Ingvild Kjerkol, Shamelessness | The shame we need

When I was growing up, we could even bumping into them when we were visiting friends around the village.

The older men, sitting in the chair his in the living room, tinkering in the barn or behind a woodpile. Those who were not grandparents, but lived on the farm for payment, as people said.

In the 80s, they still existed the remains of the agrarian society’s social service out in the village: Placement of those for whom there was something with, on farms as labor. People with mild mental health diagnoses, socially maladjusted, loners.

They were not allowed to stay at home – there they were a disgrace to the family. Not infrequently it was probably the family that was the cause of their condition. Incest and domestic violence were not invented in the 80s.

The redeployed got housing and food on the farm where they came, and then it was probably highly variable how much they were allowed to be out in society. I saw them at the height walking along the road, never at the shop, in the center or on the May 17 train. I never remember any adults referring to them, either derogatory or complimentary. They were just there.

Maybe the shame could pass to be different keep them on the farm. We can agree that this system should be a thing of the past. Then we can also discuss what we have today, and what we have lost.

Because the outcasts had something to do. They were used in barns and barns. They participated in a working community with the rest of the people on the farm. There was meaning in everyday life. The loop in life lies in the work, sings Hans Rotmo.

Today these people are sitting in a council apartment or in an institution, on the street – or in prison. Do they feel that there is a use for them?

And: Have we managed to take from them the shame of being different?

Red politician Mímir Kristjánsson has written a book about his insured mother. It is a very honest review of an important topic: the spirit of the times has made “nave” a verb, something everyone can do. The premise – which more than Kristjánsson can disagree with – is that one can also let be to nave. Who wants to tell about their social security then?

10.4 per cent of Norwegians between the ages of 18 and 67 receive disability benefits. The proportion is the same as in 2002, but has been down to nine figures in the meantime. The vast majority of these should not be ashamed. Should some of them be ashamed? Maybe.

And this is where it gets tricky. On the way to the regime of generous rights, which most of us both contribute to and benefit from, something can be lost: the shame of using the system.

It is not so easy to separate between worthy and unworthy needy. Not for the needy, and not for the rest of us. That is why it is so difficult to agree on why we have the disability figures we have, and on what the figures are should be. Are we laxer or sicker than people in other countries, or do we have a particularly efficient and demanding working life?

Ingvild Kjerkol needs neither welfare nor social security. But she has been caught cheating on her master’s thesis. The board for student affairs at Nord University believes that Kjerkol must have cheated on purpose.

I am unsure. It could be that Kjerkol has a conviction, a subjective recognition that she is in such a high position that she is allowed to deliver an assignment that is 19 per cent copied. When Kjerkol was asked if she was a cheater, the answer was:

– I don’t feel like a cheater.

Kjerkol will appeal the cancellation of his master – for formal reasons. The logic is that when she wasn’t exposed in 2021, she can’t lose her master’s in 2024.

– As a politician, she has nothing to lose the appeal, the case is known anyway. It’s about honour, says Tone Sofie Aglen in NRK. She can say that, as a politically aware NRK commentator.

I think: Doesn’t Kjerkol have anything to lose as a human being? For whom outside the political bubble is this matter about honor?

It cannot be about career. No one wants to hire a skilled ex-minister with a leadership position in the Storting because of a lack of a master’s degree. The party is only hurt by Kjerkol keeping the matter hot in the public eye.

It could be about it shamelessness that can arise in a system where the end justifies the means, and trust is about strength and not about morality.

I think of Aina Erlander, the wife of Sweden’s father of the country Tage Erlander. In 1969, her husband left the Prime Minister’s office after 23 years. The next day, Mrs Erlander is said to have trooped up to the office to return some government pens that her husband had taken home.

The past is rarely worth repeating. But in a world where Ingvild Kjerkol rules, we would have benefited from a little more Aina Erlander.

And more people should experience it that no one is ashamed who cooks.