Flight 9525 (ePub)

Flight 9525 was written as a kind of reflection and response to the crash of a German airliner that was hijacked by a suicidal copilot who then flew the plane into a mountainside. All 150 people on board were killed.

Don't we owe it, in memoriam, to look at this execution of 149 people with wide-open eyes and not sweep it under the rug? Shouldn't we try to discover a deeper meaning for these tragedies that are so common in the modern world?

There are many institutions and customs that we can blame for these tragedies, but in this book, I want to go beyond the physical causes that create so many victims on a daily basis and look at the metaphysical causes. I am using the word metaphysical to signify that I want to search for a much deeper meaning to all this, some kind of spiritual or philosophical explanation for the terrible things that are going on in this world. Much of what I will talk about is somewhat abstract and perhaps theoretical, but I think people are searching for answers that go beyond the standard and rather meaningless explanations that religions have put forth to account for tragedies like Flight 9525. Simply put, the three basic questions that I want to examine are: 1/ Is God (or some form of higher power) a myth? 2/ If God is real, what are the characteristics of this Being? 3/ If God is real, then why do human beings suffer? Why would an all-merciful, all-loving, and all powerful Being permit Its creations to suffer?

The latter of these three questions, to my knowledge, has never been answered with anything but weak and unsuccessful rationalizations by those who believe in God, and the failure to answer this question has led many to the conclusion that God does not exist.

Among the many other questions that Flight 9525 will attempt to answer are the following: What is consciousness? What is death? Do the theories that religion and science use to explain our origin as a species have any validity at all? Or are they just illogical fantasies that either mask or justify the atrocities that are occurring on a daily basis in this world?

However, the central questions that I will return to again and again are these: In this magnificent universe that we live in why do horrible tragedies like Flight 9525 keep occurring? Why do human beings suffer at all? What is the root cause of suffering? Why does it even exist?

And is there a positive explanation for all this terror and tragedy that exists in the modern world? It can't really be that we were just created to suffer and die. Can it? What is the point of this whole thing? It often seems like life is a grand adventure, even a quest. There's a constant drive for something more, as if there's some buried spiritual treasure out there. And then, one day, we find ourselves on Flight 9525, and the quest goes out the window as we're reduced to screaming in terror at our approaching fate. Most of us won't die in such a dramatic and super-sudden way, but death is death, so it pretty much amounts to the same thing. So what is the explanation?

What I am basically asking, very persistently, is why does suffering exist? This world of ours, in 2017, has become a tidal wave of suffering, misery, and murder, and as I walk through the woods on a pleasant spring day, I can't help but look up towards the sky and say, "Why? Why is there so much suffering and injustice in this world?" And the reason I ask these questions is because if we can ever figure out the root cause of suffering and injustice, we should be able to do something about it.