L O S T, Hearts & Minds

L O S T & The Nature of Suicide

2008-03-22T13:13:00.001-07:00

I think everyone feels a flinch of pain for TV characters who either commit suicide or attempt to do so. And it would seem that this empathic twinge is stronger for TV characters than for characters in a novel, I assume because of the immediacy of the visual element that isn't present in written form.

And I'm not talking about what the loved ones of the despondent person must feel, but the person who is actually attempting suicide must feel. But before I get to that, I'd like to differentiate between two types of this desire for death, so to speak.

We might call one of these "environmental suicide," though I'm not talking about the natural environment - I'm talking about the external factors that drive one to contemplate suicide: divorce, job loss, loss of a loved one, etc. - or a combination of all of these.

The other type we could call "internal suicide," which would be the result of any genetically pre-disposed brain abnormality that would lead to clinical depression, bipolar disorder, etc.

I think regardless of what it is that drives one to suicide, I believe the feeling is the same: the apathy, the hopelessness, the longing for relief and release, the final resolve, etc. For someone compelled to suicide, depression cascades down upon you and covers you like thick engine oil, and time becomes like a viscous liquid, moving languidly like honey sliding from a spoon. And no one can experience the feel of the gun in the hand, the cold steel against the temple, or the warm bath and tempered slenderness of the blade.

It seems it is the former type with which we are dealing in the L O S T narrative, and this reminds me of the point made by Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus; namely, that judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Clearly Michael, in Meet Kevin Johnson, has made his judgment, and it's clear that, for him, life is not worth living.

But to some extent we can, if we are avid (i.e., obsessed) fans of the show, empathize with Michael's plight. If we put ourselves in his shoes, we might be able to get an inkling of what he must feel. Prior to the crash of Oceanic flight 815, Michael was estranged from his wife and son, and made earnest, if clumsy, attempts at reconciliation; then, after having just received his son back into his life, he crashes on a strange island full of mysterious and dangerous happenings, unsure of whether they can survive on the island or even get rescued from it; and then, just as rescue seems possible, a boat-full of enigmatic, secretive and apparently hostile strangers kidnap his son right before his eyes; and then, to gain his son back, he must deceive his friends and fellow castaways, and finds himself confronted with the ultimate quandary of killing two of them to save his son; and, once having left the island, he confesses to his son what he did to gain him back, effectively losing him again, finding himself in his pre-island predicament.

It would seem that Michael has come full circle, with all the lurching nausea of a roller coaster ride: hope, despair, hope, despair, hope, despair, hope, despair. I would argue that Michael's emotional journey far exceeds, in terms of psychological trauma, such things as divorce, job loss - or even the loss of a loved one. As horrible as it is to lose a loved one, the loved one is lost only once; the bereaved has one opportunity for grief, for closure, and finally acceptance. I think it's fair to say that none of us will have to go through what Michael has gone through.

In the finale of Season 3, we see that Jack is also on the verge of suicide.

While we don't yet know what has driven Jack to this point, we do know that he had a turbulent relationship with his father, even up to his father's death (may we also call his father's death a sort of suicide?). Additionally, he had grown estranged and ultimately divorced from the woman he "miraculously" saved. During his on-island time, Jack was thrust into a stressful (to say the least) leadership role, and became the Shepherd of the lost flock.

In Jack's pre-island life, on-island life and even his post-island life, we see that Jack has a strong obsessive component to his personality. We could argue and speculate that Jack's predisposition to obsessive behavior and possibly alcoholism, combined with his experiences in childhood and adulthood, has led to his desire for death - his desire is a product of both internal and environmental factors.

This combination is probably even more lethal than in Michael's situation because of the deterministic element: most medical professionals would agree that abnormalities of brain function have a compulsive element in them that is not present in otherwise "healthy" individuals. Presumably, those without the brain abnormality possess a strength of will to withstand adversity that is diminished or possibly even absent - depending on the degree of mental impairment - in those with the brain abnormality.

We could also speculate that it was Jack's obsessive personality that brought him back from the edge of suicide - the car crash on the bridge. As he told Kate in the Season 3 finale: "old habits." Of course as we learned from Tom, a.k.a. Mr. Friendly, maybe the island won't let Jack kill himself...

John Locke tried to commit suicide after Ben shot him and left him for dead in the DHARMA Initiative open grave.

Locke's life story is about the search for meaning, more so than Michael or Jack's story, and thus has more affinity with the Existentialist philosophers. But Locke's search for meaning is also about being "special." His desire is for others - perhaps even God, the Universe, whatever you want to call it - to realize this specialness and to value it. That's what would give his life the most meaning.

We know that Locke grew up in many foster homes after being abandoned by his parents. We know he was conned out of his kidney by his father. He was spurned by his love Helen after she found out about his dealings with his father. Has thrown out of an 8-story building by his father and broke his back, rendering him paralyzed. He was denied access to the walkabout tour, and then on the flight home he crash-lands on an island.

