
01/03/2025
The morning after our recent visit to Machu Picchu, Misuk and I walked through our hotel’s garden and talked about the experience.
There are a handful of places on Earth that are widely accepted as magically spiritual — and Machu Picchu is one of them. Not surprisingly, a reputation like that isn’t achieved without millions of people having visited.
So my takeaway was: Wow, what a paradox. Flight to Cusco; ninety-minute guide-van to a remote hotel; another ninety-minute ride in the morning to the train station; an hour in the waiting room; a street procession to board for the two-hour train ride to Machu Picchu village (reminiscent of Namche Bazaar, the jumping-off point for Everest expeditions); and no, you’re not “there yet” as a harrowing half-hour bus ride remains, scaling countless steep switchbacks up the Old Mountain’s flank. And, of course, once you’re at Machu Picchu you’re jostling with about six or seven other busloads of tourists aiming for the same magically spiritual experience that you are.
But experiences are what you make of them. I saw the paradox; Misuk’s take was more profound: “I learned this. Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t make your vision come true.”
Point taken. Whoever first saw a jungle-covered saddle between the Old Mountain — Machu Picchu — and the Young Mountain across from it and thought, “Oh, yes, I can see a city housing eight hundred people here, and temples for both the sun and the moon,” and then went about persuading his fellows to help build it… well, “undaunted” doesn’t really provide an adequate description for that sturdy soul.
The same applies to the archaeologists who over four years once again cleared the jungle from that saddle after a local boy led Yale scholar Hiram Bingham to the site in 1911 — and to the Peruvians themselves, who in 1981 established the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu around the site and turned it into the tourist attraction it now is, drawing up to two million visitors a year… while carefully preserving the actual site itself. Once you enter the sanctuary, there are no modern conveniences whatsoever. You can stay until you have to use the facilities outside, but no longer than that.
The mountain citadel and worship center truly is in as pristine condition as one could imagine after several hundred years of jungle encroachment. And unlike other cultural heritage sites like the Parthenon or the Great Pyramids of Egypt, the stones of Machu Picchu have never been scavenged for other buildings. Remarkable.
The invading sixteenth-century Spaniards also missed sacking the site as it had already been abandoned by the Inca. When you tour other locales throughout South America, your guides will invariably point to certain places, as in Cusco, and tell you what indigenous structures used to be hither and yon… but usually, all that is left is the odd wall or two. Here, all the stone elements remain as they were.
The era of the conquistador was nonetheless pretty ruthless, lethal, and thorough. When perpetual agonists Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, they understood that they could gain tremendous economic advantage over competitors like the French, English, and Dutch if they collaborated to get the Pope’s blessing and formally carve up the parts of the New World where they had already established outposts.
And advantage they did indeed gain, pillaging what is now the central and south Americas to the tune of more than 180 tons of gold, and a staggering 16,000 tons of silver. At current market prices, that amounts to something like $20B. And that doesn’t count other goods of the day, such as slaves. Or the cost in human life, estimated in the millions. This is what happens when the powerful meld religious zeal with greed — and a highly effective public relations campaign about the supposed “good” they are doing.
Today, of course, we also have perpetual enemies cozying up to one another in order to carve up new frontiers — including cryptocurrency, AI tech, developing energy markets, and Mars. Not everyone realizes it, but global technological objectives cannot be achieved if one or more superpowers are cut out of the deal. If the West tries to go Mars without Russia or China, the project will fail due to complexity, cost, and risk. Earth cannot endure a competitive race to plant flags on another planet, and the mineral wealth is too valuable to leave unexploited.
Elon Musk understands this full well, of course. Just take a look at the two seasons of the TV series Mars, produced by National Geographic — which features “historical” interviews “from the past” with visionary Elon Musk. In the series, the sci-fi 2033 mission to Mars is accomplished through the ruthless vision of Ed Grann, “CEO of the Mars Missions Corporation, a consortium of private aerospace companies preparing Mars expeditions.” Global governments find themselves complicit in his morally corrupt schemes.
Who does that fictional character sound like? Well, Musk, of course. “Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t make your vision come true,” indeed.
Curiously, on the train back from Machu Picchu, I sat across a table from a young Colombian sales rep for a global tech company. I asked her about Musk, and what she thinks of his shouldering into global politics.
She paused for almost half a minute before replying.
“I think he’s doing what he needs to do. He has a thing that he wants to accomplish, and he’s going to do what he wants.”
I asked her if that concerned her.
“No. Nobody in the industry is worried about it.”
Really? Why not? Isn’t it dangerous for corporations to be making global political policy?
“It’s the future,” she replied quite simply.
As a career technologist, I am afraid I must reluctantly agree with her. I could go on at length about why she’s right; suffice to say that history does pivot on technological advances. And the future is often made as history repeats itself.
But I am not at all comforted by this eventuality, with which politics simply cannot keep pace. How many people will have to die so that America, China, and Russia can carve up Mars for exploitation?
But back to Misuk’s answer about Machu Picchu. “Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t make your vision come true.”
“And what’s your vision?” I asked.
Without hesitation she replied, “To find out what God’s will is for me in this world, and do it.”
Amen. That’s always the best we can do, and for the best possible future.
Wonderstruck.
Originally published at Medium. Reprinted with permission.