John Locke

“You’re not John Locke. You disrespect his memory by wearing his face, but you’re nothing like him. Turns out he was right about most everything.”

Those words from Jack to the MIB in the finale episode of the Lost series pay fitting tribute to this fascinating character. When Locke was introduced, people on the show as well as real people watching the show couldn’t make up their mind about whether Locke was a good guy or a bad guy. The main reason for thinking the latter was because Locke was so mysterious and spiritual and that’s outside most Americans’ comfort zone. It creeps people out. But he turned out to be an excellent mentor for Charlie, Claire and Boone (yes, even though Boone died working with Locke...I’ll get to that). Even to Jack: think of the scene in “White Rabbit” when Locke explains to Jack why he (Jack) is not crazy and encourages him in his role as a leader. Sometimes people were skeptical of Locke’s advice, but he always turned out to be right.

Probably the most remarkable thing about Locke as mentor, though was the contant thread running through all his counsel: Let go. Claire letting go of her fear, Charlie letting go of his addiction to heroin, Boone letting go of his infatuation with Shannon, and even Jack letting go of his father; with the exception of Jack, Locke not only advised, he literally trained these people to let go. Long before the series end, letting go was clearly an important theme. By the end of the finally, it was the central message of the whole show. And the central purpose of each of the characters lives.

Christian Shepherd: You needed them just like they all needed you.
Jack: For what?
Christian: To Remember. And to let go.

The central purpose. The central message. And John Locke was the first to bring that message to the castaways. My conclusion: John Locke was the prophet of Lost.

But how, you ask, could that be when Locke was so wrong about so many things? Wrong about what?

The hatch? Locke’s pursuit of the hatch saved Desmond’s life, which was not only good in its own right, but central to saving the island and the world from the MIB.

The computer that saves the world? Locke was right about that, too. It was Jack who was wrong. Locke was only wrong when he became convinced that Jack was right (more on that later, too).

Ben? Locke’s initial mercy on Ben was indeed due to Ben’s manipulation; but it also was what kept the island from blowing up. Locke’s temporary alliance with Ben in the hatch allowed Ben to put the numbers into the computer when Locke couldn’t get to it in time. (Ben said he never touched the computer. He lied.)

The Others? Locke seemed to go over to the others. But he believed the others were originally good (demonstrated by his pursuit of, and alliance with Richard Alpert) and as he revealed to Ben, was disgusted with how Ben had corrupted them. All correct.

The freighter? Locke looked like a madman when he knifed Naomi and said the team on the freighter would kill them all. Whoops, he was right about that, too. After most of the castaways had been killed by Keamy and his gang, Jack blamed Locke for their deaths. But they were killed because Ben was with Locke’s group (admittedly a mistake on Locke’s part). Who was it that contacted the ship and let the freighter crew get to the island in the first place. That’s right: Jack.

But telling Jack and the castaways not to get rescued? that they should stay on the island? Well, they all had to come back to save the island and the world. Locke was right again.

I refer again to the quote above from Jack: “Turns out he was right about most everything.”

Most everything. Two glaring points where John was wrong need to be addressed.


One of the few times Locke was wrong was when he took on Jack’s position about the hatch, that the whole business of entering numbers into the computer was a mind game. He came to this conclusion by watching the orientation film in the Pearl station. At that time Eko had a vision of (by then dead) Ana Lucia telling him that he needed to help John. Later he saw his dead brother Yemi telling him the same thing, adding that John had lost his way. Eko maintained the mission of pushing the button and helping John uncover other mysteries of the island. Executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have gone on record as saying that Mr. Eko was originally supposed to be a major character through the arc of the whole Lost saga, but was killed off early in Season 3 at actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s request because he has a personal and professional rule of not playing the same character for very long. Mr. Eko was indeed the other prophetic character on Lost and I believe Mr. Eko’s originally intended role in Lost was to be John Locke’s partner in the prophetic office of the island. When Eko was attacked fatally by the smoke monster, his last words to Locke were, “You’re next.” The MIB wanted to destroy the partner prophets Eko and Locke and this work was finally completed when the MIB’s unwitting accomplice Ben murdered Locke in Los Angeles. It’s no accident that when Mr. Eko was killed, John Locke buried him and gave the eulogy at his funeral. And as he used Eko’s staff as inspiration for where to go next, Locke essentially combined Eko’s prophetic office with his own as he continued his work.

And now let’s talk about Boone—especially Boone getting killed. First of all, Locke didn’t get Boone killed. He was hesitant about Boone going alone into the plane, but had no choice, since his own legs became suddenly, mysteriously useless. In fact, Locke shouted to Boone repeatedly to get out of the plane before it fell. If Boone had listened to Locke, he wouldn’t have been killed.

But Locke was responsible for Boone’s death. Why? Because he lied to Jack about what happened to Boone and because he was alone with Boone in the first place. If someone other than the two of them had been at that plane, things would likely have turned out very differently. And Jack himself said that his medical treatment was based on false information from Locke. Locke had lied to Jack for the same reason that he had been alone with Boone: he didn’t want anyone to know what they were doing. He wanted to uncover and open the hatch alone, apart from the rest of the castaways. This is a violation of the only principle as central to Lost as letting go. Recall again those words of Christian Shepherd: “No one does it alone. You needed them just like they all needed you.” Locke isolated himself from community, and the resulting death of Boone led the rest of the community to isolate him further. This was what changed Locke from the strong prophetic leader he was in most of season 1 to the scared, insecure prophet that he was until his death in season 5.

At that point Jack finally became a believer. When the two met again, in the sideways world, the two reconciled and paid their restitutions: Jack discovered what it felt like not to be believed, and helped Locke with his surgical skills. I loved watching the warmth and joy in John Locke’s eyes when he realized who he was, where he was, and who Jack was. At the church, as the two met, John Locke greeted Jack with a handshake and the most appropriate greeting from a prophet to a leader, and from friend to friend: “I’ve been waiting for you to come.”

The end (almost)

I was glad to see some kind of closure. Lost strengthened my ability to see the connections with people, the power and importance of letting go, and the often hidden, but very real purpose in our lives. It jump-started my son’s interest in philosophy and spiritual things and perhaps permanently got him thinking more intelligently about issues of morality and responsibility. It gave us some great father-son time, including great father-son conversations.

As for the finale, I say this as a general statement: I think it was the best that they could have made it. No it didn’t answer all the questions; far from it, and I’m one of the people who wants questions answered.

But in a way, I appreciate the writers’ leaving some mythology for me to write (which is what unanswered questions amount to, after all). And they stuck to what was really important: the deepest meaning of the big picture of the show. One great thing about Lost is that it is in a sense a 120-hour long movie with ultimately one great story. Lost didn’t let the subplots keep the one big story from getting all the time that it needed.

And hey, how about that wild and crazy sideways world? Turns out it wasn’t sideways at all. At the premiere episode of season 6, before I’d ever heard of the term “flash sideways” I had the bright idea that the sideways world was actually a flash forward, that what we were seeing there was where the characters would all end up by the end of the season. Not bad: I was pretty close to right. But then Darlton told us that this was not a flash forward at all so I dumped that idea.

In fairness, I was wrong about a couple of things. I thought the sideways world existed in real time in our world. But Darlton was at least half right: it wasn’t a true flash forward because it didn’t exist in real time. “There is no ‘now’ here,” Christian Shepherd observed. In fact that world wasn’t a real one at all.

But it wasn’t purgatory, either. Whether you believe in purgatory or not, the sideways world doesn’t fit the description. Purgatory is a real place prepared by God, but the sideways world is an unreal place prepared by the collective consciousnesses of all the castaways (that last idea is one of my favorites from the show). Purgatory is to punish souls for their venial sins. But the sideways world wasn’t about punishment at all. It wasn’t even about the characters working through their issues.

That’s right. There’s some complaining, I understand, among Losties that, hey, if the characters can work out their issues in the sideways world, what’s the point of growing and suffering to work through your issues in this world? (One could answer that it’s a package deal, but uh-uh— the sideways world isn’t real, it’s not part of the package with the real world). The answer is that the only chance to work through our issues is in the real world—this world—and the sideways world (made only for the Oceanic 815 survivors and Co., remember) is for restitution.