But then something happened. This was the best thing for Locke. When he woke up he was no longer paralyzed. He was "born again" on the island, a clean slate, the future open. He could leave all his miserable baggage behind and create his own meaning.

But Locke's Michael-like emotional roller coaster would continue on the island. First he became the shamanic warrior-hunter for our lost flock, providing food and healing psychological wounds (while Jack tended to physical wounds).

He felt he had some sort of communion with the island, that the island was "speaking" to him, and this made him feel very special. On-island Locke was much more confident and serene (most of the time) than pre-island Locke.

After discovering the Hatch, he discovered the "button," and this became his life's work and meaning. But then the Pearl station was discovered and this was a devastating blow to his belief in the reality of meaning.

But after the Hatch was proved to be real and imploded, he was again born anew and received a vision from the island inside his impromptu sweat lodge. He was on the scent of meaning again.

And when Locke heard from Ben, a.k.a. Henry Gale, that Ben was coming for him, he eventually decided to stay with the Others when it came time for the Others to abandon the Barracks and move on.

Additionally, Locke was able to hear Jacob, whom Ben had insisted was the real Man Behind the Curtain, thus prompting the ever-power hungry Ben to shoot Locke and leave him for dead. And that's when Locke decided to end it all.

But then "taller, ghost Walt" appeared and told Locke to get up because he had "work to do." Locke was special again...

We can see how this roller coaster ride could wear one out, psychologically speaking. Perhaps more than anything else, a human being's search for personal meaning in an impersonal Universe is the quintessential characteristic of what it means to be human. We are self-aware creatures aware of the fact that one day we will cease to exist.

Depending on our psychological and emotional mettle, we can handle all these ups and downs because we know (or at least believe) that both good things and bad things happen to us, and the wheel keeps spinning round. For most of us, most of the time, we can live with that uncertainty. We know that we will ultimately die, but we believe hat it's how we spend our time while we're alive that's most important. We value our lives so much that it's important to us to obtain more good than bad when the final tally is in. We also know that, in the grand scheme of things, our efforts and our accomplishments are ultimately meaningless.

But we can't at the same time value our lives so much and yet think that our lives are meaningless. Indeed, one's life has to have meaning in order for one to value it. If we feel our life has no meaning - and therefore no value - we are naturally driven to the "fundamental question of philosophy" - should I continue to live, or should I end my existence?

Locke had his ultimate weak moment in the DHARMA grave and apparently decided he should end his existence. Which one of us, if in Locke's same position, wouldn't do the same? Locke's lifelong search for meaning met with frustration after frustration. Locke kept bumping up against brick walls. I think many of us tend to forget this fact now that we're in Season 4 and are getting more into the over-arching mythology of the show, and away from the primarily character-focussed narrative of the first two seasons.

But is suicide ever justified? Does one have to take into account the feelings of one's loved ones? Is it cowardly to commit suicide, or does it take the utmost human courage to take one's fate into one's own hands?

Most mainstream religions believe suicide to be a sin - if not the ultimate sin. If God created you, and his spirit lives in you as if in a temple, then you don't own yourself - God does. You're leasing yourself, in a sense. If you lease a car and purposely destroy it, you're in for a lot of money, if not legal action!

But if you believe that the Universe is impersonal and unconcerned, and you have taken steps your entire life to create your own meaning, then when that meaning is gone and one is presumably of sound mind, then maybe the decision to end one's own life is the ultimate expression of courage and dignity. One is not being compelled to end one's own life; one is making a free choice.

We understand that it's different with clinical depression. We understand that one's will is compromised when in such a state. You're not yourself. Your brain is broken and it needs fixing. Your brain is a computer that has crashed and the best thing to do would be to call the Geek Squad and get it fixed right quick.

But one thing's for certain - the decision to continue to live or to end one's existence is not a light one; indeed, it is the most significant decision one can make.

Fortunately, most of us don't make that conscious decision every day. We make that decision simply by continuing to live our lives.

Lost in Galt's Gulch

2008-03-20T12:11:00.000-07:00

With the introduction of the Freighter's captain - Captain Gault - fans of L O S T have been digging around for literary references to the name. This Captain Gault has already been identified, and seems most immediately applicable to the overarching mythology of our favorite show.

But as other bloggers have pointed out, there is also a John Galt of a different type (and different spelling, of course): the John Galt of Ayn Rand's famous novel, Atlas Shrugged.

In this post I'd like to draw attention to the ethics of isolated communities; in particular, isolated communities like Ben's island and Galt's Gulch, where the "good guys" hole up and separate themselves from the rest of the world. But before I do that, I just want to draw some parallels between Ben's island and Galt's Gulch.

