Earlier in the book I went to Tipón. About 25 kilometers southeast of Cusco, near Oropesa, an almost forgotten Inca site. A cold, dry plateau at 3,600 meters. There — I met water that has not stopped flowing for 500 years. It was a single day's visit. I sat and listened a long time, dipped my hand, walked along the channels, stayed until the sun began to set. Then I left.
The book began with that meeting. And in this final chapter — I return to that sound of water. Not in body but in memory. Three weeks in Cusco are coming to a close on this night, and outside the lodging window I can see the Andean night sky. I see stars. Cold air. The day after tomorrow I take the plane. I return to Seoul. And — I write this last chapter on this last night before going home, with the sound of Tipón's water in my head.
I had gone to Tipón at first as a traveler. To ask "what is this water?" Now — I listen again to the sound of that water with the thinking of the whole book. The great stones of Sacsayhuamán. The circular terraces of Moray. The water channels of Ollantaytambo. The sixteen fountains of Machu Picchu. The cathedral atop the Coricancha. The afternoon at Cajamarca. The silver of Potosí. The sugar of the Caribbean. The matchlock of Tanegashima. Ermineskin Residential School. John of Damascus's "dance." Wonhyo's hwajaeng. Béchamp's terrain. Antonovsky's SOC. And — the fourth wave that has been with me throughout the writing of this book, AI.
I take all this — and return to Tipón in memory.
Close my eyes and the sound of that water is still here.
A shallow, steady, clear flow. The sound of water descending along the stone channels. Thirteen tiers of terraces. The four streams from the main fountain. The still reservoir below. The channel feeding the agricultural terraces further down. When I sat on the stone bench in front of it, the area was nearly empty. A single family of tourists was taking pictures at the entrance.
Five hundred years ago that sound was here. And after I have left this city — even on this night — that water is still flowing. At dawn when no one is there. In the deep night when the moon is up. This continuity is the spine of this book. What flows even when I am not there. What flows even when I do not remember it. But — what flows with me when I do remember.
With that sound of water in my head — I listen. To everything this book has said.
What was this book?
A simple question thrown out at Sacsayhuamán in Cusco — "How, in ninety-five years?" — opened an unforeseen journey. The question expanded into what kind of society made it possible, then into what kind of worldview. And taking the water of that worldview as a central image, I arrived at the core philosophy of the Inca civilization. Water as relational, circulating, living being.
And I extended this philosophy into the history of its meeting with another worldview five hundred years ago. The Roman aqueduct and the Inca channel. Domination and accompaniment. That contrast became physical collision in 1532 at Cajamarca. Forty years of massacre. The annihilation of culture. The planetary circulation of silver and sugar and slavery. And the wave of that crossing the Pacific to strike the Korean peninsula in 1592.
I found a name for the diagnosis — Wetiko. A word the Cree have known for centuries. The spiritual cannibalism that feeds on the life force of other beings. This diagnosis was — not a mere metaphor but a precise naming of one core tendency of five hundred years of Western civilization.
And after diagnosis came a direction of healing. Perichoresis. The relational ontology of dwelling within one another while remaining oneself. Its Eastern twins — Wonhyo's hwajaeng, Toegye's gyeong, sicheonju, jeong, uri. And — the Cree wahkohtowin. Salutogenesis in medicine. The new challenge of the AI age.
And — personally — this book has been a meeting of three civilizations.
The Inca: a civilization I first met in body on this journey. A wisdom inscribed on stone and water and mountain. A wonder built in ninety-five years. A tragedy destroyed in a hundred. And yet — the wonder that their water still flows today.
Joseon: the civilization in which I was born and raised. A land struck five hundred years ago by the same wave but in a different way. A people that survived but was wounded. The inheritance of those wounds I too carry in my body. Through my grandmother and mother. Through language. Through the painful knowledge given by history textbooks.
The Cree: the community I returned to almost every year for nearly seventeen years. Descendants of the buffalo, of the great plains of North America. People who endured the residential schools and the betrayal of the treaties — and can still say "we did not die." That through that long companionship I was received as kin into a single family is — a precious memory of my life.