Now, as a Christian, I’m thinking of this from a Christian perspective—the biblical concept of “the restitution of all things”—but I don’t believe the Lost finale was reflective of any particular religion. More on that later.

But for now, think about restitution, like when you steal something, think better of it, and take it back to its rightful owner. Or hurt someone, think better of it, and apologize to that person and make it up to them.

Now think of this: you kill someone, a good person. Later, you repent. Then, at the end of you life, you die. You and your victim go to the same place. How will you share eternity with your victim without making restitution? But you had no chance to in this world so you construct a world in the hereafter where you can make restitution. This, I submit, is what the sideways world is all about.

Take Ben and his dad. Ben’s dad was a decent guy gone bad because of tragedy and his own ego. He became a horribly abusive father and alcoholic. He finally repented of his ways on the day that Ben decided to kill him. Later Ben found his own redemption—again, in this world, on the island, first by confessing his crimes and repenting to Ilana, and continuing in that vein all the way through his righteous career as Hugo’s assistant.

But he couldn’t to the father he’d killed, and because of the murder, Ben’s father never got the chance to pay restitution to Ben. So what happened? In the sideways world, all accounts were settled. Roger Linus was a powerless but loving father(instead of a powerful, abusive, and loveless father), and Ben cared for his dad devotedly to make up for his past hatred and murder. He even gave his father oxygen to make up for the poisonous gas with which he’d killed him!

Think of Locke and his dad. Anthony Cooper, an evil con artist, destroyed people’s lives, especially his son’s, by winning their trust and then exploiting them. In the sideways world, Anthony Cooper gives his son, John Locke, his trust (which John had always wanted) and then John destroys him in a plane. He suffers brain damage—a living death—while John truly lets his father go and goes on to the enlightenment for which he’d always sought. (I’ll say more about the other characters later.)

The intriguing thing about this sideways whatchamacallit is its tangential resemblance to various religious visions while tipping decidedly towards none of them. I’ve already mentioned Christianity. This is no heaven or purgatory; Jack is self sacrificial, but he’s not Christ (the wound in his side is reminiscent of Christ’s, but Christ was lanced after he died, not while suffering). While we’re talking about Christ figures, how about Desmond, the miracle child, but very exclusively human being who, like Islam’s Isa, is the ultimate enlightened prophet who brings enlightenment to the world, but can’t be killed, while Jack who, like Judas in the Koran is the broken disciple who takes Desmond’s place at death. Still, Desmond didn’t ascend to heaven and Jack didn’t disguise himself...it just doesn’t add up to Islam, either.

I never bought into Doc Jensen’s idea that the castaways were reincarnated. And they weren’t: you don’t get reincarnated as yourself—in the same time period, yet! But there was a superficial resemblance to reincarnation. The castaways didn’t just waltz into judgment hall after death. The got entire lives, or at least the semblance of entire lives.

Of course, there was the stained-glass window with all the world religion symbols on it which should have made the point very clear to everyone: all the religions of the world are right, or words to that effect. I’ll say straight up that I don’t buy into that New Age-y kind of message, Lost or no Lost. But I can say that no religion reveals absolutely everything. Given the examples above, that seems to be the stronger religious message of the finale: if you’re sure of how things work in life, the universe, and everything, you’re bound to be wrong about something—and you’re in for some big surprises.

There’s more to say about Lost and spirituality, but I’m saving that for the next (and last) entry in this blog.

On to the characters. I really liked how the writers identified the most basic issues of each of the main characters. Jack had issues with confidence, heroism, leadership, faith, and relationships including parenthood and various romantic relationships, but all of these were derivative of his issues with his father.

I really appreciated what happened with Kate. With all the fuss over whether Kate was meant to be with Jack or Sawyer, I found it refreshing that the answer was neither. Kate’s calling was to be with Claire, helping her out of her mentally and spiritually messed up state and supporting her in raising Aaron.

Oh, and the whole mystery about why Aaron was so important? That was one of many things left for us to imagine, which is a very good thing. But I think it was partly answered. After all, the real “prophecy” was that Claire had to raise Aaron alone, no one else. That was to warn her that someone else with Aaron would always be a danger signal. If Claire had remembered that, the sight of her father holding Aaron would have been seen for the danger signal it was. Instead, she trusted her father and went out with him—who turned out to be MIB in the shape of her father—and Claire was “claimed”. Following the psychic’s prophecy would have prevented that.

As for Sawyer, I say, forget about who is better for Kate, Jack or Sawyer—ask who’s better for Sawyer, Kate or Juliet. Lost history bears record that Juliet was better for Sawyer. This is a consistent theme on Lost: each person is supposed to grow into some beautiful individual. Who you’re supposed to be with is determined by who leads you to be that person. Juliet and Sawyer accomplished that for each other so they were meant to be together. Kate and Claire did that for each other (though not as a romantic couple). Claire and Charlie did that for each other. Desmond and Penny, Bernard and Rose, Hugo and Libby all fit the pattern. Sun & Jin, tragic and so beautiful need little comment in this regard. The whole series, from first season to last, was the saga of how those two shaped each other.


And Sayid and Shannon did that for each other. The anti-Sayid-Shannon camp are put to silence when we understand this. We might like Nadia better than, Shannon, but Nadia was already who she needed to be. It was Sayid who made Shannon feel truly validated and valuable for the first time in her life. And think about it: Sayid’s lifelong struggle with letting others define him as evil came to a screeching halt when he and Shannon were a couple (and promptly resumed after her death). I don’t know how she did it, but Shannon accomplished in Sayid what Nadia could not, not even in the sideways world.

As for Ben, Danielle, and Alex...Doc Jensen actually found the romance between Ben and Danielle to be funny—what’s wrong with that guy? I found it very touching. At first when Ben told John Locke and Hugo that he would be staying in the sideways world a while I thought he was thinking, “This is all right...I think I’ll stay and enjoy this awhile before moving on.” But I see now that it was deeper than that. It’s back to the idea of restitution. Ben owed Alex the father (and mother) she never had. Danielle deserved the lost years with her daughter and the husband and father Ben never was.

See how nicely all this fits together? And it’s magnificent that Hugo, a character who wasn’t even in the original cast of characters but was created as an excuse to have Jorge Garcia on the show—ended up as the island guardian at the end of the series.

But...what about John Locke? Well, he gets an entry all his own.

Smokey mania!

Okay well, whatever "Across the Sea" ends up revealing, I can already tell that I was wrong about the two kids.

BUT, not so much the smoke monster..Okay, so the Man in Black always was a person. But he DID tell Richard Alpert that Jacob not only stole his body, but his humanity as well. I'm still holding onto my theory that the smoke monster was essentially the island itself, or the security system of the island which merged with MIB's spirit when he went down the Holy Waterfall. Also, his body is already dead, so clearly what the MIB wants is not to die, in the normal sense, but to be separated from the smoke monster/security system. If Mother was also so afflicted, then that was why she needed to be killed, to be re-separated from the smoke monster.

By the way, remember back, waaaay back in season 1 when Locke told Jack, "I've looked into the eye of this island, and what I saw, was beautiful!" Go back and look at the cave that Mother showed the twins. It literally looks like an eye! I submit that that was what Locke saw during his first confrontation with the smoke monster: the memory of that encounter MIB had with the Source. Or better, the smoke monster's own view from within that light.

Ghost children

As speculation grows about the "ghost child/children" in the sixth season, here's my two cents' worth: I'm going to back pedal on my previous theory that the "ghost child" was Aaron. Now I say: they're the same people as the adults they're associated with. The first one we saw was Sawyer. The second one we saw, in "Everybody Loves Hugo," was Desmond. They do physically resemble their respective adults. Additionally, the first was somber and serious because Sawyer is and he's in dire straits. The second just flashed his million-dollar smile because, well like I said, he's the man. "Go ahead and scheme away, ya MIB. I'm the bloody MAN, Brotha!"

Desmond is the man

Desmond is special because he’s the only person who is only one person in both worlds. That is: there’s an Island Jack and a Sideways Jack: two Jacks. There’s an Island Kate and a Sideways Kate: two Kates. Etc, etc. But there’s only one Desmond. Whether in the Sideways world or the Island world, it’s the same Desmond. Widmore’s jolt fused the two. Now Desmond knows both worlds. In fact, he knows everything; more than any character on the show now; more than we know. He’s the most powerful man on Lost. Fear is weakness and he’s absolutely without fear. Knowledge is power and he has more knowledge than anyone else, including the Man in Black.

