It would not be an exaggeration to say that a substantial number of people have lost their moral compass and no longer know the difference between right and wrong. This phenomenon is being played out with the recent murder of an insurance executive.
On December 4th, Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, was shot to death in a cold-blooded murder outside the Hilton Hotel in downtown Manhattan. Thompson was planning to speak at the annual investor conference. At the time, investigators collected evidence, including some video footage of the shooter both at the scene and apparently at a hostel he was staying at.
The images were released to the public, and a tip from a customer at a McDonalds in Altoona, Pennsylvania, led to the arrest of Luigi Mangione for the murder of Thompson. Although Mangione is charged with capital murder, he is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Long before the evidence began to pile up against Mangione or even his name known, social media was a buzz with comments defending the cold-blooded murder. It was pegged as a modern Robinhood, fighting against the uber-rich insurance industry denying claims that kill people. The former shock reporter Taylor Lorenz from the Washington Post and New York Times wrote online, “And people wonder why we want these executives dead.” After a backlash, Lorenz retracted a bit by saying, “No, that doesn’t mean people should murder them.” Then what does it mean?
Within hours of the killing, The Network Contagion Research Institute of Rutgers University identified thousands of similar posts on X and other social media platforms. Similarly, wanted posters of other insurance executives were plastered on a busy thoroughfare in Manhattan with red and black words: “Wanted. Denying medical care for corporate profit. Health care CEOs should not feel safe.”
The rise in vigilantism, or the acceptance of killing another human being in cold blood as being justifiable in retribution for aggrieved harm, is not only destabilizing for a society but also is morally bankrupt. Supporting the murderer of Brian Thompson reflects a growing problem in our society: right and wrong is no longer a fixed theme but is dependent on the situation. In moral terms, this type of thought is called situation ethics.
Situation ethics has two significant flaws. First, it stipulates that there is no objective understanding of right and wrong; the situation dictates good and evil. In our case, many believe that murder was justifiable based on the notion that the greedy insurance company caused the same amount of harm—an eye for an eye. In a civil society where law exists to sort out these types of issues, the social contract of all people is to refrain from taking the law into their own hands. In essence, justice is not served because the facts that could come out have been buried by the act of the alleged murderer taking upon himself the role of judge, jury, and executioner.
Secondly, situational ethics is entirely subjective. Having the situation dictate the moral response places morality in the hands of each individual. What is perceived as an injustice may not be an objective injustice. Perhaps a person feels he is the victim, even though there is no proof to substantiate the claim objectively. Does the person acting out on his feelings have the right to kill another human being? In his subjective situation ethics, he would, but not necessarily in the realm of the objective moral order.
When individuals reject the objective moral order and become their source of the truth, the killing of another human being is not justifiable homicide but murder. Those who defend the action of killing another have as broken a moral compass as does the killer.
Unfortunately, the reactions of many supporting the killer prove that many are stuck in the victim mentality, which stipulates you have a right to lash out against your perceived oppressor. Perhaps in a world of victimhood the Robinhood response is not as surprising as one would think.