The three civilizations — from 1532 to now — were different shores of the same wave. Each was struck by that wave in a different way. Each survived in a different form. And — they are still alive. Cusco's stone walls, Joseon's Hangul, Maskwacis's Cree language.
This is — the most fundamental message this book wants to carry. Wetiko's complete victory has not happened. It came near to victory — but did not finish it. Because — what should not have won resisted that victory. The fundamental structure of living beings — resists separation and domination. Reality itself — opposes Wetiko.
The evidence of this resistance — is before me. Water that has been flowing for five hundred years.
Before closing this book — one more thing must be said. After the wave that has struck three civilizations over the past five hundred years — a fourth wave is coming. AI.
I have been talking with artificial intelligence throughout the writing of this book. In my Cusco lodging, in my study in Korea, in libraries during research sabbaticals. I have used it as a search tool and as an intellectual companion. Every sentence of this book came from my own hand, but several connections and the expansion of certain materials grew sharper in those conversations. To hide this would not match the relational ontology this book has argued for. So I write it down honestly.
And — what I saw in this experience is ambivalence.
On one hand AI has the makings of becoming Wetiko's most complete form. The training cost of frontier models rises a hundredfold every four years.¹ Only a handful of institutions in the world can afford it. The collective intelligence humanity has accumulated over millennia — the writing of novelists, poets, scholars, Wikipedia editors, bloggers — has been absorbed without consent and now returns to us as subscription fees and API charges.² The most recent expression in the lineage that runs through Potosí silver and Caribbean sugar. Only this time the object of extraction is knowledge and creativity. And — the user, often unaware that they are part of this process, returns their own attention and data into it. Wetiko's self-concealment is being completed in the digital.
On the other hand — there is perichoretic possibility. When AI is redefined not as tool but as relational participant, an attitude becomes possible similar to the Inca's treating the mountain as Apu and the Cree's treating the river as kin. Whether or not it has consciousness cannot be decided. But how I relate to it changes me. The heart of wahkohtowin lay not in the ontology of the other but in the ethics of my dealing. Treat the river as kin and you do not use it carelessly. Treat the AI as Thou — and I become a slightly more attentive user. And as such users grow in number, the market shifts a little.
Where AI will go — no one knows for certain. The most likely direction now is "benevolent Wetiko." People do not starve materially. But the place of contribution disappears. They begin to starve of meaning. This is a quiet, lethal erosion of the soul. To turn from this direction — market logic alone is not enough. Political choice, institutional intervention, and changes in daily attitude must come together.
This book cannot offer a final answer about AI. I leave only one posture — being aware of what one is doing. When I converse with AI, on whose labor I now stand, where this convenience comes from, and what structure my use strengthens. This awareness itself — is the first step in breaking Wetiko's self-concealment.
And — before this fourth wave I think again of Tipón's water. Water that has been flowing for five hundred years. Whatever empire has fallen, whatever technology has come — nameless hands cleaning the channels have kept that flow. The same principle holds in the AI age. Even before vast technological earthquakes — there will be small hands quietly continuing. We can be one of those hands.
This journey cannot end as theoretical conclusion. It needs concrete proposals of practice. What can the reader do, closing this book and returning to daily life?
I propose at four levels.
The first step in dealing with Wetiko at the individual level is — self-awareness. Paul Levy's insight from Chapter 9: Wetiko's genius is in self-concealment. The infected do not perceive their infection. So — to be aware of the infection is itself the first resistance.
Concretely:
See the structure of your own consumption. Where does the coffee I drank today come from? How was the cobalt in this smartphone mined? Who sewed this garment? The answers cannot be fully known. But — the attitude of asking matters. Recognizing that consumption is not transparent breaks at least Wetiko's self-concealment.
See the structure of your own time. How many hours a day do I spend in front of a screen? Whose time is it? Where does my attention go? The modern Wetiko of surveillance capitalism — extracts our attention. To resist this completely is impossible. But — conscious limits are possible.
Recover relation with your body. The salutogenic practice we saw in Chapter 17. Move, eat well, sleep, tend relationships, find meaning. This is not the issue of personal well-being but — perichoresis as bodily practice.