Atlas Shrugged is a long novel that encapsulates Ayn Rands main philosophy, Objectivism, and John Galt especially embodies that philosophy. In short, Rand's (and Galt's) philosophy is:

Man - every man - is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

With this philosophy in mind, Rand's John Galt recruits the world's most successful business men - the "Captains of Industry" - to his cause, and seemingly spirits them away to Galt's Gulch: a secret enclave located in a valley in the mountains of Colorado, and is hidden from the rest of the world. Galt is able to recruit the best of the best - the real movers and shakers of the world - because in the Universe of the novel, the world is sinking into an orgy of collectivism and the inevitably increasing nationalization of industry by the governments of the world.

Aside from sharing a geographical similarity to New Otherton

as team Darlton like to call it - both Ben's island and Galt's Gulch are invisible to the rest of the world. Ben's island seems to get its invisible properties from electromagnetism; whereas Galt's Gulch has a man-made (by Galt) high-tech invisibility screen, which is designed to prevent the valley from being found.

Both places elicit an atmosphere of "us versus them." And both leaders consider their people the "good guys."

Let's assume for the sake of argument that Ben is telling the truth when he says that the Others are the good guys. And let's assume that John Galt's philosophy is justified. So is it ethical to take the best, the most creative people from the world and keep them to yourself? Is it ethical to take their benefits to society away?

Do they have an inalienable right to rescind their gifts and use them in their own isolated community? Or are they obligated by some implied social contract to use their gifts and talents for the benefit of society?

Does a human being exist for her own sake, or does she exist for the sake of others? Or does she somehow balance existing for both herself and others?

Lost

L O S T & The Nature of Sacrifice

2008-02-05T14:47:00.000-08:00

Well, the new season of LOST is finally here. Given last season's finale, I thought it would be interesting to explore the nature of sacrifice.

Many thinkers throughout the ages have discussed the phenomenon of sacrifice. I will be discussing the nature of sacrifice from a Nietzschean perspective. My thesaurus defines sacrifice as "an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy."

I think most people who aren't philosophers or linguists tend to classify the term sacrifice into two kinds: the kind as defined by my thesaurus above, and a kind that could be called "self-less" sacrifice. But I think that an easy bifurcation of this term, as well as other dichotomies like "good" and "evil", doesn't do the term justice. I think the phenomenon of sacrifice is more nuanced and that there are degrees of sacrifice.

First, let's discuss what may be called Charlie's "ultimate" sacrifice: risking (and ultimately giving) his life for the sake of our Losties; but primarily Claire.

Clearly, Charlie was prepared to sacrifice his life because of his love for Claire (remember, he was motivated to do this because Desmond told him that if he didn't, Claire wouldn't be rescued). Many if not most people believe that love is unconditional - or at least self-less. But is it? We all like to think so, but let's see what Nietzsche had to say* about it:

"Our pleasure in ourselves tries to maintain itself by again and again changing something new into ourselves; that is what possession means. When we see somebody suffer, we like to exploit this opportunity to take possession of him; those who become his benefactors and pity him, for example, do this and call the lust for new possession that he awakens in them "love"; and the pleasure they feel is comparable to that aroused by the prospect of a new conquest."

In the paragraph immediately preceding the one quoted above, Nietzsche presents the stark contrast of "avarice" versus "love," where avarice is a sort of wanton greed and love is something generous and more sublime. But the point Nietzsche is trying to make in this quote is that one derives a certain pleasure from helping someone in need, someone who is suffering. It makes us feel good to do nice things. If it made us feel horrible to do those things, if there wasn't even an ounce of pleasure or satisfaction, I don't think we would do them.

Nietzsche was as much a psychologist as he was a philosopher, and in other places he talks about how we humans are "knowers who are unknown to themselves"; which basically means that many times we have reasons for action that are not in accord with the true reasons behind our actions. It's almost a Freudian view. We are adept at deceiving ourselves.

But the kind of love Nietzsche mentioned in that quote isn't the primary kind of love that motivated Charlie. Again, love can be thought of as a coarse spectrum or continuum, going from lecherous lust, to romantic love (a mix of the sexual and affectionate impulses), to platonic love (admiring and intimate, but not necessarily sexual). Nietzsche is describing all three of these (and would call both romantic love and platonic love sublimated versions of the sexual instinct) when he says:

"Sexual love betrays itself most clearly as a lust for possession: the lover desires unconditional and sole possession of the person for whom he longs; he desires equally unconditional power over the soul and over the body of the beloved; he alone wants to be loved and desires to live and rule in the other soul as supreme and supremely desirable. If one considers that this means nothing less than excluding the whole world from a precious good, from happiness and enjoyment; if one considers that the lover aims at the impoverishment and deprivation of all competitors and would like to become the dragon guarding his golden hoard as the most inconsiderate and selfish of all "conquerors" and exploiters; if one considers, finally, that to the lover himself the whole rest of the world appears indifferent, pale, worthless, and he is prepared to make any sacrifice, to disturb any order, to subordinate all other interests - then one comes to feel genuine amazement that this wild avarice and injustice of sexual love has been glorified and deified in all ages - indeed, that this love has furnished the concept of love as the opposite of egoism while it actually may be the most ingenuous expression of egoism."

