Luigi Mangione is the sort of person you’d expect to find in the pages of a glossy alumni magazine, grinning beside a freshly-minted diploma, captioned by a laundry list of extracurriculars that scream “future senator” or “the next Zuckerberg.” He wasn’t just anyone; he was Gilman School’s golden boy, later basking in the Ivy League glow of the University of Pennsylvania, where ambition was as thick in the air as the coffee fumes in a Silicon Valley WeWork. But something happened to Luigi. He didn’t slide into the gilded monotony of hedge fund boardrooms or tech startup hustle culture, trading ambition for equity like a good little capitalist. No, our boy cracked—or, if you’re feeling generous, he experienced an awakening. And now we’re left with the improbable tale of a scion of privilege allegedly turning vigilante and assassinating the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Ironic, isn’t it? The young prince of Baltimore doesn’t just burn his metaphorical palace to the ground; he sets the whole system ablaze—or tries to—and instead of enlightenment, he earns a mugshot and a lifetime supply of hashtags.
To make sense of this absurdity, we must turn to another prince: Siddhartha Gautama, history’s original rich kid who ditched his father’s opulent estate in search of answers to life’s deepest suffering. What could a sixth-century BCE sage possibly share with a modern-day would-be vigilante? More than you’d expect—once you trade the Himalayan mountain air for a penthouse view and swap ascetic robes for a crisply tailored Brooks Brothers suit.
Both were born into privilege so extreme it bordered on satire. Siddhartha was raised in a literal palace, shielded from the ugliness of the world. Luigi’s palace was metaphorical—high school debate championships, Ivy League dorms, and summers interning for NGOs that probably called themselves "disruptors." Both men, despite the padding of privilege, found themselves haunted by suffering: Siddhartha by the visceral realities of old age, disease, and death; Luigi by, perhaps, a severe spinal injury and... well, America. Specifically, the sort of late-stage capitalist dystopia where your insurance company denies chemotherapy while posting record-breaking quarterly profits.
Siddhartha’s awakening involved a realization that no amount of material comfort could insulate him from the inherent suffering of life. Luigi’s awakening, by contrast, was the discovery that his generation wasn’t just enduring suffering—it was being crushed beneath the calcified weight of corporate greed. If Buddha found himself in a bodhi tree under the stars, Luigi found himself at 3 a.m., doomscrolling his way through medical bankruptcy horror stories on Reddit.
Let’s not sugarcoat it: Luigi’s solution to his existential angst was about as far from noble silence as you can get. Allegedly—because let’s remember, this is all alleged, for the lawyers—Luigi chose a path that led him outside a Hilton in Manhattan, 3D-printed gun in hand. And while Siddhartha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, Luigi achieved a mugshot under the glare of police lights. Yet both men, in their own improbable ways, became symbols of something far larger than themselves.
The Buddha left behind a path to liberation, a roadmap for the human soul to transcend suffering. Luigi left behind a manifesto. Not exactly The Dhammapada, but according to early leaks, it reads like a millennial scream into the void: a diatribe against the healthcare-industrial complex, the cannibalistic nature of late capitalism, and a system that feels designed by Kafka on an especially nihilistic bender.
And here’s where irony seeps in like water through a cracked foundation. While the Buddha was venerated by disciples and emperors alike, Luigi became a folk hero for the internet age. Even before his arrest or the reveal of his identity, Reddit threads blossomed like weeds in an abandoned lot. Fan art appeared, depicting him as a modern Robin Hood, dual-wielding pistols and spreadsheets. TikTok was awash in memes dubbing him “The Adjuster.” A contingent of the population, drowning in a sea of unaffordable premiums and medical debt, latched onto Luigi as a symbol—a grimy, flawed avatar of their collective rage.
But symbols are slippery things. The Buddha’s teachings offered humanity a ladder to climb out of its existential despair. Luigi’s actions? At best, they’re a Molotov cocktail lobbed at the fortress of institutional indifference. At worst, they’re the manifestation of a society so alienated from itself that its heroes and villains blur together in a morass of despair and irony.
And what does this say about us? About America? Siddhartha lived in an age of burgeoning empires and religious transformation. Luigi lives in the twilight of a crumbling one, where every institution feels like it’s held together by duct tape and apathy. Siddhartha sought enlightenment to save humanity. Luigi’s story suggests we’re just looking for someone—anyone—to disrupt the grotesque inertia of the status quo.
Luigi Mangione is no Buddha, and that’s precisely why he matters. His story doesn’t promise liberation or transcendence. It doesn’t even promise justice. It’s a symptom, a glitch, an absurdity in an empire that’s all but given up on itself. He’s what happens when the disillusioned prince picks up a gun instead of a begging bowl.
That says more about us than it does about him.