Featured Image: Map of the states American Election 2024 AP News 7:00am
Donald Trump has won the US election: what this means here, now in West Bridgford (and Rushcliffe) is that we need localisation, better understanding of everyone who lives here and building a conversation that will rejuvenate relationships across the lifespan.
It’s because the Trump victory is a victory for a view of the past and history that we’ve been observing in West Bridgford and Rushcliffe since the end of the second world war that is harmful.
Instead of looking at the essential value of everyone who lives here and building an economy on what’s actually happening, what’s actually going on in people’s hearts, minds and lives in a way that pays attention to everyone’s viewpoint resulting in actual, local change, I realised the election of Trump in America is an example of how everyone has tacitly colluded with the aggression, shock and awe environment of the internet at the expense of their own lives and aspirations.
It’s like the internet has colonised freedom.
I realised this when a man who was working on a green project came round to discuss a range of heating possibilities for the future: after attending a presentation about heating in the Meadows in September it occurred to me that if someone in a green house in the Meadows could have a 00 bill for energy why couldn’t people in the rest of the borough also benefit in the same way?
We talked about the cost of heating and why some people pay so much more for the same things than others: that I was really interested in finding skills and opportunities and sharing them with everyone because I thought it’s really important to share things that benefit everyone.
He looked at me as if I was talking about something he’d often thought but hadn’t been able to speak about. Then I could see tears in his eyes and he started to cry.
He said ‘we live in a world where as men we’re not allowed to let the line down now, we have to pretend we support really horrible ways of treating other people: you don’t know how bad it is, it’s like being a prisoner in an online ‘world’ that is taking over. I know that this isn’t true but I can’t speak out against it. I see the continuing harm we’re doing to people, lying to them and treating people differently it’s breaking my heart’.
I wasn’t prepared for this: I’d only thought that it’s amazing it was that someone in one of the Eco houses in the meadows had a zero energy bill but it made me realise that we need really good quality information about the world around us and we need to keep talking to people like the man who felt so burdened by the siloed world that was eating away at his soul as he tried to talk honestly about a shared green future.
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