Is it possible for a plane to accidentally disappear from the world’s radar screens without a trace? The answer apparently is, No! And so the possibility under study by people looking for the plane is that a human agent or agents caused the plane purposely to disappear through a mechanism or maneuver they are still trying to figure out. Which is the reason much investigation is now focused on the pilots and crew as well as the passengers.
The purposeful act of making a plane disappear cannot be an easy operation. There cannot be too many options for doing that. Eventually, it can be figured out by people with special knowledge about airplanes, what they can do, or what can be done with them. If one thinks that the intended goal is to make the plane disappear entirely, wreckage and all, the field of possibilities lessen.
What would be the ultimate purpose of doing that? What personal or strategic goal could be achieved? Who benefits? No one has any idea, so far. But that would be something that would show itself once the plane is found.
In the meantime, the questions are endless. One is right to be afraid to theorize. All that has been presented so far are guarded suppositions. They take on the qualities of fiction, reminding us of scripts that could sit well in another James Bond sequel, or even perhaps something from “Ancient Aliens.”
The pilots either voluntarily or under duress turned off the transponder making the plane lose contact with people tracking its course. Then the plane descends to such a low altitude as to make it disappear from ordinary radar screens.
They follow a new course for now undetermined. Did something happen along the way? If you land a plane relatively intact over the deepest part of the Indian Ocean, will it sink taking with it every small trace of wreckage? Can it be done?
And yet, the narrative of MH 370 presents to us a good study of human psychology. In due course, it will test our ability for story-telling. The big story is really how a whole planet responds to a such an unprecedented mystery. One is tempted to compare it to magic, which, as we know, is not really magic but only the illusion of it.
We are familiar with how a coin may seem to disappear from the hands of one adept with the craft. From there, we may let the imagination fly. Elephants have been made to disappear.
At one time, a jumbo jet, right in front of the audience’s eyes. This is not an unviable direction to pursue for those searching for the plane if nothing else shows up that is any more concrete than what is now available.
The root of magic of this sort is always “misdirection.” The object does not really disappear in an instant. The magician simply causes the onlooker to look elsewhere while the object is transferred from one location to another, in other words, hidden away. Ironically, the act of misdirecting always involves making the onlooker look at where he or she should logically be looking. Humans are surprisingly extremely logical and consistent when they gather as a group. It is easier to fool an audience than a single individual.
A single individual is in fact more unpredictable. Thus, what a magician does is lead the onlookers’ attention to where they should logically be even as the “magic” act is really happening elsewhere.
We can only watch the story of the search for MH 370 from a distance. And yet it is also a good vantage point if only because it is a vantage point freed somewhat by the closed logic of those who are directly involved in searching for the plane. The searchers follow the logical steps involved in searching for plane wreckage. They have to.
But even they admit that what anyone knows so far is only conjecture. Meanwhile, it has been 10 days since the plane disappeared. The hope of finding it seems to dim with each passing day. Are the countries involved really telling us all they know? Most likely not. That would reveal too much of their own intelligence gathering capabilities.
That is some sort of tragedy right there.
We are right to wonder if there is some form of magic involved here. In which case, a good question to ask is always this: If it cannot be found where we should logically look, where we have been looking so far, is it because it is hidden away where it should not logically be?