Moral Dead Reckoning

Our ideas of justice can be quite peculiar.  For instance, the rather nebulous, and almost impossible to prove, notion of intent has a dramatic, even pivotal, significance in what we consider just.  There are many thought experiments (and real-world scenarios) that amply demonstrate this.  Consider two situations.  In one, Bob prepares dinner for Alice.  He hates Alice, so he intends to poison her, but, instead of applying the poison (which coincidentally looks much like salt) he adds salt, and Alice walks away from the dinner unscathed, never knowing Bob intended to poison her.  In the other, Bob prepares dinner for Alice, who is his good friend.  He accidentally uses poison instead of salt, and kills her.  Intent matters so much to people that surveys and experiments repeatedly show that people consider the first Bob more deserving of punishment than the second Bob, despite the second Bob being the only Bob to actually kill anyone.  We call the first scenario attempted murder while we describe the second as a tragedy.

This idea of intent is a strange and challenging wrinkle in the idea and implementation of justice in a moral fashion, perhaps because it is reflective of deeper questions about what the purpose of the justice system as a legal and social apparatus within the social contract of governance is.  Implicit in the salience of intent is that the justice system does not exist to impose objective, results-based consequences, but rather to address concerns about the functioning of individuals in society.  The first Bob is considered more deserving of punishment because his intent was malicious, from which we extrapolate that he could try again or otherwise engage in asocial actions, while the second Bob is considered a less asocial figure because he had no malicious intent, despite the terrible outcome.  Morality, even within a given cultural context, is far more complicated than a simple set of outcome-based rules.

In December 2024, a man was murdered.  The murderer deliberately targeted and ambushed his victim, gunning him down outside his hotel in broad daylight while on his way to work.  It is not the event itself, though, that inspired this post, but the reaction to it.  You have doubtless already realized the event to which I am referring, the murder of Brian Thompson.  That you may well not recognize that name, but would probably recognize the accused murderer’s, is a testament both to the distortions of what constitutes news, and the most disturbing element of the entire affair: the outpouring of sympathy for the murderer.

When I first saw reference to this phenomenon, I was inclined to dismiss it as sensationalized.  The nature of the news media and of social media easily and readily conspire to amplify fringe voices and viewpoints precisely because they are sensational, and therefore will attract more attention.  That politicians would echo these sentiments was concerning in its implications for their moral principles, but also not surprising, as they are often motivated by similar factors to the media – namely the desire for attention (and whoever would assume a politician is a moral creature?) – and so, again I was inclined to dismiss the idea that any significant proportion of ordinary people were coming to such concerning conclusions.  Then I began hearing the sentiment expressed in everyday life: by colleagues, acquaintances, and in snippets of overheard comments.  I found it troubling, far more so than other differences in opinion or viewpoint, for its implications about shared (or unshared) understandings of basic morality.

The suggestion that Mr. Thompson somehow “had it coming” because of the industry with which he was involved is reflective of two major divergences from the vague moral consensus.  First, it suggests that vengeance is a justifiable motive for violence – indeed, that vengeance is justifiable in its own right (and regardless of external or objective standards).  Second, it implies an acceptance of the most extreme (and concerning) conclusions of utilitarianism as a moral philosophy.  While I have no way of knowing the actual thought-processes in which people are engaged, nor can I prove these conclusions objectively and empirically, and they are assuredly not universal in their applicability, they are valuable to consider in this context because they allow a deeper, rational insight into the underlying morality of the matter.

There is little doubt of the murderer’s intent, given the words written on the bullet casings and the manifesto he wrote.  To return to the original thought experiment, if the intent was to commit harm, then traditional views of justice would hold the murderer is the most in the wrong.  Indeed, the legal system recognizes these differences, for accidental killings are differentiated from murder, and murder is even separated based on levels of intent, with premeditated murder such as this example being considered the “worst” kind of murder.  In this case, though, the suggestion is that the murderer was justified (in a way) precisely because of his hostile and deliberate intent.  Not the intent to kill, but the reason for killing.  This is a far cry from Asimov’s suggestion that “violence is the last resort of the incompetent.”

To be clear, I am not a pacifist – far from it.  To deploy another, possibly overused quote: “war is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth war is much worse.”  Yet, there is a distinct difference between employing violence in the context of war, and deploying interpersonal violence as an outlet for an emotion associated with a nonviolent problem.  This is the key difference along which a functional social contract must draw a stark moral line.  To put it more clearly, violence can be justified when other resolutions cannot be affected: for instance, in the case of self-defense, the defense of others, and other circumstances in which the application of violent means will prevent an even less moral outcome.

Part of what makes Mr. Thompson’s murder so heinous is the emptiness and futility of the murderer’s action.  Whatever the murderer’s grievances with the healthcare industry – and the possible legitimacy or illegitimacy of those grievances, along with the genuine issues in the structure of America’s healthcare system, are beyond the scope of this post for the simple reason that they do not have bearing on the amorality of the event in question (An American Sickness, which I read before I started writing book reviews here, provides a reasonably objective analysis of the many factors making that system so complex and imbalanced) – slaying Mr. Thompson does not represent a corrective mechanism, does not incite positive change, and does not resolve the supposed basis and motivation for the crime.  This invalidates any pretense to morally justifiable violence.  Violence harnessed for defense, and for war, serves a purpose, achieves some specific end, but the violence perpetrated against Mr. Thompson did not further any direct or immediate objective.