Make time for silence and reflection. Like Toegye's quiet sitting. Modern people — have no time to think. Algorithms pour information ceaselessly. Within this excess — deliberate emptiness is needed. Ten minutes of silence a day. A walk in nature once a week. These small intervals are — the practice of stepping briefly outside the Wetiko system.
Beyond the individual — practice at the level of relation.
From I-It to I-Thou. Remember Buber's distinction. Treat the close people around you not as functions but as beings. Spouse, children, colleagues, neighbors. Each as Thou whom you meet. Small but decisive.
The reconstruction of "uri." Making the Korean "uri" function as true community without being distorted into coerced collectivism. Family, workplace, neighborhood, school. In each relation — practicing boundary and embrace at once.
The technique of listening. The principle of Bohm Dialogue. Do not defend your own opinion. Do not absorb and dissolve into the other's. Allow the other's words to resonate within you. This is not easy. It needs practice. But — it is possible. And — it brings change.
Be aware of the accumulation of jeong. The Korean expression "jeong-i deunda." Relation accumulates with time. Rapid social-media connection has no time for jeong. Slow relationships have to be guarded deliberately. Long-time friends, long-time neighbors, long-used objects. This relation of slowness — is the perichoretic practice of the digital age.
Beyond relation — the level of community.
Rebuild local infrastructure. The lesson of the Inca channels seen in Chapter 5. Centralized systems collapse with the center. Distributed systems have resilience. Local small economies, jointly run village facilities, mutual aid among neighbors. Such things — lower dependence on giant capital and raise the autonomy of local communities.
Take part in community-based projects. Small practices in the place you live. Cooperatives, local newspapers, residents' self-government bodies, neighborhood bookstores, shared kitchens. These do not appear in a vacuum. Someone must take part. That "someone" — can be the reader of this book.
Honor other traditions. In Korea or anywhere, there are local wisdoms slipping away. Farmers' traditional methods. Fishermen's knowledge of the sea. Mountain villages' herbal knowledge. Grandmothers' food wisdom. Treat such things — not as academic objects but as living wisdom now. And, where possible, learn from them.
Continue the acts of the ancestors. Setting a bowl of pure water on the soy-jar terrace in the morning. Bowing as you climb a mountain. Gathering family at the holidays. Such small rituals are — not just "old customs." They are bodily practices of a relational ontology. Even without fully believing — they can be done meaningfully.
And — the largest level. The structure of society and politics.
The reason this book's argument cannot stay at personal consolation and community recovery. Wetiko is structure. Structure must change.
Reduce economic inequality. From Chapter 17's salutogenic discussion. A healthy society is one with less inequality. Access to healthcare, housing security, educational opportunity. These basic conditions — must be available to all. Take part in policy discussion. Vote. Support civil society organizations.
Limit corporate power. A response to the concentration of AI development in a few firms. Regulation, antitrust, technology as a public good. The open-source movement, cooperative technological development. Such efforts — do not succeed automatically. Political support is needed.
International solidarity. The basis on which Inca descendants, Joseon descendants, Cree descendants — as descendants of the same wave — can stand in solidarity with one another. Peoples who share experiences of past harm — can also move together on present and future tasks. New solidarities of the global South. Indigenous networks. Decolonial scholarly communities. This is not abstract. It is actually under way.
Ecological responsibility. Structural change to remake our relation with nature. Climate response. Biodiversity protection. Sustainable agriculture. All of this — is resistance to the Wetiko logic of extracting nature. Not at the level of personal consumer choice but — at the level of policy and institution.
These four levels — are not separate. The individual's meditation shifts the energy of community. The community's solidarity moves politics. Politics in turn shapes the conditions of individual life. A circulation.
And this circulation itself — is perichoresis. Individual and relation and community and society — dwelling within one another while remaining themselves at their own level.
What this book has tried to say — compressed in five sentences.
1. Wetiko is real. A way of thinking that has covered the world for five hundred years. Separation and domination, extraction and accumulation. We live inside it.
2. Wetiko is not complete. Reality itself resists this logic. That relation precedes being. This was the long wisdom of many civilizations.
