In a recent viral video, Tenzin Gyatso aka the current Dalai Lama asks a young boy to kiss his lips and to suck his tongue.
Even though I already grew to expect such fucked up behavior from clergy of all sorts, I was mildly surprised by it this time being a friendly looking Tibetan Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Opting out of the whole sticky mess of cultural relativism, I leave the moral judgement of this incident up to yourselves.
This post is not about the morality of challenging minors to tongue-sucking. This post is about the perils of deification.
Each person that has ever lived - no matter her virtues and achievements - took stinking shits daily, was too often lazy, and displayed a wide range of ugly sentiments, such as envy, cowardice and ignorance. Every moral authority, every political influencer, nobility or intellectual giant will fail under sufficient scrutiny. This includes the heroes of the past and the icons of the present. All of them sweat and flesh and no more godlike than an ape. If you pay attention long enough, you will see all heroes stumble sometimes. Lance Armstrong will try to dope his way to the top, Elon Musk will tweet Russian genocidal propaganda to the millions, and the Dalai Lama will attempt to tongue-fuck an innocent boy.
I do not intend to chastise men here. I simply call bullshit on anyone thinking of herself or any other individual as godlike .
There are no gods, only men.
And men need scrutiny. Especially the ones in a position of power and influence.