A person was killed. That’s the sort of factor individuals usually get upset about. However not this week. This week, when UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot useless in Manhattan, the web erupted in cheers.
Many individuals, together with many progressives and liberals, mentioned they’d refuse to mourn the UnitedHealthcare government due to the ordinary unfairness of medical health insurance suppliers just like the one Thompson oversaw.
The backlash in opposition to Thompson unfold throughout social media, from TikTok to Twitter, LinkedIn to Bluesky — sometimes acerbic jokes concerning the poster’s empathy being out of community or that Thompson’s declare to sympathy had been denied. Some customers commented with “deny, delay, depose” — a reference to the three phrases reportedly inscribed on the gunman’s shell casings, themselves a reference to the well-known insurance coverage system tactic of “deny, delay, defend” when averting claims from sufferers.
The web response felt uncomfortable to some bystanders provided that we’re all imagined to care about human dignity — the concept that each single individual has intrinsic and inalienable worth. The idea is on the coronary heart of human rights: It’s as a result of each individual has worth that they’ve the correct to, say, not be murdered.
But the individuals posting vitriolic feedback about Thompson really feel justified in being smug concerning the loss of life of this human particularly. That could be comprehensible, given the hundreds of thousands of People who suffered on account of the trade that he represented. However disregarding human dignity by committing or cheering on an act of violence can’t be the reply. So, what’s? Is there a greater strategy to sq. ethical outrage at somebody and what they symbolize, whereas preserving religion with a perception of their human dignity?
How to consider human dignity
Our biggest philosophers and non secular thinkers have thought of this similar dilemma over the course of centuries. We will be taught from the insights they surfaced alongside the best way.
The thought of human dignity crystallized within the wake of World Struggle II, when the Common Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed in its first article, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” However the idea goes again a lot, a lot additional.
It goes again to the Hebrew Bible, which teaches that humankind was created “within the picture of God.” Each Judaism and Christianity took this to imply that every individual has one thing of the divine in them. Which means they’ve inherent price, a elementary sanctity that needs to be revered. In different phrases, the theological doctrine of imago dei, or “picture of God,” isn’t only a creation fable, it’s the grounds of an ethical crucial: You must deal with individuals as if there’s God in them, as a result of there may be.
To get a way of how this concept performed out within the historic creativeness, think about this story. In response to the Bible, when Moses was liberating the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, he parted the ocean so they may stroll by means of to the opposite aspect. Pharaoh and his Egyptian charioteers got here chasing after them. However as quickly because the Israelites made it safely by means of, God despatched the waves crashing again down, drowning the Egyptians.
The traditional rabbis, embellishing this biblical story, wrote that the angels in heaven began cheering and praising God after they noticed the Egyptians drowning. God bought offended on the angels and rebuked them: “The work of My fingers, the Egyptians, are drowning at sea, and also you want to say songs?”
The story reveals the stress between anger at an oppressor and the concept of human dignity — and it comes out on the aspect of human dignity.
This concept filtered down by means of Western thought and was amplified within the Enlightenment period. The 18th-century thinker Immanuel Kant gave it a secular formulation when he argued that it’s best to by no means deal with a human being as a way to an finish; persons are ends in themselves. That supplied a basis for human dignity because it got here to be codified within the secular human rights motion and the Common Declaration of Human Rights.
The identical core concept arose amongst Jap thinkers. Buddhist philosophy, for instance, emphasizes that every one beings have “Buddha nature,” or the potential to be enlightened. Sure, we typically commit dangerous actions, however that’s as a result of we’re topic to sure “causes and circumstances” — like ignorance and struggling — that preserve us trapped in unsuitable views and habits. This philosophy encourages us to really feel compassion for the one that is trapped in struggling and subsequently performing unskillfully. It doesn’t imply we have now to approve of their actions, however we shouldn’t hate the individual or want them in poor health even when their actions have harmed us.
When a human being has acted in a manner that’s morally repugnant, you may keep in mind that all people have worth and dignity, whereas additionally recognizing that typically their circumstances — the techniques they’re embedded in — twist them into morally deformed beings. That’s tragic, and we mourn for that. It has tragic penalties for a lot of different individuals, and we mourn for that, too. After which we flip that mourning into motion: motion to alter the circumstances, in order that in future, such tragedy received’t happen once more.
How to consider the individuals trolling Brian Thompson
Why has the general public response to the killing of Thompson overwhelmingly been derision for the deceased and admiration for the unidentified shooter?
