Doesn’t it seem odd, at least it does to me, that in a world where we have unlimited access to information, knowledge and inspirational stories of people who have changed the world, that we choose much of the time to focus our attention on utter rubbish.
That is not to say that benign, non-life changing entertainment is rubbish, I watch the Brits – I’m not sure there is any credible judging pattern related to the Brits and I’m sure that there is huge wheeling and dealing behind the scenes for the correct artist to win the right prizes. Little Mix?? But that said, it’s an entertaining show.
This degenerates downwards though into things like the Soap Awards, The Voice, Britain’s Got Talent or The X Factor which we seem to give such enormous amounts of our collective societal time to while ignoring some extraordinary things are done in the world around which don’t relate to popular culture. So here’s the point… do you know who went out of The Voice on Saturday night? I guess many people will discuss this on their Mondays at work versus do you know how many British people have won a Nobel Prize?
The Nobel Prize has always fascinated me in all categories and I decided to look into that subject just to see how many incredible British people had been awarded what can be considered as one of the highest honours that the world society has to bestow.
It turns our 124. Some of them you will be aware of but I guess not many. Noteworthy prize winners I guess would be Alexander Fleming for Penicillin (that seems reasonable) Hans Adolf Krebs born in Germany but residing in the UK, all dental and medical students will know what that’s for and the same year in 1953 Winston Churchill won a Nobel prize for literature.
The scientists among you will be aware of Bernard Katz in 1970 and William Golding in 1983, I am trying to get my daughters to read Lord of the flies now.
David Trimble was only the second ever Briton to win the Nobel Peace Prize, that’s quite a telling statistic I guess and last year Oliver Hart, a Scot now working at Princeton, won the Nobel Prize for Economics.
It’s fine to worship sporting icons and God knows I’ve done my share of that, the stories behind some of these individuals, the narratives that we’re fed are extraordinary and unbelievable but often tarnished when the truth comes out – think Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong.
Greatness exists in many spheres of life and some of the Nobel prize stories are a great place to start. My favourite and most inspirational of all time is that of Muhammad Yunus. While David Beckham is credited with changing many people’s views of masculinity and aesthetics in males, Mahammed Yunus was off changing the world.
Imagine if we were all able to put half an hour aside a couple of times a week to read inspirational stories from places other than Coronation Street. I suspect our conversation on a Monday when we return to work might be just a little bit better.
Blog Post Number: 1237
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