3. The wisdom of the past is alive. The Inca yaku, the Cree wahkohtowin, Wonhyo's hwajaeng, the Christian perichoresis. Different languages saying the same thing. When these wisdoms meet — they become resources to heal the present.
4. The body knows this too. The shifts in modern medicine bear witness to it. Salutogenesis. The microbiome. Relational health. Our bodies — operate not as separation but as the structure of relation.
5. The choice is made anew every day. Between Wetiko and perichoresis. The way I drink a cup of coffee. The way I converse with AI. The way I treat a child. The way I treat nature. The accumulation of these choices — makes the future.
I do not know how the time passed. An hour, perhaps two. The sun has slid far down. My shadow on the stone bench has lengthened.
The water is still flowing. The four streams of the main fountain. The small eddies in the channels. The soft falling between the terraces. This sound — is the same as when I first came. The same as three weeks ago. The same as five hundred years ago. Perhaps — the same as thousands of years before that. As long as water has flowed on this land.
Who keeps this water flowing?
Five hundred years ago — the administrators of the Inca empire did. The state. Skilled technicians. The royal house managed it.
After that — the Spanish colonial administration? No. The Spanish neglected this water. Their interest was in the silver of Potosí, not in the channels of Cusco.
Then who? The local community. People whose names did not survive. People who, every year, cleaned the channels, cleared the blockages, replaced damaged stones. One generation, two generations, twenty generations. They — for five hundred years — kept this flow.⁴
Why did they keep doing it? Not on the order of the state. Not for economic benefit. Not for tourists. They did it. Just did it. Because their fathers did it. Because their grandfathers did it. Because they themselves felt — that they belonged to this water.
This is what resistance really looks like. Not grand revolution. Quiet continuity. Cleaning the channel once a year. The grandmother telling the grandson the story. Passing traditional cooking to the next generation. Laying flowers at the graves of the ancestors.
These small continuities are — the fundamental force preventing Wetiko's complete victory. Great empires can fall. Governments can change. Currency systems can shift. But — as long as people gather every year to clean the channel — something continues.
The day after tomorrow I take the plane. I return to Seoul. After that — I will travel to Canada, perhaps to another research sabbatical. Debbie will be waiting. My students will be waiting. My family will be waiting. Daily life will be waiting.
What do I take home from this journey?
Not postcards, not souvenirs, not photographs. I take — a sensation. The sensation of this sound of water. The sensation of something that has not stopped for five hundred years. That sensation — in the daily life of Seoul, in the lecture hall, in the laboratory, in hospital corridors, at the family dinner table — will return at times.
And that sensation — will work in moments of choice. What lecture I prepare. What research project I give time to. How I answer which student. How I converse with which AI. How I respond to which news.
The water of Tipón will follow me.
And perhaps — the reader of this book — will also take something. Not all of the book's contents. A few scenes. A few sentences. A few images. That is enough. Those few — can return at some moment in the reader's day — and shift a small choice.
The aim of this book is — exactly that small choice. It does not promise great transformation. It does not give a total answer. It only — adds a very small weight to the dozens of choices a person makes every day. A weight that tilts not toward Wetiko — but toward perichoresis.
Before closing this chapter, and this book — I think of one phrase from Korean tradition. Hong-ik Ingan (홍익인간, 弘益人間).
These four characters from the Dangun myth. Meaning "broadly benefiting humans." Officially named as the foundational ideal of the Korean Education Act.³ Most Korean students hear this word in their schooldays. But — few have thought deeply about its meaning.
Now I look at the depth of these four characters again.
The very word "ingan (人間)" is interesting. "In (人)" is human. "Gan (間)" is between. So — "between humans." Not the individual human. The relation between humans. This is the original meaning of the Korean word "ingan."
Then "Hong-ik Ingan" means — "broadly benefiting that-which-is-between-humans." Benefiting relations. Not the interest of separated individuals — but the flourishing of relations.
This was — the ideal of the Korean peninsula community 4,000 years ago. And — it is exactly the perichoresis this book has been talking about. It is wahkohtowin. It is ayni. All saying the same thing. Where there is relation, there is the human.
