Evil, like pornography, is hard to define, but as Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart said regarding pornography, “I know it when I see it.”
Make no mistake about it, what Luigi Mangione is alleged to have done was evil. Likewise, what the insurance industry does to some deserving claimants every day in America is also evil.
A young man’s life may very well be ruined. His family is left to suffer from his evil deed.
Brian Thompson is dead, and his family is also left to suffer because of this senseless death. Because Thompson ruled over an insurance company whose primary goal is profit, profit that too often comes at the expense of suffering and, yes, even unnecessary deaths, he is dead.
There can be no doubt that far too many decisions of the insurance industry are evil.
Luigi is no hero, though he is considered by many fed up with the cruelty and evil of the insurance industry to be one.
Likewise, Brian is not completely an evil man at all, but under his leadership many believe evil is committed. He did not deserve to die, but it is understandable how Luigi might have thought so.
We must be careful not to glorify evil or condone it for any reason. Evil should always shock us, repel us, spur us to action.
We must never normalize evil, nor accept it as a necessary action.
And by all means we should never excuse it, ever. There is no such thing as “good” evil!
To justify his actions, Luigi purportedly quoted the famous Indian philosopher, Krishnamurti, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Krishnamurti is suggesting it would be normal to act abnormally when one is in an unhealthy society — though Krishnamurti would have never sanctioned killing.
If guilty, I suspect Luigi was also influenced by Nietzsche and his superman philosophy. Luigi might have believed he was just the one to strike a blow to the seemingly mighty, invincible insurance industry.
Perhaps he was also influenced by Quentin Tarantino’s classic movie, Pulp Fiction, where evil is considered “cool.”
This is not to justify in any way the evil Luigi is accused of committing, but merely to offer some insight into the young man’s mind.
He experienced evil and is accused of reacting in a way that could have been predicted had we the privilege of knowing his innermost thoughts.
Arguably, equally tragic in all this insanity is the reality that Luigi’s alleged actions will change little if anything in the healthcare industry.
After all, it is still driven by the goal of maximizing profit, often at the expense of good health care.
Congress is a guilty participant in the evil of the insurance industry, too. But due to the fact that the insurance companies own Congress, do not expect the evil to stop.
English scholar Samuel Johnson wrote, “Vice, for vice is necessary to be shown, should always disgust; nor should the grace of gaiety, or the dignity of courage, be so united with it, as to reconcile it to the mind.”
In short, no one who perpetrates an evil act should not be considered a folk hero.
Paul Robinson
Mansfield, Ohio