Now, Nietzsche was definitely known for his frequent overkill, and it certainly offends our modern taste to equate love with egoism, but I think he's right - to a point. Let's look at Charlie again.

Charlie definitely wanted to possess Claire's love in the sense used above. Remember, he was jealous when he noticed that Locke was "stealing" some of Claire's attention away from him - jealous to the point of making a public embarrassment of Locke. Additionally, Charlie overcame his heroin addiction primarily as a result of his love for Claire.

But what was the nature of that overcoming and that love? It's undoubtedly a great good that a person like Charlie is able to overcome an addiction; but he gave up one possession (the pleasure derived from the opiate) in the hope of acquiring another: Claire's love.

But what about Charlie's ultimate sacrifice at the end of Season 3?

We could say a number of things, since we don't know what exactly is going on inside of Charlie's head (thanks to Darlton), or even any other human being's head! Speculation runs rampant. But let's have a try at educated speculation.

We could say that since Desmond told Charlie that his flashes are jigsaw puzzle-like, and that the picture can change, that maybe Charlie is a betting man and was betting that Desmond wasn't seeing clearly, or was simply wrong this time.

Or maybe he was thinking that making a go at a life with Claire, which of course contains the possibility of failure, disappointment, and depression - and therefore a possible relapse into drug addiction - would just be too difficult, too great a test for his mettle, and if he could end on a "high note" (remember the episode titled "Greatest Hits"?), he would at least have the satisfaction of knowing, before he died, that he would be remembered and revered by Claire and the rest of the Losties as an admirable hero. (Of course, that still remains to be seen, given the fact that we don't yet know what Naomi's people want with the Island.)

If Charlie derived no pleasure from Claire's love; if he derived no pleasure or satisfaction from knowing that amongst his island community he would be remembered as a hero; then what would be his motivation for sacrificing himself? What would be his reason(s) for action? Have you ever heard of the "BDI" formula? It's short for Beliefs plus Desires equals Intention (or you could say Intentional Action). Working backwards: one's actions are the result of one's desires; and one's desires are based on one's beliefs. For example, I drive down to Starbucks because I desire a coffee, and I believe I can get one there.

So Charlie swam down to The Looking Glass station because he desired to help Claire and his friends by securing their safety and returning them to their lives of normalcy.

Charlie did this because he believed that doing so would in fact secure the rescue he sought. If Charlie didn't desire rescue for anyone, and/or he didn't believe that turning off the jamming equipment in The Looking Glass would secure that rescue, then he wouldn't have swum down there.

But Charlie's sacrifice at the end of Season 3 still seems different to us. When he surfaced in the moon pool to discover that it wasn't flooded, he assumed Desmond's vision was inaccurate and that he wasn't going to die. But once he was captured and tenderly interrogated by Bonnie and Greta, and he saw the flashing yellow light and the jamming equipment, he told the nice Other ladies that he was ready to die.

And even after disabling the jamming equipment and receiving the transmission from Penny and mumbled, "So much for Fate," he was still willing to sacrifice his life for Claire - and now Desmond, who would most certainly have died in the moon pool - after Patchy pressed a grenade up to the portal window.

But can we say that Charlie's reasons for action were now categorically different than those Nietzsche talked about? Could we say that the initial shock of hearing he's going to die gradually faded to the point where he was in fact ready to die? Think about it: if someone came up to you on the street and said you were going to die in 10 seconds, you would be horrified and panicked. However, if you were on death row, and had time to get your affairs in order and make peace with your Maker, you would be more psychologically prepared for your impending non-existence.

Could it be that once this thought worked its way into Charlie so deeply that it became part of his motivational set - his character - even if it was now disconnected from its source? Can we call the fact of desiring the safety and salvation of a loved one a truly self-less act? And if we could, would that make it somehow more valuable or admirable? If it does, then why?

But we could argue that the original impetus was a selfish - or at least a self-interested - motivation. Does an action's value increase as the nature of the motivation for that action changes from selfish to something approaching neutral? If so, why? Does the concept of a self-less act even make sense? Are we simply deluding ourselves again?

Regardless, this analysis doesn't have to demean or devalue Charlie's sacrifice. The sacrifice still took place; and both Charlie and Claire - and all the other Losties - get something in return. In some ways you could call it a win-win-win situation: Charlie's last thought - that he will be remembered as a hero - is a positive one; the Losties (presumably) get rescued; and Claire at least gets to believe that Charlie was not only a hero, but loved her enough to sacrifice his life for her well-being.

I ended up spending more time on Charlie than I had anticipated, so I'll analyze other characters in a subsequent post...

* All Nietzsche quotes are from his book, The Gay Science.

Lost, Charlie Pace

Would You Leave Omnium Island?

2007-09-01T15:55:00.001-07:00

Ben: I can show you things. Things I know you want to see very badly. Let me put it so you'll understand. Picture a box. You know something about boxes, don't you, John? What if I told you 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. What would you say about that, John?