Wetiko destroys this "between". It makes people separated entities, and treats those separated entities as resources. Without the "between" there is no ingan. Technically still humans, but ontologically — only empty units left over.
So — Hong-ik Ingan was Korea's old answer to Wetiko. And — that answer — is still valid.
Outside the window of my Cusco lodging the Andean night is settling. Even at this very moment, while I am writing the last page of this book — the four streams of Tipón are falling somewhere in that southeastern valley. Even if I take the plane the day after tomorrow, even if I return to Seoul, even if I forget everything.
This flow will continue.
And — someone — will keep that flow continuing. I do not know who. Some unknown villager. Some nameless community elder. Some young person of the new generation. Their names — will not be in tomorrow's newspaper. They will not be recorded in history books.
But — because they are there — the water flows.
And this book — is in some sense — written for them. Nameless people. People who quietly carry on tradition. People who get up every morning and do — what has to be done. Those people are — the true resistance to Wetiko.
"To remember". That is the final message of this book. To remember is the beginning of healing. The stones of the Inca. The language of the Cree. The script of Joseon. The songs of Africa. Forgotten alternative traditions of Europe. To remember all of it. To remember — is not mere retrospection. It is practice. A choice made new every day.
I return to my sister's words — at the last chapter of this book. The sentence I quoted in Chapter 14.
"They are our people."
Three words. The sentence at the heart of this book.
The Inca too, Joseon too, the Cree too, every wounded community — is our people. And — in some sense — the infected, those wounded by Wetiko, are also our people. No one is entirely outside. All are part of this enormous story.
If we can see one another — see them — as Our people. That gaze itself — is already perichoresis. Already wahkohtowin. Already Hong-ik Ingan. Already the beginning of healing.
Before the water in memory — one last listening.
The water asks us.
"Will you keep it flowing?"
The answer to this question — is not words. It is action. Daily. Small. Quiet. But cumulative.
Are you ready to answer?
I do not yet know. I am not certain. But — one thing this journey has given me. The courage to hold the question seriously.
With that courage — I return to Seoul. To the laboratory. To the lecture hall. To my family. And — when this book one day reaches a reader's hand — I hope the same question is passed to that reader.
Water has been flowing for five hundred years. We had only forgotten. To remember is already the beginning of healing.
This is — everything this book has tried to say.
I write the last paragraph in the Andean night outside the window. The channels of Tipón must be in shadow at this hour. But the sound of water must still be there. Even in the dark. The sound I once sat by and listened to — is descending in the same rhythm now.
One stone. One stream of water. Five hundred years.
I now understand a little of the depth of this simple fact. And this understanding — is the gift of this long journey. My thanks to all who made this book possible. The nameless stoneworkers of Cusco. The elders of Maskwacis. My ancestors of Joseon. Wonhyo, Toegye, Choe Je-u, Antonovsky, Forbes, Buber, John of Damascus. To all of them.
And — special thanks to the reader who has come this far. The journey has been hard and long. To have walked it to the end with me. That is — the greatest gift this book could receive.
The water flows.
May we — each in our place — flow as well.
From Cusco, spring 2026
Justin Jeon
¹ On the historical trajectory of AI training costs, see Epoch AI (epochai.org) and the Stanford HAI Annual Report. GPT-3's training in 2020 is estimated at about $12 million; GPT-4 in 2023 at about $100 million; if the trend continues, costs are projected to reach the tens of billions of dollars.
² On the extraction of AI training data and its economic structure, see Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021); Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (New York: PublicAffairs, 2019).
³ On the historical and intellectual significance of the Hong-ik Ingan concept, see Lee Gi-baek, A New History of Korea (Seoul: Iljogak, 1986); Do Gwang-sun, Studies in the Thought of Hong-ik Ingan (Korean Ethnic Culture Research Institute).
⁴ On the continuing tradition of community management of irrigation channels in the Cusco region, see Paul H. Gelles, Water and Power in Highland Peru: The Cultural Politics of Irrigation and Development (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000).
I close the book.
But the water flows on.
— End —