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Dirty in high block

Both socialist and conservative thinking can lead to unwanted abuses against those who are on the fringed outskirts of society.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

I sit by the window of my apartment in Groruddalen and look out on a burgundy high block. In it, the district has placed social housing for the district's long-term dependents, a nursing home department and various other. A multitude of residents with few things in common beyond the need for help or assistance, squeezed into a square volume of ten to twelve floors. Several of my oldest neighbors refer to the block as the place where friends and neighbors end up being demented, beaten, or drunk.
My condominium team surrounds the block. Once upon a time, all the land around me was municipal property, set aside for housing construction. Over the years, OBOS built 1959 into my 1962 housing team. As the surrounding area was still municipal property, the social security block came up in our garden a few years later, in the middle of the housing association. Early in the 1980 century, OBOS bought out the plots for its housing stock. But a bit of the plot was already built by the municipality, with the municipal high block I sit and look at.
At times, I hardly see anything for the people who live there. This always changes on the twentieth day of the month – the social security day. Then there is the livate at the local Chinese restaurant, people come in wheelchairs and electric wheelchairs to enjoy a beer or seven in good measure. Other residents are queuing up to buy beer at the supermarket. For the next couple of weeks, tired residents with empty property arrives and queues in front of the ATM. In the summer, people sometimes hear shouting from windows, and on hot days I see ten to twelve floors of fluttering curtains in the wind. At night, if I can't sleep, there is still light in many of the apartments. I never really feel alone with this block in front of the window.

Different clearing strategies. Last year, one of the most tired residents tried to take their lives. It was probably mostly a cry for help, he hung out screaming with his legs out the window until the fire department got him down. I used to know who that guy was, but I haven't seen him after the suicide attempt. Maybe he's moved to another place. Out of sight, out of mind, seems to be the reaction.

The symbiosis of conservative control greed and socialist social turmoil makes it easy for the addicted, the tired, the weak and the "psyche" to appear as filth in society.

In most cases, life on the fringed edges of society is not the result of conscious choices. It just turned out that way. Bad luck, coincidence, circumstances or other people's abuse pushed people down. But even when the situation is the result of stupid choices, the aid system must be generous and accepting. We will also be like that in society. Being outside or in a downhill hill should not lead to condemnation. Condemnation creates shame. Shame makes people sick.
Now I do not believe in neoliberal arguments against intervening in the lives of people in need of care. These are in the ultimate consequence that everyone is a blacksmith of their own happiness, and that with money – and thus power – they are not responsible for their fellow human beings. But also socialist and conservative social thought can lead to undesirable consequences and abuse.
Socialist abuse is often the result of believing in the healing of the individual from structural stress. If only society is healthy, then people become healthy. If you just organize enough, everyone will be sensible, healthy people. Marx was never fond of the filly proletariat. In the struggle songs of the labor movement, they called for the pure and the pure. Those who fell outside were only a result of social ill. Håkon Lie stated in his older days that he had been shocked when he realized that some people continued to steal even after hunger and structural poverty were gone. As late as the 1970s, large parts of the international left, including the enormous French Communist Party and the ML movement in Norway, believed that homosexuality would be lost in a healthy, socialist society. Socialism was the definitive ash decoction, and state intervention was the cure for miracles that could fix everything.
Conservatives, for their part, have always been happy in order. More police in the streets, bans on begging, bans on overnight accommodation, more envoy of foreigners. Recently, a progressive party politician in Oslo wrote a chronicle that she loves the police, and that she therefore prefers to see these armed. An addict or asylum seeker who is being chased around the city center by an armed police may not see this in the same way.

Just a few meters. The symbiosis of conservative control and socialist social turmoil makes it easy for the addicted, the tired, the weak and the "psyche" to appear as filthy in society, or as a result of a malady. Addicts and other social outsiders are chased from the streets. The filth is condemned. The deficiencies stow away. Out of sight, out of mind.
By looking out the window, I am reminded that once in a lifetime I may actually end up having to move myself. Moving from the housing block I live in now, to the municipal social housing block. From civil society to institution. The difference between me and my life, and the lives in there, are often just luck and chance, or a few stupid life choices. The road from a life of rougher levels to a life of need is geographically just a few meters. A useful metaphor. An important reminder.


Hatterud is a cultural writer and a regular contributor to Ny Tid. megaeldar@hotmail.com.

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