Wealth can be counted, and machines keep getting faster at almost everything measurable. Neither has ever managed to produce honesty. The Dalai Lama put that gap plainly. "Good human qualities, honesty, sincerity, a good heart, cannot be bought with money, nor can they be produced by machines, but only by the mind itself," he wrote. "We call this the inner light, or God's blessing, or human quality. This is the essence of mankind." The claim is simple enough to state in a single breath, yet it cuts against an instinct that is easy to fall into, measuring worth mainly through what can actually be counted, priced or automated, rather than through the quieter things that never show up on any of those scales at all.
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