it's just as hard to get the lowest hand as it is to get the highest. Ever wondered why there's no prize for 'Didn't Do Anything All That Remarkable'?

Vocabulary:
sentiment (in this context)    odczucie
shield                ochrona
disarmament            rozbrojenie
to admit            przyznać
brutal                okrutny
goodies            prezenciki
to disrupt            zakłócić
a luxury            luksus
remarkable            niezwykły

'The bomb'
When we say 'the bomb', we normally mean atomic bombs (also called nuclear bombs). You might have noticed a few other examples like this:
'The pill' means the contraceptive pill.
'The war' usually means World War Two.
'The blitz' also has something to do with the Second World War. It's the time London was bombed heavily by the Luftwaffe.
'The net' means… Hang on, I can't remember that one. Now let me think…

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