Indeed. Let's assume for the sake of argument that Ben isn't speaking metaphorically. Let's suppose there is indeed a 'box' or some other mechanism on the island that is capable of doing what Ben says. Of course, this is a direct allusion to the box in Flann O'Brien's grimly funny novel The Third Policeman. O'Brien's novel was briefly seen in Desmond's possession in "Man of Science, Man of Faith". As with any allusion in L O S T, there is always rampant speculation as to the relevance of such an allusion: what does it mean for the show? Is it a key in unlocking the mysteries of L O S T? Is it a red herring?

The subject of the novel is about a murder committed by the novel's anonymous narrator and his accomplice. They murdered a wealthy recluse, à la Charles Dickens' Scrooge, for his locked cash box, rumored to have an inordinate amount of money it. But the accomplice betrays the anonymous narrator, who then embarks on a search for it. This search leads him to a surreal police station where a pair of policemen "do not confine their investigations or activities to this world or to any known planes or dimensions."

Eventually, one of the policemen leads our protagonist to the 'box' of The Third Policeman universe. Here's the description, after the protagonist and the policeman take an elevator down to it:

I saw a long passage lit fitfully at intervals by the crude home-made noise-machines, with more darkness to be seen than light. The walls of the passage seemed to be made of pig-iron in which were set rows of small doors which looked to me like ovens or furnace-doors or safe-deposits such as banks have.

I shall not recount the passages we walked or talk of the one with round doors like portholes or the other place where the Sergeant got a box of matches for himself by putting his hand somewhere into the wall. It is enough to say that we arrived, after walking at least a mile of plate, into a well-lit airy hall which was completely circular and filled with indescribable articles very like machinery but not quite as intricate as the more difficult machines.

"Is this eternity?" I asked, "Why do you call it that?"
"We call it that," the Sergeant explained, "because you do not grow old here. When you leave here you will be the same age as you were coming in and the same stature and latitude."

To my astonishment he went over to one of the bigger ovens, manipulated some knobs, pulled open the massive metal door and lifted out a brand-new bicycle.

"What else is there?"
"Anything."
"Anything I mention will be shown to me?"
"Of course. Did you ever hear tell of omnium?"
"Omnium? And what is omnium the right name for?"
"You are omnium and I am omnium and so is the mangle and so are my boots..."

The ease with which the Sergeant produced the bicycle...had set in motion in my head certain trains of thought. Sitting at home with my box of omnium I could do anything, see anything and know anything with no limit to my powers save that of my own imagination. Perhaps I could use it even to extend my imagination. I would improve the weather to a standard day of sunny peace with gentle rain at night washing the world to make it fresher and more enchanting to the eye. I would present every poor labourer in the world with a bicycle made of gold.

My nervousness had been largely reduced to absurdity and nothingness by what I had seen and I now found myself taking an interest in the commercial possibilities of eternity. I ordered a bottle of whiskey, precious stones, some bananas, a fountain-pen and writing materials, and finally a serge suit of blue with silk linings.

"I am going to take these things with me," I announced.
"In that case you will need a big strong bag," the Sergeant said.

We smoked in silence and went on through the dim passage till we reached the [elevator] again. I was very tired with my bag of gold and clothes and whiskey and made for the [elevator] to stand on it and put the bag down at last. When nearly on the threshold I was arrested in my step by a call from the Sergeant...

"Don't go in there!"
"Why?"
"The bag, man. The simple thing is that you cannot enter the [elevator] unless you weigh the same weight as you weighed when you weighed into it. If you do, it will extirpate you unconditionally and kill the life out of you."

I understood little except that my plans were vanquished and my visit to eternity unavailing and calamitous.

Generally speaking, this all sounds very familiar to Ben's interrogation of Locke in "The Man from Tallahassee":

Ben: Are you afraid it'll go away, John? Is that why you want to destroy the submarine? Because you know if you ever leave this island you'll be back in the chair?

I'm sure we can all empathize with Locke's apparent dilemma. Who wouldn't want to keep the use of their legs and remain independently ambulatory? Locke doesn't seem to be able to contribute to humanity at large, at least not in the same way as, say, a spinal surgeon like Jack; so maybe Locke's desire to retain his mobility would not be considered selfish.

But what about Jack? Clearly he can do much good in the world with his singular skill as a surgeon, and in the Season 3 finale he was even able to respond to human suffering while in the throes of his own 'dark night of the soul' as he seemed to resign himself to suicide. Would it be selfish of Jack to remain on the island, assuming he also knew the island's secret powers that were vouchsafed to Locke by Ben? If one has the power to save lives, is one morally obligated to use that power? Is refraining from using one's life-saving power equivalent to outright killing someone? Would Jack be considered to be the most dispicable of human beings by choosing to stay on the island? Ben, always the devil's advocate, presents a starkly convincing picture for Jack in the Season 3 finale:

Ben: Let me ask you something, Jack. Why do you wanna leave the Island? What is it that you so desperately want to get back to? You have no-one. Your father's dead, your wife left you, moved on with another man. Can you just not wait to get back to the hospital? Get back to fixing things?

