7 ms·

Reductio ad absurdum: everything is meaningless, so why do intelligent, educated people do anything? I find views like this pointlessly cynical. The man has be

Reductio ad absurdum: everything is meaningless, so why do intelligent, educated people do anything? I find views like this pointlessly cynical. The man has been done something good for society, why on earth shouldn't he accept the acknowledgement?

mariusz79 12y ago
He did something to help promote computer science to people who could not afford a computer. Accepting OBE, on the other hand, is equal to becoming a member of a caste system. You either believe that all people deserve equal rights, or you don't.
- nicholassmith 12y ago
  An OBE (and MBE) are basically a nice bit of paper and a day out. They confer no privilege or powers, it's just a recognition that's given.
- markdown 12y ago
  > Accepting OBE, on the other hand, is equal to becoming a member of a caste system. No, it's like receiving a Nobel Prize, or a Medal of Honour (or any medal, really). An organisation awarding a prize to someone who has done something remarkable for his fellow men.
  - mariusz79 12y ago
    The titles given are taken from the aristocratic system that's still alive and kicking in the GB. And while OBE does not give the recipient anything special besides titles, heraldic supports and order of precedence, one could argue that it's supporting the aristocratic system. If you accept a title, be it sir or knight, or whatever else there is, you indirectly accept that the person with a higher title is above you, even if they did not earn that title with the hard work like you did, but simply by being born into a right family. You accept being a royal subject, , and you accept that the king or queen, are not your equals but your rulers. In any modern society we have titles, and honors but they have to be earned. President, general, senator is your equal, selected for their office based on the skills (I know that a staggering oversimplification, and a very naive point of view) not based on the birth right.
    - Angostura 12y ago
      > one could argue that it's supporting the aristocratic system One could. But most people would disagree.
      - mariusz79 12y ago
        Let's eat s*. Billions of flies can't be wrong!
  - dfc 12y ago
    To say that this is "like receiving a Nobel Prize, or Medal of Honour(sic)" or the Victoria Cross is absurd. There are 1,946 MoH recipients (excluding civil war recipients when it was awarded under different conditions), 1,357 Victoria Cross recipients and 876 Nobel Laureates. In one year "more than a thousand people have been recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours."[1] [^1]: With one thousand awardees this seems more like an Eagle Scout Badge or
    - markdown 12y ago
      Yes. Like an Eagle Scout Badge or a Medal of Honour. Doesn't matter how many people get it, my point is that it's a reward for either doing something positive or achieving something remarkable.
      - dfc 12y ago
        The Medal of Honor and/or Victoria Cross are not rewards.
        markdown 12y ago
        Jesus Christ dude, you're missing the point completely. Read the comment I originally responded to.
- frobozz 12y ago
  If you can change your caste, then it can't be a caste system, can it?
  - mariusz79 12y ago
    You can't change it - you can only be accepted into it. So not only you have to do something extraordinary, someone from the caste needs to like what you did. Or you could be born into it...
    - migstopheles 12y ago
      I think you're confused about what this honour actually is. Receiving an OBE doesn't imbue any extra rights or powers, it's literally just an award for doing something that helps others. That's specifically what it was created for. You can't be born into it, and the system has traditionally honoured thousands of 'normal' people that have been nominated, usually by their peers, for doing work in their field or community.
    - mariusz79 12y ago
      @migstopheles I wasn't talking about being born into OBE, but about being born into British aristocracy. I admit that OBE is just a small part of the whole system of honors, but by using titles and heraldry it still helps to keep the caste system alive in the GB.
      - sbuk 12y ago
        There is no caste system in the UK. There was a class system that is largley defunced, despite pretestations to the contrary. You aren't even British, so why do you care?
    - asuffield 12y ago
      I think you're confused about who awards these. Honours are awarded based on decisions made by a committee comprised of the members listed here: https://www.gov.uk/honours-committees https://www.gov.uk/honours-committees As you can see, some of them are themselves honours recipients, and some are not. In no sense is this a self-awarding organisation - and the only reason there are so many recipients on the committee is because honours are given out to just about everybody who has achieved anything of note.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  The UK may have a class system (sadly, all capitalist societies do and must), but it does not have "castes". Knighthoods and other honours are merely titles.