Wondering why Desmond ran over Locke? So am I. But the most significant thing about that scene was not what Desmond did, but the fact that he knew exactly what he was doing when he did it. He knows. He freaking knows it all. Desmond is the man.

The destruction of the temple

Okay, this is stepping back a few episodes, but I want to take advantage of this Lost hiatus to say something about the destruction of the Others' temple by the smoke monster.

When the survivors found refuge in the temple I thought, This is cool, for a few reasons: now we got the heart of the Others’ society spiritually and historically; as the heart of their society it not only offered answers to the island’s mythology, but was most untouched by the megalomaniacal influence of Ben Linus and Charles Widmore; and because I thought here will be the final conflict between good and evil. When Smokey came and destroyed everything I was traumatized. It felt like the series had ended and evil won. But I think in part I was blinded by a Jacob-like optimism that overlooked what was wrong at the temple.

See, as we got closer to the temple, the Others seemed to be revealed to have a more complex history than was revealed in Season 3 where they were just bad guys supreme. As I wrote in an earlier post (“A History of the Others”), the Others actually seemed to have started out as a good society which was corrupted first by Smokey’s interference, then in turns by the wanton power lust of first Widmore, then Ben. So by the time we got to the temple at the opening of Season 6, I was convinced that the temple Others were kind of representative of the original Others, and therefore actually good guys. Certainly they seemed more sympathetic than the Others of Season 3. But right from the beginning there was bad stuff. At first sight of the survivors, Dogen orders them all shot. Lennon only briefly hesitates then shrugs his shoulders and said, oh..ok. So much for valuing human life. Lennon and possibly Dogen lie to the survivors. The truth is the Others just aren’t a good community even at their very heart. Maybe they once were, but they have become corrupted also with much the same spirit as the other Others.

When an attempt to revive Sayid failed, Lennon callously announced, “Your friend is dead.” The body was left lying by the side of the pool. No attempt at consolation whatsoever. When he inexplicably revived, Dogen tortured him mercilessly as a test of the evil in his soul. When Sayid failed the test, Lennon lied and told him he’d passed. But that was only so Dogen could trick Jack into killing Sayid by unwittingly giving him poison. How would Jack unwittingly do that? By Dogen lying again and telling Jack that the poison was medicine.

And, as a bit of an aside, since when do so many guys walk around with loaded guns in a sacred place of worship like a temple?

Guns, cold-blooded killing, disregard for life and death, lying – since when are these the ways of a sacred people? Of a temple? Is this the kind of society Jacob wanted?

And so it came to pass that Smokey succeeded in destroying the temple and the people who insisted on staying there. Yes, I’m suggesting that the very corruption of the Others, the very choices they made to allow their ways to be corrupted, led to the very complex web of circumstances that opened the way for what would otherwise have been impossible: for Smokey not only to get out and kill Jacob, but to get in the temple and kill everyone in it. So, given the choices of the Others, this was meant to happen. Perhaps it was even prophesied. “It only ends once,” Jacob once told the MIB. The destruction of the temple seemed to be the necessary beginning of that end.

This means we have here yet another biblical parallel on Lost: the destruction of the temple by the Babylonians. That destruction also looked like the defeat of God by the forces of evil, but was actually judgment for Israel betraying God’s covenant. Like Smokey, Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians were the bad guys on the face of it, but when the time of captivity came God declared that He sent the Babylonians to destroy the temple.

“Therefore thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.
Then shall the cities of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem go, and cry unto the gods unto whom they offer incense: but they shall not save them at all in the time of their trouble.
For according to the number of thy cities were thy gods, O Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have ye set up altars to that shameful thing, even altars to burn incense unto Baal.
Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up a cry or prayer for them: for I will not hear them in the time that they cry unto me for their trouble.”

(Jeremiah 11:11-14)

You can hardly read that without thinking of the smoke monster destroying the temple. But maybe that means that the smoke monster really isn’t a monster.

Interestingly, in the biblical case of the temple's destruction, God's prophet Jeremiah warned the citizens of Jerusalem, just as Sayid warned the others: surrender to the invasion or be completely destroyed. Now, I bet you haven't thought of zombie Sayid as a prophet, have you? But the parallel is inescapable (even if Jeremiah never killed anyone). Maybe Sayid's nasty state is all part of a bigger plan that ultimately works out for the good. In fact, maybe the good is not bound up with either side. Many have said that neither Jacob nor MIB is all good or all evil. Let's think of it another way: maybe good isn't all Jacob or all MIB. Not that they are bigger than good and evil, but that good and evil are bigger than them. Maybe there's some ultimate truth and good in which both Jacob and MIB play a role.

I’ll just say it out: maybe the evil here is not in Jacob or the MIB, but in their mutual alienation. Maybe Jacob and MIB are supposed to work together rather than strive against each other.

Richard, we hardly knew ye.

I had hoped to get this done before the Richard Alpert episode, but such is life. I actually haven't seen it yet (I watch Lost on hulu.com on Thursdays), so my apologies if my remarks seem obsolete, irrelevant, and/or sophomoric.

This is just a very brief entry to state my observation that Richard Alpert has been diminishing consistently in mystique since he first appeared on Lost. Originally he seemed to be this all-knowing oracle of the island, but that has changed; not that Richard actually became less-knowing, but the more we saw behind the scenes, the more we realized that he wasn’t all-knowing even when he seemed to be. Like in “Because You Left” the first episode of season 5, when he told Locke that he had to go bring the other survivors back to the island and how he had to die. Richard seemed to know everything even when the next time-flash would take Locke. “Next time we see each other I'm not gonna recognize you.” Then we found out in part 1 of “The Incident” that Richard didn’t know any of that; he was just repeating what Fake Locke told him to say. In fact all of Richard’s dealings with Locke were machinations of the Man In Black. This leads one to wonder if Richard was really told by Jacob to kill the Dharma Initiative or the 18 soldiers that he had killed in 1954, or if the Man In Black deceived him to do it (see my earlier post "How to fail at religion by not really trying"). In that event, not only is Richard not all-knowing, he’s almost the opposite: he’s clueless and easily deceived and manipulated (even by Daniel Faraday, “Jughead” (5.3)).

The fork in the road

Originally the bomb “Jughead” was to be detonated with the intention that by preventing the hatch from being built, the ill-fated Oceanic flight 815 would not crash and the remainder of history would be changed. But since the electromagnetic anomaly originally was there in 1977, blowing up the bomb had to change history from that point on. Even the lives of the survivors were changed from that point on. Evidence for this includes, but is not necessarily limited to, the following:

Sideways Jack had his appendix out when he was seven years old

He is the father of a teenage boy.

James Ford is a police officer and never was a criminal.

Desmond is on Oceanic 815.

Therefore a piece of conventional Lost wisdom has been that when the nuclear trigger to “Jughead” was detonated at the end of s.5 the timeline of Lost was split in two; put differently, the two versions of present reality diverged from a single point in 1977. That’s been rendered invalid now by at least one fact: Roger and Ben Linus left the island before The Incident. Also Sideways Ben is not one of the Others, so he was never taken to the temple, so he was never was shot by Sayid (because if he had been shot by Sayid and not taken to the temple, he would have died). This would explain why Sideways Ben is essentially a grown-up version of the kind, idealistic kid who was taken to the island by his father: if Sayid’s attempted murder of Ben started Ben down the path of evil, well, that event never happened in the Sideways universe.

This indicates that the divergence between Island or “normal” reality and Sideways Reality started at an earlier date than 1977 and I’m going to call it at 1974. That’s early enough for the Linuses to have left the island, but late enough for them to have arrived there. But there’s another reason for proposing 1974, namely…well, think about it. If the hatch was never built, then Oceanic 815 never crashed in 2004 (in fact the island is sunk by then), and none of Lost ever happened. Which means that none of the survivors went back in time to 1974. So the elimination of the electromagnetic anomaly would not change history just from 2004 or even from 1977, but from 1974.