What would we do? Would we leave our comfortable lives, our lattes, our HDTV and spend our lives on the island, knowing that the unbelievable and unsurpassable things we could conjure up on the island must forever stay there?

Lost

Communion or Collapse?

2007-08-19T13:00:00.001-07:00

Ben: Why are you so angry, John?

Locke: Because you're cheating! You communicate with the outside world whenever you want to, you come and go as you please, you use electricity and running water and guns...you're a hypocrite, a Pharisee. You don't deserve to be on this island. If you had any idea what this place really was, you wouldn't be putting chicken in your refrigerator!

One of the running subtexts of L O S T is the relatively recent (since the Industrial Revolution) struggle between modernity and what could be called primitivism - a belief in the value of what is simple, or 'natural.'

Season 3 came to a close with the revelation of perhaps the epitome of neo-Luddism (or, given the apparent manipulation of time on the island, maybe the original Luddite), Jacob.

The Luddites (named after Ned Ludd) were a group of English textile artisans in the 19th Century who opposed, sometimes violently, the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Neo-Luddism, usually employed now as a pejorative, refers to the resurgence of this type of resistance to the exponentially rapid technological changes of today. While they don't view technology itself as intrinsically evil, they do feel that technology somehow degrades the quality or dignity of our humanity. The poster child for the extreme element of this type of movement would be Ted Kaczynski (who bears a striking resemblance to Jacob; though no doubt this was intended by the writers of L O S T - Kaczynski even lived in a secluded cabin in Montana).

Another modern, but more moderate, example of this type of thinking is evinced by Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy:

From the moment I became involved in the creation of new technologies, their ethical dimensions have concerned me, but it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil, the deservedly famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and many other amazing things.

In the hotel bar, Ray gave me a partial preprint of his then-forthcoming bookThe Age of Spiritual Machines, which outlined a utopia he foresaw - one in which humans gained near immortality by becoming one with robotic technology.

I found myself most troubled by a passage detailing a dystopian scenario...In the book, you don't discover until you turn the page that the author of this passage is Theodore Kaczynski - the Unabomber. I am no apologist for Kaczynski. His bombs killed three people during a 17-year terror campaign and wounded many others.

Much of my work over the past 25 years has been on computer networking, where the sending and receiving of messages creates the opportunity for out-of-control replication. But while replication in a computer or a computer network can be a nuisance, at worst it disables a machine or takes down a network or network service. Uncontrolled self-replication in these newer technologies runs a much greater risk: a risk of substantial damage in the physical world.

Each of these technologies also offers untold promise: The vision of near immortality that Kurzweil sees in his robot dreams drives us forward; genetic engineering may soon provide treatments, if not outright cures, for most diseases; and nanotechnology and nanomedicine can address yet more ills. Together they could significantly extend our average life span and improve the quality of our lives. Yet, with each of these technologies, a sequence of small, individually sensible advances leads to an accumulation of great power and, concomitantly, great danger.

While the neo-Luddites can be considered to be at one end of the spectrum, the Transhumanists can be seen as the other end. Just as the neo-Luddites have their extreme element, so do the Transhumanists; though the critical difference is that it's much easier to employ violence to destroy existing technology than it is to force as yet non-existent technology onto the populace. Transhumanists generally support the use of new technologies to enhance human mental and physical capabilities, and to ameliorate or eradicate undesirable aspects of humanity - disease and death being the big ones.

The Others could be considered to be the neo-Luddites, while the D.H.A.R.M.A Initiative could be considered to be the Transhumanists. Generally speaking, the Others want to 'get back to nature', so to speak; and the D.H.A.R.M.A. folks ostensibly want to enhance humanity, or at least prevent humanity from destroying itself. But apparently the mixture of the extreme elements of both sides resulted in a cataclysmic clash:

Ben: This is where I came from, John. These are my people - the DHARMA Initiative. They came here seeking harmony, but they couldn't even coexist with the island's original inhabitants. And when it became clear that one side had to go, that one side had to be purged - I did what I had to do.

It's been argued that the human race's evolution from quasi-nomadic hunter/gatherers to agriculturalists living in villages and towns, while presaging the onset of modern civilization, has been detrimental to both human society and the planetary environment at large. University of Reading professor Steven Mithen's latest book, After the Ice, treats this subject at length. UCLA professor Jared Diamond explores similar themes in his two bestselling books Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse: How human societies choose to fail or succeed.

The general theme is that technological advances have not only enabled humanity to flourish as never before, but that this flourishing has led to depletion of natural resources, social hierarchies that lead to marginalization and strife, and economic disparities. While this trend may be lamented by some, it would seem that it is an inexorable consequence of planetary evolution.

But since each of us is concerned primarily with the small picture, with the effects these trends have on us individual humans, the question seems to be: Is it possible to revert back to a more simpler time, to 'get back to nature', to live as if the deluge of progress had never swept us away?