Many moral systems impose a clear standard of conduct with regards to other human beings, including a prohibition on murder, regardless of the supposed reasons (and distinct from other forms of killing based on other intents and in other circumstances, again such as war or self-defense).  Utilitarianism, though, does not.  This is not unique, but what makes utilitarianism unusual is that its natural extensions include the conclusion that murder can become, not just acceptable or justifiable, but more morally right than failing to murder.  If the murder of one individual would result in a net benefit to society, or even to a few people, then utilitarianism more than suggests that the murder would be justified and right.  After all, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…which becomes a much more ominous quote in this circumstance, when the sacrifice is involuntary, than when Mr. Spock deploys it.  Democratic societies, with their elevation of the majority as the prime decisional and guiding authority of the society, its government, and its social contract, are particularly prone to the reasoning of utilitarianism.

In the utilitarian view, therefore, Mr. Thompson’s murder would be justified if it even brought attention to particular issues resulting in positive change which benefited the many, although there is room in this paradigm for a philosophical discussion regarding the relative value of a human life.  Moral relativism, though, is far more destructive, for it is this that suggests that the vengeance motive is justified in its own right, that we should sympathize with the murderer because he believed he had cause for grievance (again, the legitimacy of said grievance, and its applicability to the deed, are beyond the scope of this post).  Moral relativism allows for murder to become an understandable, even justifiable, expression of discontent, and it is in the case of Mr. Thompson’s murder forming a dangerous alliance with utilitarianism to say that the murder was justifiable because the murderer’s vengeance motive is relatable to the majority.

This is the implicit (sometimes explicit) message of those who defend, justify, or otherwise exonerate the murderer of the usual implications and connotations of his crime.  I do not know whether it is unconscious or conscious, or which would be worse.  Better that these people not be aware of the dystopic direction this line of reasoning tends, or that they should be aware of it, and actively treading that path?  We could present the event as “a hardworking father was gunned down in broad daylight while on a business trip,” and the situation would be more akin to the Alice and Bob examples from the beginning of the post.  That the addition of a detail about the victim’s chosen career – not even what he has done in that career, or his own motivations in being in that field, or how he reached the position he was in, but the mere fact of his professional association – should so dramatically alter people’s perception of justice in the case, of right and wrong involved, is no small step towards upending the basic concept of equality under the law.  Mr. Thompson could have been a man who devoted his entire life to improving the healthcare industry so more people could access the care they needed, but because he had a prominent role in a flawed healthcare system, he has been judged and found deserving of death by the modern mob mentality.  It begs the question: who is next?  If murder is justified when it is perpetrated against anyone associated with a career, a profession, a vocation, and hobby with which the mob is displeased, it is not slippery slope fallacy to wonder who else’s murderers would be enshrined as folk heroes instead of being treated as the criminals they would be, and it is no stretch of the imagination to come up with an extensive list of people you probably know who could become acceptable targets in this paradigm.

That the internet has coarsened our public discourse, that the modern age is one of declining moral standards and respect for the principle of equality under the law, have become almost axiomatic.  I have always considered such assertions somewhat overblow.  Look to history, I would say.  Look to the vitriolic reactions to Andrew Jackson’s presidency.  Look to the congressmen beating each other half to death in the hallowed halls of government.  Look to tarring and feathering, to the excesses of the French Revolution, to the rhetoric of the Lutheran Reformation, to the execution of Socrates.  To say that our modern levels of vitriol, morality, and law are unprecedented as to ignore history.  This example, though, in large part because I have seen it spill over from fringe internet assertions and chats to legitimate discussion from the halls of power to the ordinary office, strikes me differently.  It’s all exacerbated, of course, by the fact that the multitude of reasonable, thoughtful voices I must believe exist are inevitably drowned out by the vicious, reactionary rhetoric.

Where do we go from here?  I have confidence that the justice system will not stray so far from the notion of equality under the law as to accept the outraged justifications for murder as exonerating.  That so many (and I wish we could gain a better grasp on just how many) believe the murderer to be a folk hero, and will consider a conviction, a guilty verdict, to be a kind of martyrdom, though, is a deeper problem with no clear solution, for morality is a difficult thing to inculcate, and a harder thing to change once established.  Somehow, our society’s common notion of morality is breaking down beneath an onslaught of the excesses of moral relativism and utilitarianism.  There is no panacea, no fantastic elixir, that will heal these divisions or shore up our crumbling shared moral foundations.  The best we can do, perhaps, is to ensure that these voices, which I will continue to call fringe, are not the only voices that can be heard.  That is why I wrote this essay, though I know it will be read by few and will not be noticed in the larger debate. If I did not write it, if we do not ensure voices of reason and morality are raised and amplified, if we allow these assaults on the notion of equality under the law to go undebated, Mr. Thompson will not be the last victim-villain.  You or I may be next.