Regina Austen, meet Kate Spektor

And now an off-the-wall moment. When I watched “The Incident,” Season 5’s finale, and saw Jacob talking to young Kate, I thought, “Hey! That’s, like, little kiddie Regina Spektor!”

Think I’m loony? Well, this morning I just watched a CBS Sunday Morning story on Regina Spektor originally broadcast three years ago and it included pictures of her when she was nine. Sure enough, little nine-year-old Regina looked exactly like the child actor who played Kate in that scene from “The Incident”! So what does this mean?

1) Does Kate consider Tom Brennan, her childhood sweetheart to be her “sweetest downfall”?

2) Is Kate the real mother of David Shephard and that’s where David gets his virtuosic piano skills?

3) If Kate ever makes her peace with the law, will she become an internationally famous pop star?

4) Did sideways Kate actually kill her biological father, or was it really Fiona Apple?

Self-centered vs. Other-centered

There was an interesting contrast on the “Sundown” episode that highlighted the difference between Jacob and MIB. Dogen described the deal he made with Jacob: Jacob heals his son and Dogen will move to the island and do Jacob’s work, never seeing his son again. Sayid made a deal with FLocke: FLocke will somehow give him Nadia back and Sayid will do FLocke’s bidding. But the fundamental difference is this: Dogen’s deal was one of sacrifice. He himself did not benefit from the deal, but his son did. Sayid’s deal on the other hand benefits Sayid himself. Indeed, it was defined in those very terms. “What if I told you you could have anything in the world that you wanted.” That is essentially self-centered. I submit that Jacob represents other-centered spirituality and MIB represents self-centered spirituality. That’s why when Widmore was acting on his own behalf for his own self-centered agenda (“I’m going to get back what’s rightfully mine”) he was unwittingly doing MIB’s will; which is why Ilana and Bram, Jacob’s people, saw Widmore as being on the opposite side from them in the great conflict. That’s why self-centered Ben played right into FLocke’s hands.

Incidentally, I wonder if anyone else picked up on the parallel between FLocke’s offer, “What if you could have anything in the world you wanted,” and Ben’s offer to Locke in "The Man from Tallahassee": “What if I told that somewhere on this island there’s a very large box and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it, when you opened that box, there it would be.”

Now I’m going to take this a step further. Self-centered spirituality can also be connected to pantheistic spirituality. And this is the great opposition that the Apostle Paul saw as being at the root of paganism: “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature [or creation] more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.”

Let’s not forget that in the earlier seasons of the episode the island wasn’t seen as some thing to guard, but as a kind of a being all its own. Before we ever saw the Man In Black, before we ever heard of Jacob, it was all about the island.

Locke: Each one of us was brought here for a reason.

Jack: Brought here. And who brought us, John?

Locke: The island.

It was the island that did things. The island healed people. The island told people things. The island gave signs. After the hatch imploded, before Locke could go back to being Locke of the Jungle, he had to talk to…that’s right, the island.

Now I’m going to take this one step further: what if we didn’t know the Man In Black’s name because he didn’t have a name? And what if he didn’t have a name because [dramatic pause] the Man In Black is the island?

Whatever it is, we know that the island is not just the tip of a mountain sticking up out of the ocean like a normal island. This island heals people. This island can move through space and time. This island has a built in donkey wheel like a quarter mile underground, for crying out loud. I submit that this island is an incomprehensibly advanced, complex machine built by Jacob or Jacob’s people. If Jacob didn’t build it, he at least runs it. And over the millennia he has brought people to it to be blessed by its benefits. But the island is not just a machine; it’s a learning machine. Over the millennia it has been copying the experiences of the people who come to it until eventually it developed a consciousness of its own. Then it grew tired of just being an object to be protected, an object that helped others and it longed for an identity of its own, separate from the object of the island and separate from Jacob. This gives new meaning to Jacob’s answer to Hurley:

Hurley: Who killed you?

Jacob: An old friend who grew weary of my company.

This is why the MIB couldn’t kill Jacob: Jacob is its keeper, its master, if you will. This is why the MIB wanted to kill Jacob. This is also why the MIB/FLocke can’t kill the candidates: the island isn’t programmed to do that.

The numbers revisited at last!

So on “The Lighthouse” we learned that the numbers are degrees of a circle. That’s awesome. Seriously, now we know, at least in part, where the numbers come from. The remaining unanswered question, of course, is what, if anything, determines which names get assigned to which numbers on the compass.

But that’s okay because the really significance of this revelation is that there is no inherent power in the numbers. It’s reminiscent of George Martin’s comment on the public’s reaction to “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” upon its release in 1967: “People were doing all sorts of things, turning it on its edge, playing it backwards, trying to find the answer, the cipher to this enormous enigma. And the really great joke was, there wasn’t one.” Losties went wild in the first couple of seasons trying to figure out some mathematical pattern or other such significance in the sequence 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. But the power didn’t come from the numbers. The numbers came from the power. That is, the sequence of numbers became significant because of the names they were assigned to, because after all others were eliminated those were the ones who remained as candidates.

This also has great implications for Lost mythology. If the power of the numbers and the very sequence of numbers derives from them being the final candidates, then they were selected decades ago. Recall that Rousseau and crew were brought to the island in ’88 by the numbers. How old were the candidates then? And in the same year, in “Numbers”, Sam Toomey heard the numbers for the first time. If the candidates had been narrowed down to those six by then, what does that mean? And how were the other people eliminated? It’s not from dying, because, for example the name Straume, presumably referring to Miles Straume was crossed out and he’s still very much alive.

And the big one: (Kate) Austen 51. What does it mean that Kate is the only person not in that sequence who is not eliminated (crossed out)? She is neither eliminated nor in the 4-8-15-16-23-42 sequence.

By the way, in Jacob’s cave, I saw the name Littleton crossed out. Is that really Claire inside Claire’s body? Now that Sayid has been “claimed,” will his name be crossed out?

As complete a list as possible of the names and numbers from the cave and lighthouse are found in the Lostpedia article, “The Numbers”.

New questions and the hope of old questions answered

In the last episode "The Substitute," a lot of significance happened, but I'm just going to jot down a few things here.

How many are with me in thinking that the boy following Locke around and being chased by him is Aaron. Yay! Since season 1 we've been waiting to learn why Aaron is so important and now we’re going to finally find out. Yay!

But wait…Aaron was left in LA. If that’s the case, what’s he doing on the island? Unless, he can teleport (or bilocate) just like Walt! Double triple yay! So the unanswered questions about "supernatural Walt" are actually going to have relevance again and maybe get answered! Maybe somehow Walt and Aaron are members of the same class, or order, or whatever. My son has the theory that they will be the new Jacob and Man in Black.

Also (from the cave where Locke took Sawyer):
4 John Locke
8 Hugo Reyes
15 James Ford
16 Sayid Jarrah
23 Jack Shepherd
42 ?Jin-Soo/ ?Sun-Hwa Kwon

What, if anything, is the significance of this order of names. And what does it mean that Kate’s name is not included, even though she was touched by Jacob?

Well that's all for now. More later.

The reclamation of Benjamin Linus

Ben is one of Lost’s most interesting characters. Sociopath, mastermind, manipulator extraordinaire, pathological liar, Ben is so interesting largely because he is not what he seems to be most of the time: he is not unadulterated, irredeemable evil. He does care about something.

Ben was tragically abused by his father because of something that was no one’s fault: his mother’s death in childbirth. Ben’s deep wounds coupled with his brilliant mind make him potentially dangerous, but he is still trusting and hopeful of a better life for himself when he trusts Sayid to take him to the Others. Somehow, Sayid’s deception and attempted murder of Ben (and perhaps his experience in that pool in the temple?) put Ben over to the dark side. But it’s instructive that his evil results in large measure from injustices against him.