Some would say no. But Ben seems to have done it; the Others he has recruited, those who have made 'the commitment', seem to have as well. But for some there may be psychological hindrances to this type of reversion. For instance, Mephisto mockingly offers Faust the following advice:

Right. There is one way that needs
no money, no physician, and no witch.
Pack up your things and get back to the land
and there begin to dig and ditch;
keep to the narrow round, confine your mind,
and live on fodder of the simplest kind,
a beast among the beasts; and don't forget
to use your own dung on the crops you set!

C.G. Jung believed that this 'simple life' cannot be faked, that an escape into this simple life is closed forever to someone who has not been driven to it by necessity. Someone who is firmly ensconced in modernity cannot slip into unsophisticated existence without serious psychological dissonance. Such a one cannot comply with poet Wallace Stevens' directive - "you must become an ignorant man again/and see the sun again with an ignorant eye" - meaning, one cannot really divest oneself of all the symbolic or abstract concepts attributed to all the variegated phenomena of life.

But the appeal is there, nevertheless. In fact, the inspiration for this post came from reading a passage from pseudonymous Flann O'Brien's novel The Third Policeman, describing an enticingly pastoral, idyllic and somewhat psychedelic scene:

A record of this belief will be found in the literature of all ancient peoples. There are four winds and eight subwinds, each with its own colour. The wind from the east is a deep purple, from the south a fine shining silver. The north wind is a hard black and the west is amber. People in the old days had the power of perceiving these colours and could spend a day sitting quietly on a hillside watching the beauty of the winds, their fall and rise and changing hues...What could be more exquisite than a countryside swept lightly by the cool rain reddened by the south-west breeze!

So this societal struggle is paralleled on the personal level as well. We'll see how it plays out on L O S T over the next 3 seasons; but more importantly we'll see how it plays out in our own global society, and in the hearts and minds of each individual.

Lost

A Very Brief Hiatus

2007-08-07T16:30:00.000-07:00

I must apologize for the dearth of posts lately.

I am currently teaching a class of blind students for a month, and it requires an almost-total commitment: mentally, physically and emotionally.

There will be more posts soon!

Thanks for your patience,

Juno

Sociology, Social Organization, and Sociopaths

2007-07-14T15:10:00.000-07:00

In an era of unrelenting globalization, of the strengthening and expansion of the complex web of social, economic, cultural and political interactions, it seems that humanity has always existed in this way. But the history of the human species could really be said to be the history of social organization: what is the best way to organize society?

Now, I'm no anthropologist - or even a sociologist - so this post will be about drawing fairly general, and almost superficial, parallels between the world of L O S T and the milestones throughout the history of the world; more specifically, the human world. Perhaps we should begin with a sketch of human history from the time of our hunter-gatherer epoch. Before that, things are a little murky - at least for me!

A hunter-gatherer society - if it could be called a society - is one where the members rely for subsistence on the near-constant foraging for edible plants and vegetables and the hunting of various animals for protein. Modern humans would call this 'living hand to mouth' or 'paycheck to paycheck', so to speak. Hunter-gatherer societies were generally small, probably only consisting of less than 100 persons closely related. This very accurately describes our Losties, at least before they found the Swan Hatch and all of its modern provisions! Although after Hurley distributed the spoils, they seemed to have reverted back to foraging and hunting to some extent.

Hunter-gatherer groups were generally non-hierarchical, egalitarian social structures. With our Losties, Jack may be the de facto leader of the group, but generally they have adopted a 'treat everyone as equal' philosophy, distributing Nature's bounty as equally as possible. The one exception is the anomaly of Sawyer. He's got more of the Ayn Rand-ian ethic of enlightened self-interest.

The next major step in the evolution of human society was the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals. This effectively ended the previously nomadic lifestyle of the hunter-gatherers. The development of this type of subsistence led naturally to a more organized type of social organization; namely, settled villages with more formalized rules for social interaction. This seems to relate well to the Others, at least in their confiscation of the previously occupied Dharma Initiative barracks. We saw at the Flame Station that Mikhail apparently kept chickens and cows.

The rise of agriculture and the domestication of animals allowed for larger and larger villages; and with the concomitant development of more and more advanced technology, this eventually led to States and Nations, which we still have to the present day - to present a very compressed summation of thousands of years!

But a more interesting comparison is between the Losties almost communist approach to organizing their 'society', to the Other's top-down, dictatorial approach to theirs. We now know that the top dog in the hierarchy is Jacob, who gives directions to Ben:

Ben: There's something you should know, John, before we go. Whether or not you think he's the Wizard of Oz, I can assure you that Jacob is very, very real. And we're gonna go see him, and he's not going to like it. In fact, I have a feeling he's going to be very angry. And that's why my hand was shaking; because he's not a man you go and see. This is a man that summons you.

