Tourists of the Apocalypse

Once a luxury item, tourism has now become essential for humans.  We live such ugly lives, that we’ll take the most drastic action to have even the tiniest, brief break from it all: escape.

And yet, the respite is always too brief.  A long weekend, perhaps a week or 10 days, sometimes even a month of travelling for the few of us who can afford the luxury.  However long it is though, it never feels enough.  Because the life we’ve left behind is simply not worth going back for.

The problem with tourism is that it only leaves one craving for more, for the next vacation.  Tourism is a mass manipulation of consumers on a global scale, by a system which wants to get into our wallets even when we think we are “leaving” the system altogether.  By travelling, we are merely propping up the very system which is making us unhappy, supporting some of the most harmful and wasteful industries on the planet: from aviation to single-use consumables to human rights violations, tourism represents the worst aspects of the “life” that we think we are “escaping” every time we go on a trip. It is the third largest industry on the planet, and largely responsible for both the ecological apocalypse and the climate crisis. It is an 11 trillion dollar-worth economic sector employing upwards of 300 million people, making both tourism workers and locals miserable.  They, in turn, are also slaves to this system: accepting the brutal working hours, the devastation of their local environment, and the inflated home prices in their hometowns so that they can make a living.

At the end of the day, by travelling we are propping up the very economic system responsible for making the lives of billions of people even more miserable. 

The answer isn’t simply saying no to tourism.  The answer is reconstructing our lives and societies so that we won’t need to escape them that often.  We are already becoming tourists on a burning, polluted planet.  This dystopic image of human arrogance should be a wake-up call to us all.  Because it is the prelude to what follows next, as the climate and ecological crises begin to make our lives truly ugly, truly impoverished in ways which we never thought were possible.  There won’t be any tourism left, because there simply won’t be anywhere left to “escape”.

This civilisation may be creating more and more theme parks, more and more virtual spaces it thinks it can retreat to, but it will ultimately face the physical reality:  the LCD wall of its virtual existence will short circuit in the heat of its own inferno.  The postcard will burn bright, then darkness.

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons

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