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.