Many people already are aware of the historic irony in the idea that the Nobel Prize system was established by the inventor of dynamite, especially the Nobel Peace Prize.  Not many of those savvy folk know the entire story, however. 

Nobel was moved to establish the Nobel Prize system when an obituary was wrongly published reporting his death (obviously prematurely).  The obituary went to great lengths to villify and denounce Nobel for having been the inventor of one of the single most potent and deadly of creations--TNT--and all the death and suffering it (and he by association) had brought into the world.  Nobel was so struck by the vitriol of the report, including its label of him as "the merchant of death," he shortly thereafter signed the bulk of his estate in a permanent trust that we know as the Nobel Prize foundation, honoring great accomplishments in all major fields of human endeavor with no bias for nationality.

Cynics would say this was Nobel trying to buy himself a quick PR cleanup of his legacy.  More romantic historians would say this was the act of a man trying in some measure to redeem himself by giving of his wealth and esteem in a noble sacrifice to the world.  Perhaps the truth, like so many situations, lies somewhere in the middle.

But we have to also look further into history, again examine Nobel's story a little more deeply.  It's easy at the end of a string of events to try and paint a picture of a particular shade when we only look at the last one or two dominoes in the chain. 

Consider that dynamite, the thing Nobel was denounced so hotly for having created, was Nobel's original attempt to improve and benefit mankind, and forge a legacy for himself as a great figure of humanitarian intent.  Some of you are already saying "Ridiculous!" but hear me out.

Before dynamite, all humanity had as a major explosive was nitroglycerin.  A dangerous, unsteady, volatile material that could explode without warning and in sometimes virtually inexplicable circumstances.  We all know the famous "Wild West" films where a few little bottles of nitro, stoppered with cork and sealed with wax, are all it takes to bring down an entire train trestle or bank vault.  Nitroglycerin was powerful, but was about as dangerous to any 'professional' users of it as notorious criminals trying to harness its abilities.

Nobel found that adding substances such as wax and sawdust and cotton to nitroglycerin mixtures ended up with a powerful--but stable, and safe-to-handle--version of the deadly material.  Nobel was guilty of perhaps scientific naivete at worst, but he's in good company (consider Dr.'s Guillotine and Gatling, inventors of devices named after them responsible for a great deal of death in the world but which originated in laboratories of compassion and the desire to lessen human waste and suffering).

So ultimately, what can we say the Nobel Peace Prize represents?  Is it a cynical man's last wish to buy himself positive acclaim for all time?  A genuinely hurt and shocked inventor who wanted to make yet another effort to try and fulfill his original dream of human achievement for all the world's benefit?  Or perhaps ultimately, the prize today is less about the interpretations of the man who started it and more about the international community today granting it each year.

And this year, the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to a man who may very well become just as much an enigma of intentions and results as Alfred Nobel himself.  President Barack Obama.

That the Prize has never been previously awarded to a sitting President is one thing.  That it was the Peace prize, awarded for those individuals whom the Nobel committee feel are responsible for encouraging greater peace and diplomatic strength for all the peoples of the world, given to a war-time President is yet another.  That it has been awarded to a President whose accomplishments seem thin at best, and only nine months into his Presidency, is still another.

So was the Prize awarded to Barack Obama because his work in diplomatic relations with the Middle East, and his attempts to renew and strengthen badly-injured relations with the global community as a whole, are already showing significant result?  Considering today's news of fresh attacks from Pakistan against the Afghan border, maybe that's hard to say.

Was the Prize, as many assert, less a remark on Obama himself and more a remark on his predecessor, George W. Bush?   A way of the international community going out of its way to grant a significant and highly-esteemed form of recognition to Obama as a backwards way of showing its contempt and disdain for what many have claimed could be one of the most disastrous administrations in recent U.S. history?

I'd like to try and think that the Prize could be everything it's interpreted to be.  After all, any President winning such an award is, in fact, being given a recognition that says something about those predecessors who didn't receive it (after all, Clinton and Bush Sr. could be remarked as having had their own detrimental effects on our nation and international relations).  And Obama's efforts to open channels into the Middle East previously though of as wholly unreachable is in itself an impressive goal, an ambition he's already made some headway into seeing bear fruit.

Sadly, some of Obama's heaviest critics over this award have been within his own nation.  The everyday on-the-street response seems to show some folks cheering, and a lot of folks scratching their heads and asking "For what?" 

While unemployment soars and a 'jobless recovery' seems to be the most optimistic promise being offered out of Congress for coming out of the current recession, people are genuinely wondering: what profits a President to have the world think him so wonderful and peace-loving, while in his own nation people are dying for lack of health care and children going homeless for lack of their parents being able to find work, and massive corporations profiting of the tax dollars of that shrinking, terrified middle class that are bearing the brunt of it all?

I would like to think that perhaps the Nobel committee is less naive and more just ahead-of-the-curve.  Prophetic, perhaps.  Nobel was a man who created an invention of massive destruction and death, all because he tried to simply make it safer to handle what was already a well-known and well-applied force of almost primordial destructiveness.

Meanwhile, Obama has voiced many great goals and spoken of his attempts to seek out the fruition of these goals without alienating anyone to whatever extent he can.  He has tried to incorporate everyone's views, and it seems so far at the cost of achieving any one of those hopes in any noticeable measure. 

Perhaps he has been given a nation that is now nitroglycerin, and in his attempts to form it into something safer, cleaner, healthier, more prosperous, he will simply create a new landscape of difficulty and pain that the world will denounce even as he mounts his Peace Prize in his Chicago living room long after he steps down from his office.

Perhaps President Obama has not been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his accomplishments to date, or the failures perceived in his predecssor, or because of some cynical statement on the world as a whole, but simply because the committee has seen in him something that the rest of us are already lamenting in one degree or another: a good man, perhaps a shortsighted one, working towards peace for all, who may instead only leave a legacy of half-measures and horribly backfired attempts.