The Hellhole of Santorini

Welcome to Santorini.? Bienvenue.? Willkommen. Καλω? Ηλθατε.?

If you don’t know what Santorini is or where it is, then hats off to you, though it is extremely unlikely that you would have escaped the harassment of doctored-up Instagram images which remove the crowds and the pollution, masking the unliveable temperature conditions with the classic soothing cerulean blue of the Aegean sea.? Get ready for your dream of Santorini to be crushed forever.? Because as tiny as this little island may be, it stands for everything that is wrong with the world today.

First of all, a shameful admission on my part.? I was on Santorini just a few days ago, courtesy of a family visit which was put to me as an ultimatum:? I either meet them on the island, or I don’t get to see them at all, and all of this will be my fault for breaking up the family.? If you don’t know anything about Greek families, just picture a chicken factory where all the chickens talk at the same time and a cloud of feathers slowly rises in the background as mutual plucking rages on.? Anyway, following the introvert’s one and only trusted coping strategy of surviving in a group of assertive extroverts, I said “yes” in order to hold on to the few feathers I had left.? Off I went, into the hellhole of Santorini, airfare and all, because it was free and I’m currently broke.? Yes, I TOOK A FUCKING PLANE, and a domestic flight for that matter, accompanying my elderly mother.? Don’t worry, I’ll plant some basil in my windowsill to cancel it out.

One thing you must understand first of all, is that whoever goes to Santorini does not go there to visit Santorini.? They go there to visit the most emotionally toxic parts of themselves.? They go there so that they can see themselves in Santorini, get photographed in the same exact location with the same exact background as their favourite film and rock star.? A visit to Santorini is a visit into the bubbling, molten, incandescent depths of one’s own narcissistic ego: that’s all it is for most visitors.? The view itself may be breathtaking, but no one really sees it with their own eyes.? They only see it as the background to their selfie as they look away from the view, and into the screen of their iphone.? Trust me they don’t care about the view. That’s not why they’re there. They’re there to rendezvous with their ego.

The volcano itself may be inactive currently, but there is another volcano in its place, emitting tons of CO2.? If you are lucky like me to have stayed in one of those iconic hotels built literally on the cliff of the inside of the caldera facing the sunset, then you will experience the most dystopian demonstration of the impending collapse of the volcano of global industrial civilisation:? at any point in time, between 2 and 4 huge cruise ships are parked inside the caldera, chimneys full on pumping toxic gasses which visibly accumulate inside the bay as they become trapped by the walls of the ancient volcano.? On a not-so-windy day, you will not only be able to see the cruise ship emissions, but you will smell them too.? This tiny island of 15,000 inhabitants must have the largest per capita CO2 emissions in the world.? It is a postcard which sells beauty, while it destroys the planet at the same time.? I told you, your world was going to be crushed.

But that’s not all.? Wait until I tell you about the new climatic conditions on Santorini.? They simply don’t feel like Greece anymore.? It is more like Tunisia or Algeria, where you’d have to be royally stupid as fuck to be outside of the house for no good reason between 11:30 am and 5:30 pm.? This is what we had to do to survive, in a June month which was the hottest ever globally, and for Greece as a whole felt more like July as the country went into full-on heatwave alert for much of the month.? The globally famous (i.e. really tasty but overhyped and overrated at this point) fava bean cultivated on the island for the past 3,5000 years was nowhere to be found.? Small packets sold for 18 euro.? A local friend told us that drought had impacted harvest.? Besides, the locals make more money from tourism.? So much for a unique, indigenous heirloom variety dating back to Neolithic Greece.? I guess cruise ships, ecological destruction and selfies are way more important.

I don’t have anything personal against Santorini.? I do have a problem with what it stands for:? greed, natural destruction and narcissism.? I don’t know who I dislike most: the locals, the tourists, or the average Joe who looks at this toxic postcard and wants to go there just because everyone else has.? Well, you’ve heard it from me: I never wanted to go there, and once I did, it was very “meh”.? Why would I go to a place I’ve seen a million times on Instagram, surrounded by people who are only there physically, having long ago surrendered their emotional world to an online algorithmic existence.? Why would I queue for half an hour literally so that I can take a selfie by a fucking cliff while the chicken mob is cackling all around me.? Trust me, Santorini is no different than Times Square or Piccadilly Circus.? It’s a sad dystopian theme park, a shrine to capitalism and the climate crisis. Such is the narcissistic self-destructiveness of this species that there is even a replica of Santorini in…China.? Yes, you can go there and even have a frappe coffee.?

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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