  - arethuza 12y ago
    Out of interest, what do you see as the link between classes and capitalism or are you equating social class with a level of income (or ownership of assets) - it's really much more complex than that in the UK due to the remarkable amount of historical baggage we have.
    - hcho 12y ago
      Not the OP, but concentration of wealth in the hands of a class and concentration of capital in the hands of capitalists sound awfully similar.
      - arethuza 12y ago
        Having loads of money is neither necessary or sufficient for belonging to the UK Upper Class, traditionally at least: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_structure_of_the_United_Kingdom#Upper_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_structure_of_the_United_... [NB I'm really not defending this state of affairs - just pointing out that "Upper Class" traditionally meant "aristocracy" not "rich" in the UK].
        hcho 12y ago
        I don't think anybody is disputing that. But there was a time upper class meant rich, no? That's considered proto-capitalism by many.
        patrickk 12y ago
        PG has an interesting bit about this in an essay: "This started to change in Europe with the rise of the middle class. Now we think of the middle class as people who are neither rich nor poor, but originally they were a distinct group. In a feudal society, there are just two classes: a warrior aristocracy, and the serfs who work their estates. The middle class were a new, third group who lived in towns and supported themselves by manufacturing and trade. Starting in the tenth and eleventh centuries, petty nobles and former serfs banded together in towns that gradually became powerful enough to ignore the local feudal lords. [10] Like serfs, the middle class made a living largely by creating wealth. (In port cities like Genoa and Pisa, they also engaged in piracy.) But unlike serfs they had an incentive to create a lot of it. Any wealth a serf created belonged to his master. There was not much point in making more than you could hide. Whereas the independence of the townsmen allowed them to keep whatever wealth they created. Once it became possible to get rich by creating wealth, society as a whole started to get richer very rapidly. Nearly everything we have was created by the middle class. Indeed, the other two classes have effectively disappeared in industrial societies, and their names been given to either end of the middle class. (In the original sense of the word, Bill Gates is middle class.) But it was not till the Industrial Revolution that wealth creation definitively replaced corruption as the best way to get rich. In England, at least, corruption only became unfashionable (and in fact only started to be called "corruption") when there started to be other, faster ways to get rich." http://paulgraham.com/gap.html http://paulgraham.com/gap.html
- pjc50 12y ago
  The OBE doesn't convey any extra rights on the recipient.
  - mariusz79 12y ago
    order of precedence, titles, heraldic supporters.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
Luc 12y ago
I suppose one could argue that a club that has 'For God and The Empire' as its motto, and awards military-sounding titles, is about more than just getting recognition from society. Though perhaps it's not to be taken too seriously...
mariusz79 12y ago
Many reasons, but let me quote few people who actually declined the "honor": "I get angry when I hear the word 'empire'; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds me of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised." "An OBE is what you get if you clean the toilets well at King's Cross station." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_declined_a_British_honour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_declin...
- migstopheles 12y ago
  Quoting Michael Winner, a multimillionaire conservative, probably isn't your best line of argument :) But seriously, these are both personal opinions, and the first one even seems to be working against your original assertion that the honour is meaningless. All things considered, if you have an issue with the monarchy and the "aristocratic" government (not quite accurate, but there's a point there), that's completely valid. Rallying against an almost entirely unrelated honours system is way off-target, and I would imagine that abolishing it would do more harm than good.
  - mariusz79 12y ago
    I was asked - "why on earth shouldn't he accept the acknowledgement?" My reply is an attempt to provide a partial answer to that question, and is unrelated to the rest of the discussion. :)