The only three things or rather the only three people he cared about were his mother, Juliet, and Alex. But they did not love him back: his mother, who gave him his name, died giving birth to him. Juliet did not love him, but loved Goodwin whom Ben set up to get killed as a result (which didn’t help to endear Juliet to him), and Alex hated him as a teenager as she came to understand how evil Ben was. Juliet betrayed the Others, and Alex was killed because Ben chose to use strategy rather than give himself up to save her life. After her murder, Ben seems to wake up for the first time in his life. First blaming Charles Widmore, he ultimately takes full responsibility himself for Alex’s death and submits himself to judgment by the smoke monster. The monster, instead of executing Ben, lets him off with a very emotional slap on the wrists and simply uses him to accomplish his (the monster’s) agenda of killing Jacob. It’s not hard to do: Jacob brings out in Ben all the longing that perhaps Ben himself didn’t know was there. Ben had a longing to see Jacob, a longing for Jacob to be the loving father he never had. When Ben confronts Jacob about his absence in his life with the words, “What about me?” and Jacob responds, “What about you?” that easily pushes Ben to stab Jacob repeatedly and fatally in the heart.

“What about you?” Ben thought that Jacob was blowing him off, but there’s something more to that question, I think. A lot more. It goes back in part to Alex’s death.

The death of Alex, the only person left that Ben actually cared about, reminds me of a play that hasn’t actually been referenced on Lost, but is instructive nonetheless. It’s Jean Anouilh’s play Becket, about Thomas Becket, a figure not unlike Ben Linus. Becket at the outset of the play is the cold, calculating, Machiavellian right-hand man of England’s King Henry II. In the first Act of that play, the boorish King orders Becket to surrender to him the woman who loves him. Becket hesitates and the King says,

“You care about her then? Can you care for something? Go on, tell me, tell me if you care about her?”

Becket almost does, but not enough to cross the king. He surrenders the woman who soon afterward kills herself.

The king is shocked by the suicide and says to Becket, “You loathe me, I shan’t even be able to trust you now.”

But Becket reassures him,

“So long as Becket is obliged to improvise his honor he will serve you. And if one day he meets it face to face….But where is Becket’s honor?”

Ben likewise serves the forces of death because he has no honor and “improvises from day to day.” “How many times to I have to tell you, John,” Ben told Locke at the end of season 4. “I always have a plan.”

Eventually, Becket does find his honor. If you don’t know the rest of the story, read the play (or see the movie version with Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton; a remastered re-release just came out on DVD). Long story short, when Becket finds his honor, he does a complete about-face spiritually, and opposes the forces he was working for.

Could a change like this take place in Ben's life? I think when Jacob died, Ben at least began to feel his lack of honor as in the scene from Becket. In the sneak preview of one scene from the first episode of the sixth season, Ben says something that was cut from the episode as it aired. In the preview, Ben stares at the fire where Jacob has burned up and asks, “Why didn’t he fight back? Why did he just let me kill him?” Something seems to break in Ben at that point. Later at Locke’s burial, Ben is the one who offers a eulogy: “John Locke was a believer. He was a man of faith. He was a much better man than I will ever be. And I’m very sorry I murdered him.” These words are remarkable. First that Ben voluntarily speaks the truth and confesses his crime. And second that these words are spoken with an obvious profound sense of remorse, not just for what he has done, but for who he is. Everything he has ever done has been about “me”. Everything except sparing Alex as a baby, and even her he allowed to be killed to save his own neck. Ben’s whole life has been “me, me, me”. I wonder how many times since Locke’s funeral Ben has been haunted by Jacob’s words “What about you?” Ben seems to be really answering that question now, and he’s finding that the answers aren’t pretty. And if one day Ben meets his honor face to face, what then? But where is Ben’s honor?


Maybe it’s at the temple.

How to fail at religion by really trying, part 2

So Widmore and Ben both failed at the "religion" of the island for the simple reason that they didn't try. Didn't make the effort to control and submit their wills, didn't make the effort to control their own desires, didn't make the effort to channel their ambitions for good, didn't make the effort to do the hard work of telling the truth. They failed at religion by not really trying.

But that seems about to change this season. Already at the end of season 5, Charles Widmore appears to have had a change of heart, somewhere between the time he sent the ill-fated freighter with psychopathic mercenary Keamy on it and the time John Locke fixed the wheel and made it off the island in 2007. Then we found him pledging to do all in his power to protect Locke's life and get him back on the island with the Oceanic 6 because "there's a war coming." Something in that interval between the freighter and his 2007 meeting with John Locke pulled Widmore's head abruptly out of his powerful, hyperwealthy butt and made him "get religion": his eyes are open now to the real conflict and his past rivalry with Ben doesn't seem to concern him anymore.

But what, if anything, could pull Ben Linus' scheming, lying, sociopathic head out of his butt (especially with such a tight sphincter)? Amazingly, I think that's just what we're beginning to see unfold in the onset of the final season: Ben Linus' spiritual reclamation, maybe even his redemption. More on this next.

How to fail at religion by not really trying

Throughout the series, we heard about the man who was in charge of the island, the one even Ben answered to. His name was Jacob. He was given as the one ultimately responsible for everything done by the others. But was he? Some things attributed to the command of Jacob:


Killing 18 soldiers who attacked the others

ordering the murder of Danielle Rousseau and her baby Alex.

abducting various survivors of Oceanic 815


Ben claimed to get his orders from Jacob, but only later after falling from power, he admitted that he never saw Jacob. So how much of what Ben did was from Jacob? It's likely, given that Ben manipulated things to make him self God/cult leader of the island, that very little of his administration had anything to do with Jacob.

The lists -- yes. Jacob is in the habit of choosing people. He hand picked -- literally -- Kate, Sawyer, Jack, Jin (and maybe Sun, though I didn't see him touch Sun), Locke, Hugo, and Sayid. My guess is that those names were on that piece of paper in the big wooden ankh. And the tailies who were taken based on lists -- they are now seen at the temple and they seem to belong there -- so it seems those lists were really Jacob's choices.

But how they were abducted is another matter. We know, for example, that Ethan and Goodwin deceived the Survivors at Ben's command, not Jacob's. Ben even mandated the over-extension of Goodwin's assignment to ensure his death at the hands of the survivors to remove competition for Juiliet's affections. That's about as far removed from Jacob's lofty big-picture aspirations as you can get.

The point here is that just as countless ungodly things are done in the name of God, so Jacob;'s name is invoked for many things unrelated, or even contrary to his purposes. Recall also how, when Locke met Richard Alpert in 1954, he said, "Jacob sent me," when no such thing had happened. It was just the obvious way to get the stamp of approval. Replace "Jacob" with the name of any popular deity and it sounds a lot like much religious history.

Also note that Ben thought Jacob lived in a cabin when all along he lived in that statue. It now appears that Jacob's cabin was a kind of holding cell for Jacob's Nemesis. So whoever was getting directions from "Jacob's cabin" wasn't getting directions from Jacob at all, but from his nemesis in Jacob's name. Recall how this was shown explicitly when Christian Shepherd said that he spoke for Jacob when he is either on the side of Jacob's Nemesis or IS Jacob's Nemesis.

Now notice that Charles Widmore is opposed by the Man In Black implicitly (his dupe John Locke opposes his arrival as a threat to the island, the smoke monster directly attacks Kemy's men (though sparing Kemy himself, presumably to allow him to strap on the device that will destroy Widmore's freighter and virtually everyone aboard it). But Smokey is opposed to Ben as well (think of his judgment under the temple wall).

At the same time Charles Widmore is not favored by Jacob, either. This is evidenced byu the fact that Ilana & Bram who are on Jacob's side, are opposed to Widmore (Bram tells Miles that he is on the wrong side by working for Widmore). Ben was not favored by Jacob, either: Ben was never allowed to see Jacob and in fact never seems to have known where he lived. Then there's Jacob's famous (and fatal) response to Ben: "What about you?"

So Ben & Widmore were fighting each other for power and mastery, completely apart from the rivalry between Jacob and his Nemesis. This seems analogous to political struggles that take place in the name of religion, but really have nothing ot do with said religion(s) at all. Ben & Charles seem almost completely oblivious to Jacob and 100% ignorant and oblivious of Jacob's nemesis -- they don't even seem to know he exists. And that's why Jacob's helpers see Widmore as if he's working for Smokey: by being wrapped up in their own egos Widmore & Ben both become unwitting tools in the hands of evil. By ignoring spiritual reality, we become evil's greatest patsy.