It will be straightforward to write down this pattern off as performative callousness or as a sardonic type of social media politicking. And it’s true that there’s an awesome tendency throughout social media for individuals to reply to juicy political moments with politically edged sound bites and memetic phrases — for instance, gags concerning the hole chorus of “ideas and prayers,” or the demonstrative lack of empathy many present at any time when a distinguished anti-vaxxer dies from Covid or one other preventable virus.
But there’s extra happening right here than simply knee-jerk trolling, and it’s essential to take a step again and take into consideration why frustration is so excessive. Somewhat than blaming each other for not responding to information of the capturing within the “proper” manner, maybe we must always acknowledge that deficit as a craving for a society that reveals extra compassion by default to its most weak members.
On Reddit’s Information subreddit, the high thread concerning the capturing rapidly crammed with first-hand accounts of individuals whose claims had been denied by UHC and different insurance coverage suppliers. “My spouse has MS, and we have now been combating with the insurance coverage firm for months as a result of they’ve been denying her remedy,” wrote one consumer. “I don’t condone violence in opposition to these CEOs, however I perceive it.”
In her publication, impartial journalist Marisa Kabas posited that the overwhelmingly damaging public response to Thompson within the wake of the capturing was extra than simply performative vitriol. Evaluating the reactions to the loss of life of former Secretary of State and accused battle felony Henry Kissinger, she wrote, “[I]t rapidly grew to become clear [Thompson] was somebody who many People thought of to have violated the human contract.”
When somebody “violates the human contract,” it challenges us to consider how compassion works: Does it circulation towards the most important variety of individuals experiencing hurt, towards a high-profile particular person sufferer, or is there room within the creativeness for each?
Ideally, the reply is each.
However after we see how the world operates, and all of the compassion wanted and sometimes denied, it’s little marvel we discover ourselves at a deficit. In an ever extra polarized society of vastly unequal wealth and enormous pockets of anti-capitalist sentiment, many individuals are out of persistence with being requested to have compassion for many who have proven little for individuals of their care, for humanity, or for the planet.
CEOs are arguably excessive on that checklist. Company regulation has been whittled down over the past 40 years, and executives sometimes face little private accountability for even their most inhumane choices. A latest Supreme Courtroom ruling that limits the ability of federal companies to supervise varied enterprise sectors has made looking for accountability even more durable — and that has huge ramifications for the well being care trade particularly.
Well being coverage outlet KFF concluded that following the SCOTUS determination, there can be much more limitations to “key well being care protections equivalent to prescription drug affordability in Medicare, eligibility guidelines for Medicaid beneficiaries, infectious illness management and public security requirements, in addition to client protections for these in self-insured personal employer-sponsored plans.” In a separate 2023 ballot, KFF discovered that 58 % of adults had skilled an issue with their medical health insurance within the final 12 months and that amongst that quantity absolutely half of them had been unable to resolve the difficulty. Then there are the hardships concerned with paying for insurance coverage to start with.
In fact Thompson and his household deserve our compassion. However the system he was a key a part of ceaselessly operated with little compassion for the people on the different finish of his choices, and the responses that default to jokes about being “out of community” underscore that. UnitedHealthcare routinely brings in income of over $100 billion, with a 2025 income forecast of greater than $450 billion. Of that, Thompson himself could have taken house as a lot as $10 million a 12 months.
These sums are staggering, and it feels profoundly tough to reconcile that a lot cash with the numerous deeply private social media tales at the moment making the rounds — tales of denied claims and agonized fights for fundamental service, together with the deployment of an AI-based claims approval system that was unsuitable as much as 90 % of the time. Nevertheless it’s additionally price noting that Thompson was reportedly conscious of the issues in his trade. One worker advised the New York Instances that Thompson typically spoke about the necessity to change well being care within the US.
The humanity we present one another is a sophisticated factor. It’s potential that after we attempt to categorical our want for it — on this case, for different individuals caught in America’s well being care system — we could also be getting additional away from that very same humanity. It’s tough, in any case, to see the efficacy of a memetic response when it comes throughout as a callous disregard for private tragedy, as a denial of look after a useless man and his household.
Maybe what’s required to grapple with this second is an growth of compassion relatively than a limiting of it. You possibly can have compassion for Brian Thompson and his household, and you too can have compassion for the hundreds of thousands of People who suffered on account of the choices made by his trade and the corporate he oversaw.
After which you may refocus on calling for the sort of significant systemic reforms that may really make a distinction — earlier than the following viral vigilante prompts one other cyclical cultural dialog about who deserves our empathy.