mariusz79 12y ago

He did something to help promote computer science to people who could not afford a computer. Accepting OBE, on the other hand, is equal to becoming a member of a caste system. You either believe that all people deserve equal rights, or you don't.

nicholassmith 12y ago
An OBE (and MBE) are basically a nice bit of paper and a day out. They confer no privilege or powers, it's just a recognition that's given.
markdown 12y ago
> Accepting OBE, on the other hand, is equal to becoming a member of a caste system. No, it's like receiving a Nobel Prize, or a Medal of Honour (or any medal, really). An organisation awarding a prize to someone who has done something remarkable for his fellow men.
- mariusz79 12y ago
  The titles given are taken from the aristocratic system that's still alive and kicking in the GB. And while OBE does not give the recipient anything special besides titles, heraldic supports and order of precedence, one could argue that it's supporting the aristocratic system. If you accept a title, be it sir or knight, or whatever else there is, you indirectly accept that the person with a higher title is above you, even if they did not earn that title with the hard work like you did, but simply by being born into a right family. You accept being a royal subject, , and you accept that the king or queen, are not your equals but your rulers. In any modern society we have titles, and honors but they have to be earned. President, general, senator is your equal, selected for their office based on the skills (I know that a staggering oversimplification, and a very naive point of view) not based on the birth right.
  - Angostura 12y ago
    > one could argue that it's supporting the aristocratic system One could. But most people would disagree.
    - mariusz79 12y ago
      Let's eat s*. Billions of flies can't be wrong!
- dfc 12y ago
  To say that this is "like receiving a Nobel Prize, or Medal of Honour(sic)" or the Victoria Cross is absurd. There are 1,946 MoH recipients (excluding civil war recipients when it was awarded under different conditions), 1,357 Victoria Cross recipients and 876 Nobel Laureates. In one year "more than a thousand people have been recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours."[1] [^1]: With one thousand awardees this seems more like an Eagle Scout Badge or
  - markdown 12y ago
    Yes. Like an Eagle Scout Badge or a Medal of Honour. Doesn't matter how many people get it, my point is that it's a reward for either doing something positive or achieving something remarkable.
    - dfc 12y ago
      The Medal of Honor and/or Victoria Cross are not rewards.
      - markdown 12y ago
        Jesus Christ dude, you're missing the point completely. Read the comment I originally responded to.
frobozz 12y ago
If you can change your caste, then it can't be a caste system, can it?
- mariusz79 12y ago
  You can't change it - you can only be accepted into it. So not only you have to do something extraordinary, someone from the caste needs to like what you did. Or you could be born into it...
  - migstopheles 12y ago
    I think you're confused about what this honour actually is. Receiving an OBE doesn't imbue any extra rights or powers, it's literally just an award for doing something that helps others. That's specifically what it was created for. You can't be born into it, and the system has traditionally honoured thousands of 'normal' people that have been nominated, usually by their peers, for doing work in their field or community.
  - mariusz79 12y ago
    @migstopheles I wasn't talking about being born into OBE, but about being born into British aristocracy. I admit that OBE is just a small part of the whole system of honors, but by using titles and heraldry it still helps to keep the caste system alive in the GB.
    - sbuk 12y ago
      There is no caste system in the UK. There was a class system that is largley defunced, despite pretestations to the contrary. You aren't even British, so why do you care?
  - asuffield 12y ago
    I think you're confused about who awards these. Honours are awarded based on decisions made by a committee comprised of the members listed here: https://www.gov.uk/honours-committees https://www.gov.uk/honours-committees As you can see, some of them are themselves honours recipients, and some are not. In no sense is this a self-awarding organisation - and the only reason there are so many recipients on the committee is because honours are given out to just about everybody who has achieved anything of note.
TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
The UK may have a class system (sadly, all capitalist societies do and must), but it does not have "castes". Knighthoods and other honours are merely titles.
- arethuza 12y ago
  Out of interest, what do you see as the link between classes and capitalism or are you equating social class with a level of income (or ownership of assets) - it's really much more complex than that in the UK due to the remarkable amount of historical baggage we have.
  - hcho 12y ago
    Not the OP, but concentration of wealth in the hands of a class and concentration of capital in the hands of capitalists sound awfully similar.
    - arethuza 12y ago
      Having loads of money is neither necessary or sufficient for belonging to the UK Upper Class, traditionally at least: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_structure_of_the_United_Kingdom#Upper_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_structure_of_the_United_... [NB I'm really not defending this state of affairs - just pointing out that "Upper Class" traditionally meant "aristocracy" not "rich" in the UK].
      - hcho 12y ago
        I don't think anybody is disputing that. But there was a time upper class meant rich, no? That's considered proto-capitalism by many.
        patrickk 12y ago
        PG has an interesting bit about this in an essay: "This started to change in Europe with the rise of the middle class. Now we think of the middle class as people who are neither rich nor poor, but originally they were a distinct group. In a feudal society, there are just two classes: a warrior aristocracy, and the serfs who work their estates. The middle class were a new, third group who lived in towns and supported themselves by manufacturing and trade. Starting in the tenth and eleventh centuries, petty nobles and former serfs banded together in towns that gradually became powerful enough to ignore the local feudal lords. [10] Like serfs, the middle class made a living largely by creating wealth. (In port cities like Genoa and Pisa, they also engaged in piracy.) But unlike serfs they had an incentive to create a lot of it. Any wealth a serf created belonged to his master. There was not much point in making more than you could hide. Whereas the independence of the townsmen allowed them to keep whatever wealth they created. Once it became possible to get rich by creating wealth, society as a whole started to get richer very rapidly. Nearly everything we have was created by the middle class. Indeed, the other two classes have effectively disappeared in industrial societies, and their names been given to either end of the middle class. (In the original sense of the word, Bill Gates is middle class.) But it was not till the Industrial Revolution that wealth creation definitively replaced corruption as the best way to get rich. In England, at least, corruption only became unfashionable (and in fact only started to be called "corruption") when there started to be other, faster ways to get rich." http://paulgraham.com/gap.html http://paulgraham.com/gap.html
pjc50 12y ago
The OBE doesn't convey any extra rights on the recipient.
- mariusz79 12y ago
  order of precedence, titles, heraldic supporters.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

Luc 12y ago

I suppose one could argue that a club that has 'For God and The Empire' as its motto, and awards military-sounding titles, is about more than just getting recognition from society. Though perhaps it's not to be taken too seriously...

mariusz79 12y ago

Many reasons, but let me quote few people who actually declined the "honor": "I get angry when I hear the word 'empire'; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds me of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised." "An OBE is what you get if you clean the toilets well at King's Cross station." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_declined_a_British_honour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_declin...

migstopheles 12y ago
Quoting Michael Winner, a multimillionaire conservative, probably isn't your best line of argument :) But seriously, these are both personal opinions, and the first one even seems to be working against your original assertion that the honour is meaningless. All things considered, if you have an issue with the monarchy and the "aristocratic" government (not quite accurate, but there's a point there), that's completely valid. Rallying against an almost entirely unrelated honours system is way off-target, and I would imagine that abolishing it would do more harm than good.
- mariusz79 12y ago
  I was asked - "why on earth shouldn't he accept the acknowledgement?" My reply is an attempt to provide a partial answer to that question, and is unrelated to the rest of the discussion. :)