Not that Smokey has any regard for them. As shown above, there's ample evidence of Smokey being opposed to Ben & Charles. "You're cheating," Locke (the real one) tells Ben. "If you had any idea what this island is capable of, you wouldn't have chicken in your refrigerators." Those words came from the real John Locke, but they seem inspired by the being that influenced Locke's mind all his life and ultimately copied his body.

(to be continued)

John Locke and Judas Iscariot

Now that it's official, and we know that Locke isn't really Locke, let's take a break from time travel. I'm interested in some insights from Locke, Flocke, Ben, and Charles Widmore. First Locke. It impressed me how there seem to be parallels between John Locke and Judas Iscariot. Both were chosen by their Masters whom both later betrayed. Both hanged themselves or at least tried to, and both were possessed in a way. John Locke had Jacob's nemesis sort of in John Locke's mind, influencing him until Locke's death, when he made his own copy of Locke's body and thus in a sense possessed him. It was then that he killed Jacob, or rather used Ben to kill him. Likewise, although Satan influenced Judas to sin before the Last Supper, at the Last Supper "Satan entered into him" (John 13:27) and he betrayed Jesus to his enemies.

One definite difference between them is that Locke was hanged before "Satan" entered into him, Judas hanged himself afterwards. Maybe there's an insight here: Locke was strangled and hanged by Ben, who is also a kind of Satan figure* and then the smoke monster Nemesis was able to totally take him over. Perhaps before Judas' physical hanging, we could say there was a spiritual strangulation wherein he crossed a line and let the devil kill, him, making ti possible to take him over completely.


*compare these two statments: John 8:44b "When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." Ben: "I lied. It's what I do."

Time after time

When Einstein developed his special theory of relativity, and later his general theory of relativity, he did not address the implications of this theory for the existence of time. Indeed, he seemed somewhat averse to doing so. But mathematician (and Einstein’s close friend) Kurt Gödel, did not have such apprehensions. His view can be summarized this way: If time is really just another physical dimension (the fourth dimension of space-time), then time as we understand it, can’t exist. Time as a river that flows along just doesn’t exist, because a spatial dimension doesn’t flow, just as width doesn’t flow, height doesn’t flow, etc.


The question is, how is that we do experience time as something that flows (what Gödel referred to as “intuitive time”)? One way of thinking of this is by analogy. Think of a strip of motion picture film. We watch the film shown through a projector, and it seems that things and people are moving on the film. But of course, they’re not. There are, on the film, a series of still two-dimensional photographs (length and width) arranged in order so that as light passes over the individual photographs in rapid succession through the third dimension (depth), they appear to us as movement. But the reality is they are static.


Now imagine this again, except instead of two-dimensional photographs, there are three-dimensional photographs (length, width, and depth) which are static; they don’t move. They’re arranged in a particular order and arrangement through the fourth dimension (time). Then, somewhat like the light in the movie projector, our consciousnesses pass through these static stills and this produces the impression or “illusion” of intuitive time.


The key point here is that it’s not our bodies or environment that’s moving. Rather there are countless copies or versions of our bodies and environment arranged in these 3D stills; it’s our consciousnesses that are moving through the stills.


This is exactly how time is presented on Lost. Brilliantly, when Daniel Faraday experiments with time travel, he doesn’t send the rat’s body back and forth through time, but her consciousness. Likewise in the episode “The Constant” Desmond’s body doesn’t travel through time, but his mind does. In effect what’s happening is his mind is passing through the arranged sequence of stills in his life then suddenly he skips back to a much earlier slide (in 1994?) and then moves along nicely in that part of the still arrangement, then jerks suddenly back ahead to a much later part of the sequence. In other words his body doesn’t move through time because it’s stuck in each of those slides; only the mind is free to skip back and forth between the slides.


On the other hand, on the island when Ben turns the donkey wheel and moves the island, the wheel gets off track and the people on the island move back and forth through different times; not just their minds, but their bodies as well. Remarkably Daniel Faraday describes this as being “unstuck”; that is, their bodies as well as their minds are unstuck from the stills and actually move to other stills in the island’s “life”.


There’s another application of this view of time that is demonstrated on Lost: the occurrence of event conundrums in the story. I mentioned one of these in my last post. Locke lands on the island and, long story short, meets Richard Alpert who tells Locke that he will be the leader of the Others. Eventually as the survivors skip through time, Locke meets Richard in 1954, two years before Locke will be born and tells Richard that he (Locke) will be their leader because Richard told him so. He also says, “May 30, 1956 I’m born….if you don’t believe me, I suggest you pay me a visit.” Then Locke disappears, an event sufficiently impressive enough that Richard takes Locke up on his invitation, goes stateside in 1956, and sure enough, there’s infant Locke. Richard is impressed enough that he visits Locke again in the early 60’s and even when Locke fails his test Richard gives him another try when Locke is a teenager. By the time Locke comes to the island, Richard is convinced that Locke is their leader and tells Locke so. So when Locke goes back in time to 1954, Locke tells Richard……


You see that there simply is no beginning or end to this loop. Which makes no sense because things have to have a beginning and end, right? Not according to Einstein’s and Gödel’s view of time. If all fractions of a second are 3D stills that are arranged in a sequence, maybe some stills are arranged in a circle and one consciousness can enter at any point and exit at any point. Richard’s consciousness entered that loop in the 1954 meeting, while Locke’s consciousness entered the loop in the meeting with Richard in 2004 after the crash.

Another example of this kind of loop is the connection between Sayid and Ben. Ben is a sociopath who commits atrocities and ultimately manipulates Sayid to kill many people for him. Then Sayid goes back in time and meets Ben as a child in 1977. Ben totally trusts Sayid and looks to him to liberate him from his abusive father. Instead Sayid shoots Ben in the chest intending to kill him. While Ben does not consciously remember the details of this event, the producers themselves have stated that this event was pivotal in turning Ben into the heartless sociopath that commits atrocities and ultimately manipulates Sayid to…..


Again, we can understand that all the moments in these events are arranged in one giant loop which Ben’s consciousness entered in the 1977 meeting with Sayid and Sayid’s consciousness entered in the first 2004 meeting.


All this seems very neat and tidy except for two things. First, even if all events are series of static motionless 3D stills arranged in the fourth dimension, our minds still move through them. And movement requires time. It’s like the sunrise: the sun doesn’t actually rise; it’s static; rather the earth turns. But something moves. Maybe the physical universe doesn’t actually move in the passage of time, but our minds do; something has to move for us to perceive movement and time, even if, as with the sunrise, what seems to be moving is static and what seems to be static is moving. This is what’s wrong with Justin Barbour’s thesis in his book, The End of Time: in this treatise on time, similar to Gödel’s, he nevertheless makes the further claim that Gödel never made: there is no movement at all. But that is clearly impossible. Movement may be different than what we perceive, but it can’t be altogether absent. The sun may not be actually moving, but earth and sun can’t both be still. Likewise, the physical universe may not be moving, but our minds are. And that means there’s still time. Only that time, i.e. intuitive time, is a spiritual, not a physical phenomenon. And that in turn opens up the possibility for what Faraday considers the great revelation: that we are the variables in the equations of relativity. Our free will allows us to make choices and therefore to move to other series of events. This seems to resolve the dilemma of destiny vs. free will. Destiny is where you end up if you stay on a given track of stills, but one can, by choice move to another series of stills. This seems to be what lies ahead for those who blew up the nuclear device in the finale of season 5.

Locke, Flocke, Schlocke

So, in the last entry I made mention of the Man In Black aka Jacob’s Nemesis aka “Esau” taking the form of Locke. While this isn’t universally accepted among Losties, it’s generally accepted and it’s what I’m going with. I also noted that the Biblical Esau was a hunter, like Locke, but posed the question: was Locke really a hunter? That is, was he meant to be a hunter? Remember that scene in "Cabin Fever" (s.4 e.11) where Richard Alpert visits Locke’s (foster) home when Locke was a child? He set objects in front of him and asked him to identify which ones were already his. Locke chooses the vial of sand, and the compass. And by the look on Richard’s face, they are correct choices. Then Locke looks first at the "Book of Laws", then at a knife – one of the objects – and takes the knife. Richard stops smiling and asks, “Are you sure the knife is yours?” Locke nods. Richard takes the knife and disappointedly, almost disgustedly says, “Well, it’s not.” He tells Locke’s foster mother that Locke is “not ready” for their “school”, and leaves very abruptly. Later, as a teenager, Locke is told by a school counselor or teacher that Richard Alpert is offering Locke an excellent educational opportunity in science, (through Mittelos Laboratories in Portland, so this is probably really an invitation to the island), but Locke angrily rejects it, insisting that he is not a scientist, but a sportsman and an outdoorsman. The counselor gently but firmly advises Locke that although he may not want to be a scientist, “that’s who you are, John.” What exactly is going on here with Locke? It seems that throughout his life he has been resisting his true calling, which is not to be a hunter. Where then did the hunter come from? Was in fact Locke’s ambition to be a hunter “Esau”’s idea from the beginning? Has he entered Locke’s mind to influence him away from his true calling as a spiritual leader to be a hunter instead? Has he spent all of Locke’s life setting Locke up to be this person so that he (“Esau”) could use him to kill Jacob?


