It's not like the monkey deployed special monkey skills beyond "occupy space while being electrically conductive".

But I get what you’re saying.

Nature is brutal. I distinctly remember a hike where I stumbled on a mother bear (RIP) tearing apart a still-alive baby elk for her cubs. Human civilisation has done a lot of damage. But we might also be able to spare a lot of sentient suffering, bringing care to the biosphere and taking station as nature’s ethical guardians. Food for thought if you find yourself going full misanthrope.

The monkey was probably dead before it felt anything.

  Westerners rarely associate Buddhism with extremism or violence, but Buddhist movements in Asia have often raised few qualms about the use of force. Buddhist authorities have, at times, justified violence against the faith’s enemies and supported authoritarian regimes.

* https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/myanmar-s-extr...

These links are just Myanmar.

We are still people.

I'm always shocked when Europeans or Americans single out Christianity as some uniquely malevolent force.

People are like this. We have always been like this. Being atheist, agnostic, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan, heathen, etc -- it doesn't make you superhuman. We're all capable of this and the sooner everyone realizes this the sooner we can work to prevent tragedy.

The external affair minister of India, Mr Jaishankar, recently excoriated a European politician over Indians handling of Ukraine. He said 'Europe needs to get past the mentality that Europe's problems are the world's problems, while the world's problems are not Europes problems '.

And this is where that attitude comes from

India has dealt with genocides at its borders in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and yet most Europeans and Americans have no idea. The United States of America criticized India for helping Bangladesh during it's Pakistan sponsored genocide, and actually understood military action against India to protect Pakistan's ability to slaughter Bangladeshis.

Again, in Sri Lanka, no one cared

Yet the moment India undertakes it's strategic interests regarding cheap Russian oil, suddenly the whole world starts pointing fingers

There's a lot that goes on in Asia that is simply not reported. If you read American media it's almost like that part of the world doesn't exist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage

There are a couple of Buddhist majority countries; Cambodia, Thailand, Mongolia, Laos and more. Also, judging a religion from its adherents worst atrocities is a mistake - for example, look at history. It is hard to rank them given the high level of sickening background brutality but if we're just commenting on religions not living up to their values the crusades (particularly #4) are difficult to top.

If you want to read a good non-fiction on the Sri Lankan civil war, check out "The Divided Island" by Samanth Subramaniam.

Here's my understanding on the conflict.

1. The Sinhalese majority were given mandate by the British.

2. They used this mandate to apply incredibly discriminatory practices towards the Tamils.

3. Constant rabble-rousing by Sinhalese politicians intermittently led to race riots, in which Sinhalese mobs carried out pogroms and murders against Tamils.

4. Due to almost laughably blatant policies targeting Tamils, such as an affirmative action policy designed to reduce the number of Tamil students at universities, a group of Tamil students formed a league to protest the matter. These students would become the forerunners of the tamil militant groups.

5. Further barbarism from the Sinhalese majority, such as the destruction of culturally important Tamil heritage (for instance, the destruction of an important library), seeding racial tensions.

6. A rebel group carries out an ambush against the Sri Lankan army, seemingly as retaliation for the assassination of one of their commanders. The result of this was a week of rioting where innocent Tamil civilians were murdered, raped and tortured by Sinhalese mobs. This event is known as Black July. To readers: do not view the wikipedia page for this event if you're sensitive. The first image depicts a Tamil man being stripped and beaten before being murdered by grinning Sinhalese youths.

7. War starts, and the rest is history.

I don't blame the "other side" for being extremely nasty ethnonationalists. In fact, I'm very surprised they didn't become violent militants earlier by how badly they were treated. Whilst I can't condone the ethnic cleansing they carried out, I can on a human level understand why they'd carry out such crimes when they'd been so viciously treated by their victims in the past. The sexual violence that seemingly became routine for Tamils is some of the most sickening that I've ever read. I had to take a break and go for a walk after reading some of the accounts.

My job requires me to have some level of awareness to the subtleties of conflict. Having studied the aspects of international relations that pertain to war, I've learned how complex a lot of these internal struggles can be. As such, I try to be fair in my assessments of ethnic conflicts. It's usually not straightforward to charactise one side as villainous and one side as victorious. Having pored over accounts from government affiliated sources, the only consistent perspective that Sri Lankan commentators seem to provide in their support for the killing of civilians is their strong belief that Sri Lanka must be a Buddhist nation and that Buddhism has a special place in the state constitution. That's literally the only thing that they have to support themselves without circular reasoning (and is ironically a key feature of fascist polity). Otherwise, it's "We treated the Tamils like subhumans, actively discriminated them into poverty and kept murdering them and rioting in their areas. Now they're fighting back, so we're justified in committing genocide". How on Earth do you justify that without having a revisionist stance, or claiming that the clearly documented discrimination against Tamils didn't happen?

What happened to the Sri Lankan Tamils is a travesty beyond reckoning. The fact that it has been forgotten and that the Sri Lankan government that stirred this conflict is still at large is a miscarriage of justice so severe that it calls into question any legitimacy of international law and human rights.