Not-So-Gross Domestic Product

In the spirit of the season, my family's been working its way through biographies of religious figures. "2000 Years of Christianity", "Muhammad: The Last Prophet", "Dalai Lama: The Soul of Tibet". It's been really enlightening to think about what it must have been like living with these real human extensions of Deity. Somewhat mercifully, man-on-the-street interviews didn't exist in Jesus' time (and I wonder what his neighbors said about him???) Anyway... Something they said in the Dalai Lama biography stopped me in my tracks. "Tibet," they said "is a nation wholly devoted to the production of enlightened beings." Woah. They do not have an agricultural infrastructure. They do not sell anything (even before the brutish Chinese invaded them). They have no military. They don't produce tchotchkes. There is no such thing as a Tibetan automobile, and there never has been. They don't talk about how much money they do or don't have. They produce enlightened beings. And what's more, they export them. I can't help but contrast that with my own nation, which currently is on a campaign of exporting filth, death, destruction, and debt. Oh yeah, and McDonalds, which may qualify as all four. You just have to wonder, what it would be like to live in a place where the entire culture is focused towards creating and reincarnating beings committed to the purpose of the betterment of the human soul. Dizzying, isn't it?