Why Are We Surprised When Buddhists Are Violent?

nytimes.com

5 points·gerbilly··2 comments

> There is a philosophically problematic presupposition that also figures in widespread surprise at the very idea of violence perpetrated by Buddhists — that there is a straightforward relationship between the beliefs people hold and the likelihood that they will behave in corresponding ways.

Bingo! This is maybe compounded for Buddhism because, chances are, your average western person knows few or no people who are Buddhist in the way Myanmar's people are (i.e., have it woven into their cultural and ethnic identity). I imagine that most westerner's associate Buddhism with the laughing genial Buddha statue, or celebrities who subscribe to what this article describes as "blandly nonreligious mindfulness meditation now becoming more ubiquitous even than yoga".

That article really beats around the bush. Let's just call a spade a spade: it's racism. It's no less racist to believe an ethnoreligious group of people intrinsically non-violent than to believe them intrinsically violent. Both cases are failures to recognize and appreciate the universal human condition. In both cases human beings are reduced to caricatures.

I doubt the author would discuss Kantian ethics when criticizing the Alt Right. That he does here without ever admitting the obvious is disheartening.

To be clear: we're all guilty of this. A tendency toward racist thinking (more generally, imbuing intrinsic traits to an ethnic group based on cultural stereotypes) seems to be part of the human condition. The worse sin is in denying it.

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