HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR CATASTROPHE/ ARMAGEDDON/ APOCALYPSE PARTNER (S) ?
The world is burning, leaking, overflowing, and drying out. Everyone can hear that apocalypse drum. Billionaires are preparing their drawbridge. Activists are wearing red and buying more super glue. We are trying bug bolognese for the first time. Adam Smith’s golden hour is over. The golden hour is getting hotter. The trees are bitching about us, pointing their middle finger roots at the big smoke. And I, in my maturing age have begun to adapt my ideas of what makes a good partner within this new toxic dust.
I am Eliza Lawrence a love and sex coach and writer who has been brought up by two environmentalist parents. I meet clients who crave to get away from toxic relationships and my parents crave to get away from a toxic world. In the growing crisis, how can we move towards having relationships that also follow the ecological buzzwords such as ‘sustainability’, ‘resilience’, and ‘organicism’? How can we find the best partner to fight the good fight whilst also being perfect for when it all gets a little shittier?
I recently went to a talk where the musician and environmentalist, Brian Eno, said that in order to survive collectively, we need to abandon our modern luxuries and go back to what the western world sees as primitive survival. Having a plot of land, growing vegetables, washing with rain water, and living on the land. In direct contrast, living a ‘successful life’ in the city at this very time we need to make money and are thus automatically engaging in the progress trap of the GDP cyclone. This life contributes to the slippery slope where only burning trees, missing oceans and extinction lies in the sandpit you fall into. I am part of that life too because I need to eat and prosper. The city is intoxicating with its boundless opportunity.
The city has its capitalist foundations but within it, there are some of the most beautiful minds and specialists that have combined their cognition to create a cumulative complex brain. Brian Eno calls this a ‘fish tank’ and despite its diverse intelligence it always needs to be monitored and cleaned out like a fish tank. If the wifi turns off, the brain turns off and the fish die. We rely on each other to burrow in each others brain, but what if some of the brains are polluted?
As a pretty normal, educated middle class citizen I see that I have a responsibility, but I am also aware that it’s the people above, the top 1 % of billionaires that are driving the capitalist monster truck. That monster truck holds a ridiculous overflow of money and they are just licking their lips. So what can we do? Do we leave the fish tank or do we find a way to inhabit it and sustain it so that in the future it doesn’t need to be constantly monitored?
I chose to sustain. I chose to push for a new system. Since when has economy and environment been interesting in the way we live our sexual and romantic lives?
I will tell you.
If we need to abandon the growth society and move to a more successful organic life, we need to find partners we want to do it with.
Before I knew about the climate emergency I used to fall for boys with little knowledge of the world around them, only because they had an overall obsession with themselves. If, however, I wanted to be a ‘futurologist’ I would be wise to pick someone who knows the difference between a dangerous mushroom and a safe one. Someone who knows bird calls. Someone who can cook with the little to make it the large. Someone who can get dirty. Someone with humour who you can spend those long dark winters and long hot summers with. Someone who laughs at the small things. Someone who can sharpen weapons to kill fish. Someone who knows how to make a fire. Someone who can roll a joint and trip on psilocybin when the going gets tough. It could also be many people, a commune if you like, or a polyamorous relationship. Polyamory is probably the best kind of catastrophe relationship as all three can be skilled fishermen and the cumulative brain is at its highest strength.
If it isn't someone, maybe it’s time to learn these things yourself? Maybe instead of specialising in crypto its time to specialise in vegetable growing. I may sound like a coastal granny who wears Birkenstocks, but I am being fucking serious and it may just be my new year's resolution.
I may have found the catastrophe partner of dreams and just to my luck, he looks good while he is building his apocalyptic skills. It must be good karma after all the boys who were fans of the mirror over me.
Think of it as getting a winter partner, who aids the winter blues and cold because you save on heating and have someone to play with. This partner, however, is for the rebuilding and reviving of our world as we know it.
Environmental action can start with your romantic choices because I truly believe love can change, inspire and turn things right around, or in fact the world on its hot axis.
