Kim and the lama’s exchange underscores their divergent worldviews. While the lama espouses material detachment, criticizing people like their hosts for being too materially minded, Kim seems to take a less high-minded approach, appreciating the immediate pleasures that the material world can offer. His criticism of the lama exemplifies this, pointing out that, were all good people freed from the material world, then it would be filled with “evil” people. In doing so, Kim pushes the lama’s ideology to its theoretical limits, highlighting the lama’s hypocrisy: without generous people like their hosts, people like him and Kim would not be able to survive.