Consider that when Richard pays Locke that visit as a child, he sees what looks like a drawing of a man attacked by the smoke monster. Richard asks John if he drew that picture and John nods yes. If the Man in Black or “Esau” is the same as the smoke monster, this seems to be powerful evidence that the smoke monster is somehow in Locke’s mind influencing him. Note that this is different from saying that Locke was the Man in Black all along. John Locke is a real person, separate from “Esau”, and called to be a scientist, perhaps even a lawgiver and mystic. But the Man In Black/“Esau” has been with Locke from the beginning of his life, working to steer Locke away from his true calling and be manipulated by “Esau” instead.


By the way, Richard visited Locke first as a newborn baby, then as a child, because in 1954, two years before Locke was born, the grown up, Oceanic 815 Locke told Richard that he was the island’s leader – in fact that Richard himself had told Locke so – and added, “if you don’t believe me, I suggest you come and visit me.” This connects with Lost’s concept of time that seems to reflect the work of mathematician Kurt Gödel. And I’ll write about that later.

A History of the Others

Here's a summary of my understanding of the history of the Others on Lost.

The Others were originally brought to the island by Jacob, probably on the Black Rock in the 19^th century. One of the men on that ship, Richard Alpert, is granted immortality by Jacob. From there they lived in peace and harmony with the environment until the US army comes to the island in the 1950’s . Then the army finds the others and attacks them unprovoked. Forced to defend themselves, they fight and become militant, killing eighteen soldiers and taking some of the army’s fatigues and other equipment, especially weapons.

Question: if Jacob brought the Black Rock, who brought the army? I thought no one could find the island. What if the army was also brought – by “Esau”? Jacob brought the Black Rock to prove “Esau” wrong – did “Esau” bring the army to prove himself right? “They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same.” The army’s arrival and its consequences certainly seem to tip the argument in Esau’s favor.

By the way, whether The Man In Black’s name is Esau or not, consider this: Jacob in the Bible favors the domestic life as does Lost’s Jacob, Esau in the Bible was a hunter. So is “Esau” a hunter, too? If so, notice how he took the form of Locke, the “hunter” par excellence among the survivors. Ah, but then again, was Locke really a hunter? That is, was he meant to be a hunter? Well, I'll write more about that another time.

So anyway, back to Others history. So the Others/Hostiles became militant and well armed. Eventually the army leaves, but the Others remain militant. One in particular, Charles Widmore, becomes outstandingly ruthless and Machiavellian about defending the island. He comes to be their leader and perhaps gives orders that claim to be from Jacob, but aren’t really.

Now it’s as a young man that Charles Widmore first meets Ben Linus, freshly shot by Sayid Jarah. Ben goes back to live with his dad and the Dharma Initiative, but in his heart he’s with the Others all the way. But something else is in Ben’s heart: a cold calculated rage and a kind of sociopathy that covers his whole soul except…Ben’s sociopathy has one hole: he has a soft spot for babies and small children left motherless as he was. So he can’t kill Danielle Rousseau and leave her baby Alex motherless, much less kill Alex. So he goes against Widmore’s orders and brings Alex to the Others’ camp, adopting her as his own daughter. But that soft spot doesn’t stop Ben from slaughtering the entire Dharma Initiative for the Others.

Ben then led the Others to the Dharma compound where they changed from a live-off-the-land back-to-nature-lifestyle to a suburban American lifestyle. Widmore was eventually banished (by Ben’s maneuvering? Widmore’s corruption? A combination of both?) Ben began recruiting people, lots of people, who shared his sociopathy and would be brainlessly loyal and completely controllable by him. He adapted all the facilities of the Dharma Initiative to keep complete surveillance and complete control over everyone on the island. Ben ingeniously wove together the people of the Others with the resources and facilities of Dharma to turn the island into his own private universe over which he is God.

Except…

Except that Jacob is still in charge of the island. And it’s a fair bet that he was not too happy with what Ben (and Widmore) had made of his happy little society. No wonder Jacob never showed himself to Ben.

The picture I get from all this is that between Charles Widmore and Ben Linus, the Others are turned from a benign community into the monsterous cult-like controllers and oppressors that Lost fans loved to hate.

A less serious Lost rambling:

Lost = Star Trek (the original series)

If you're unfamiliar with the original series, this might not make sense to you. But I thought it was kind of fun to observe the parallels between chief characters in the series.



Jack = Kirk

First of all, the names are similar: monosyllabic, end with a "k"; ok, they don't start with a "k," but Jack starts with a J which is right next to K in the alphabet. Anyway, more to the point, Jack is Kirk. He's clearly the hero leader of the bunch. In fact, apart from Jack's issues with his dad, and not being quite the womanizer Kirk was, Jack's personality is almost identical to Kirk's; that is, defined by "I'm the dashing hero who never gives up and always wins in the end."



Locke = Spock

Come on! Their names even rhyme! Locke is no Vulcan, but he is the most in control of his emotions (most of the time) and the most philosophical (I love Sawyer's reaction when Locke punched out Charley: "That's like gettin' Gandhi to beat his own kids!"). Also, if you've ever seen the very few Star Trek episodes where Kirk isn't around and Spock is in the top leadership position, you'd see even more parallel between the two. Two outcasts who were perpetually abused for being outcasts, they adhere to unconventional principles ruthlessly, even to the point of being hopelessly out of touch with what's right before them. Even so they also by the same means have access to insights that no one else could hope to gain. Both are ideal as second-in-command. Unfortunately, while Spock relishes that position and is thoroughly loyal to Kirk, just the opposite is the case for Locke.



Sawyer = Bones

Ok, no name games here, but the parallel is still obvious. Two southern rascals who keep bringing the others back down to earth with a very earthy perspective. Also: the very few times you have Jack, Locke, and Sawyer working together in a scene, it's priceless. Exactly like Kirk, Spock, and Bones. Too bad Lost doesn't exploit that dynamic as much as Star Trek did.

thoughts about the second and third seasons

Originally written November 9

-------------------------

So okay, before I get too far into the fourth season (only seen two episodes so far) I need to stop and assess the second and third.

The first season was about getting acquainted with the island and its mysteries, Season 2 was about the hatch and learning about the Dharma Initiative, and Season 3 is about learning about the Others.
First I'm just going to ramble about my impressions and then I'm going to talk about my ideas about this stuff.

One thing that I found annoying about the second season was what happened to Locke. Now, I was one of those types who couldn't make up my mind about whether Locke was a "good guy" or a "bad guy". In the pilot he gave me the creeps. But I quickly came to like him, particularly from the fourth episode of season 1 because I saw his backstory and thought now here's a guy who went from being the most pathetic loser in human history to being the ultimate g. And he wasn't just cool and a hunter, but he helped people and had insight into what they were about when no one else understood them.

So I was really rooting for Locke and then he got into the hatch and everything went wrong. It's weird and probably intentional on the writers' part, that as soon as Locke got out of the jungle into the relatively modern setting, furnishings, comfort, and technology of the hatch, he started reverting into the mamby-pamby, whiney mess that he was before the plane crashed. Over and over again he'd lie or believe the wrong person and I'd be like, "Awww, Locke!" I'm totally with Doc Jensen when he talked about how great it was to see Locke become Mr. Island superman again after season 3 started. (Yes, I have read quite a bit of the Doc's web site. I kind of made my head hurt, and I don't read it much anymore. I still go back to it now and then.)

It was cool to have a Nigerian character in the story (and Yoruba at that! It was neat to hear Yoruba spoken on an American TV show). One of the annoying things about Season 2 was that we got interested in the "tailies" as Doc J calls them, only to see almost every last one of them get wiped out. Especially Libby! She was so sweet and it was so cool that she and Hurley made a perfect couple.

And now a word about Ana Lucia. What's with the hate? I couldn't believe all I read from guys (on the hulu website) wishing her dead and stuff. What's their problem?! She was annoying at first, but she was a very tragic figure from beginning to end and I had a lot of sympathy for her. Juliette -- now there's someone who looked really obnoxious more than once. But Ana Lucia was cool.

I do have to hand it to Doc Jensen for two insights that seemed far fetched when he originally posted them, but which panned out in the end: that the Others are not the Dharma Initiative people, but the hostiles who were at war with them once upon a time. And the idea that Desmond and Penelope's quest for reunion is going to be the central theme of the story (well, I haven't seen enough of it to know if that's true, but it's turned out to be a major theme anyway).



And I fell for just about every trick they threw at me second season. I totally was with Jack thinking the hatch computer thing was a hoax. How could a 70's-Commodore-looking computer be what keeps the world from blowing up? Then it turned out to be for real. I thought the others were primitives even though Ethan and Goodwin were others and didn't seem primitive. I thought the tailies were others before they turned out to be tailies (the account of their first 48 hours after the crash was really chilling, I thought). But I think I'm getting the hang of this: when the finale for Season 3 started, and I saw Jack in a beard, I knew it wasn't a flashback but a flash forward. A few episodes before the finale I'd actually been thinking, "Man! After all these people have been through, how are they ever going to survive civilized life if they get back? They're going to be a mess!" Apparently Danielle Rousseau has already figured that out about herself.

Seeing Bernard and Rose reunite made me cry. Really cry. For real.

The episode where Hurley and Charlie jump start the van was one of the most awesome experiences I've ever had watching a tv show. I had "Shambala" (which I don't think I've heard since I was a teenager) playing in my mind for at least a couple of days afterward.

Seeing Charlie die and just the fact that he died was the hardest thing I've had to deal with on the show. Honestly I still don't see why he had to close that door. It would've taken ages for that huge station to flood and Charlie and Desmond would've been out of there long before that.

So now there seem to be four factions: The survivors with Jack, the survivors with Locke, the Others, and the pseudo-rescuers. It's very cool to see that the Others want Locke to replace Ben. Not that I'm sympathetic towards the Others, or even Locke anymore. It's just....Ben! He's pure super-geek evil. I'm telling you, when I saw him as a kid...I went to school with a lot of kids like that. In a way I was a kid like that myself. Which is precisely why I have no sympathy for Ben. He suffered a lot, with his mom dying and his dad being a jerk, and blaming Ben for his mom's death and all, but Ben made his own choice. He murdered his father when he was an adult. By that time most kids growing up with crap like that have figured out that you let some things go. Ben reminds me a lot of a verse from the Bible:

"Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves:" Isaiah 28:15.


Yeah, religion gets into this a lot doesn't it? It's remarkable that Ben's mom's dying words were, "Call him Benjamin."

"And they journeyed from Bethel; and there was but a little way to come to Ephrath [or Portland, whatever]: and Rachel travailed, and she had hard labour.
And it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, that the midwife said unto her, Fear not; thou shalt have this son also.
And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she called his name Ben-oni: but his father called him Benjamin." (Genesis 35:16-18)

And, of course, in the Bible Benjamin’s father was Jacob.

It's not just biblical stuff, though. Ben shoots Locke, leaving him to die in a mass grave surrounded by corpses. It's there at the point of death surrounded by the dead that he receives his commission (from Walt, no less). That's a near-perfect example of shamanism, where the shaman is killed and goes to the abode of the dead to receive his or her shamanic ordination, so to speak. In college I read some pretty astonishing first hand accounts of shamans who past through such an experience. Some literally order someone else to kill them by shooting or drowning just to go to the underworld to become shamans.

Bad news for Ben, too, because that passage in Isaiah continues:

"And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it." (Isaiah 28:18)

I notice that Ben as a kid saw his mom on the island, before he met the hostiles, but as yet I don't know that he saw her again after that. My guess is that either Ben gets his come-uppance as in the above verse (the “overflowing scourge” from the rescuers?), or he sees his mom who melts his heart and turns him back from his evil ways. I don't know yet.

And what about Jacob? That puts me in mind of the unhappy revelation at the end of Season 2 when Sayid and company find the remains of the colossus statue on the island: a foot with four toes. The statue was huge, apparently ancient, and the foot had four toes. What else could it be but the remains of an alien civilization? I thought, "Oh, no, aliens." Aliens just seem like such a cop-out. "How do you explain this unfathomable mystery?" "It was the aliens!" "Simple! Aliens did it!" But now it seems inevitable that we're going to deal with aliens sooner or later. So Jacob is invisible, but evidently real. Is he an alien? I groan at the sneaking suspicion that he is. I'll soon see.

What's more interesting is: who are these hostiles? Are they the aliens? At least one of them, Richard, looks like he was the same age when Ben was 10 or 12 as he is now. Are they more recent than the aliens? If they're not aliens (and I can't tell if they keep their shoes on) who are they and what do they want? What do the aliens want? Ah, well, such is the stuff that Lost is made of.

This was the first of my ramblings on Lost, originally written September 25 of this year after finishing the first season and the beginning of the second.

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Ok, so here's some of what I've got so far: The progress through the first season seems a microcosm of human history: first people find themselves in paradise; the food is just provided for them, but then that runs out and they have to get their own. They start by foraging, then they learn to hunt game. Then they learn to domesticate plants. Then mysteries occur and religious or quasi-religious beliefs arise to make sense of the world. Then there's a conflict between science and religion, personified in Jack and Locke, respectively. The hatch sort of is the concrete object of life's mystery. Locke wants to open it, but Sayid thinks that's crazy so he enlists Jack (Reason/Science) to "talk him out of this madness." To Sayid's dismay, Jack wants to open the hatch, too, but for a different reason: Locke is looking for arcane knowledge and experience, while Jack is looking for safety for the people. Ironically, opening the hatch leads to some modern comfort and bounty, but no real answers or safety. Likewise the modern world that science and religion have both created out of conflicting motivations has not provided answers, only more questions and problems and enslaved us to meaningless tedium (the button). The button is like the status quo: the threat is that if the button is not pushed the status quo not maintained, all hell breaks loose. You know that may or may not happen, but are you willing to take that chance? So far, no one is.

As I move further through the second season, I get the distinct impression that the dichotomy between Jack and Locke is not so much "man of science" vs. "man of faith", but "man of responsibility" vs. "man of fate". Jack is willing to take responsibility for everything he does and everything that happens to him. Locke, on the other hand, does not take final responsibility for anything (he does say Boone's death was his fault at first, but he ultimately concludes that the island demanded his death). Locke's fatal weakness is his inability to take ownership of his life, while Jack's fatal weakness is that he takes responsibility not only for his own life, but for everyone else's as well.

I also get the purgatory thing. Very interesting. Apart from the obvious ("we're both already dead," "Are we saved yet?" "Not yet.") there are the cases of those who die: Boone dies shortly after he lets Shannon go, Shannon dies as soon as she finally feels validated and worthwhile. It's like as soon as you've worked through your issues you die and leave the island. If that's true Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Ana Lucia have a long life ahead of them on the island, cause man, I don't remember when I've seen so many messed up issues in so few people.

Introduction

I was encouraged to start doing this by a friend of a friend, literally, after emailing long ramblings about the show Lost. I haven't watched this on tv -- in fact, I don't have a tv -- but I heard enough about it to finally get me to see the pilot on hulu.com and I was hooked. So I watched five seasons of Lost in about two months or so. So here I go. My insights into the show pale by comparison to those of other Lost bloggers, but if anyone finds this interesting, fine. After my Lost rantings have been exhausted, I'll see about other ramblings involving the true nature of time, classic vs. quantum physics, and other things that I really know nothing about.

Cheers, and Happy 2010!