But Ben is ostensibly the dictatorial leader of the Others. He has power over and directs Tom, Richard, Juliet; and he can stay Juliet's execution, even from the operating table.

A telling example, similar to Saddam Hussein's reign, is when he tells Locke about the illusion he needs to maintain for 'his people', and the tenuousness of his claim to power:

Ben: Well, get this: there I was, shaking hands with Jack and thinking I'd give almost anything to come up with a way to stop him from leaving, because to let him go would be a sign of weakness, of failure, of defeat. People would see that. They would know it. And that, John, would be the end of me. But to kill him - that would be cheating, because my people also heard me make a promise, and to break my word - that would be the end of me, too.

Ben is even quick to order the deaths of Bonnie and Greta in the Looking Glass Station, as well as almost sacrificing Juliet when Jack flooded the Hydra station. Clearly, this type of perceived ruthless behavior causes mistrust and division within Ben's community, as Juliet demonstrated when she took the risk of confiding in Jack:

Unless a dictator can maintain total control, he is liable to coups and assassinations. Under a dictatorship, the people suffer and revolt, and the dictator himself is under constant pressure and anxiety to maintain his stranglehold on power and manipulation.

On the flip side, a more communal or communist-type of approach ostensibly creates an atmosphere of egalitarianism. Hurley - and even Nikki and Paulo - represent this kind of approach to social organization. And even though Jack is the de facto leader - albeit reluctantly - he does try to treat everyone equally and magnanimously. This may be partly due to his reluctance to assert his dominance over the other Losties.

And a communal or communist-type of social organization is best described by the Marxist slogan of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." I'm using the word 'communist' with a lower-case 'c' instead of an upper-case 'C' to distinguish between the philosophy behind communism and the political animal it became under the Soviets.

I should also point out that Patchy's (or the "one-eyed maniac", in Charlie's words) namesake, the anarchist philosopher Mikhail Bakunin, had this to say about the nature of communism:

[The Marxists] maintain that only a dictatorship - their dictatorship, of course - can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can only be created by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people, and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up.

This characterization could really describe both the Other's organization and the Losties'. The pre-Ben Others might have organized themselves in a communist-type of community, and when Ben came along he instituted his own dictatorship.

We have yet to find out just how the "island's original inhabitants" organized themselves, but I'll stick to this hypothesis for now.

Likewise, we've seen several instances in the Losties' camp where discontent and grumblings over Jack's leadership have reared their respective ugly heads. But clearly Jack is a much more magnanimous leader than Ben, and he never resorts to physical violence - or even Machiavellian machinations. Though one could argue that he is becoming increasingly 'close to the vest', especially with his questionable partnership with former Other, Juliet.

But one could argue that Jack's apparent manipulations - or temporary secrets - are ultimately for the good of the group; whereas Ben's manipulations have seemed to benefit mostly Ben. Although in my previous post analyzing Ben's motivations, I noted that Ben may in fact have the interests of the island in mind, and it's been hinted that the island may in fact be the only thing standing in the way of the total extermination of the human race. But we have yet to discover if that is true.

So, in the world of L O S T, things aren't as clear cut as we would like them to be. I suppose that's what makes for good drama.

And in Through the Looking Glass, I think we may have - or at least may plausibly speculate - that there may be a merging of both camps - the Losties and the Others - in order to fight what Ben called "forces stronger than anything it's had to deal with in many, many years."

And if this consolidation happens, that opens up an entirely new can of worms in terms of social organization, hierarchy, and group dynamics. Not only will this new group have to deal with these issues, but they will still have to deal with the sociopaths within their respective contingents, and also with whatever these outside "forces" ultimately turn out to be.

Will this new group, if it does come into being, be able to not only coexist but marshal it's collective forces to repel this new sinister threat, the way the United States and the Afghani mujahideen attempted to do against the Soviets? Will they be able to coalesce into a harmonious society if they do in fact succeed in keeping these sinister forces at bay?

The new season will surely be rife with possibilities since the conclusion of this past season and its cliffhanger, and the introduction of a new plot device - the flash-forward.

Lost

Does Ben Belong in the Big Pen?

2007-06-27T15:47:00.000-07:00

Does the end justify the means? Does it ever? Is there any circumstance under which we could pursue an end yet still feel unperturbed?

Clearly I think most of us, if not all of us, occasionally rationalize our own actions in pursuing some ends. Fortunately, not all of society engages in pursuing means to ends that harm others or seriously abrogate others' equal rights. But Ben seems comfortable pursuing his ends by any means necessary.

We don't yet know, if we ever will, what the first 10 years or so of Ben's life were like.

But we do know that the on-island Ben doesn't seem to bat an eyelash at even the most cold-blooded actions, most recently in Through the Looking Glass:

Tom: They're not talking.

Ben: Who do you have?

Tom: Jarrah, Kwon, and the dentist.

Ben: Shoot Kwon.

Tom: What?

Ben: If you want them to answer questions, kill Kwon, do it now.

Now, it's been clearly implied that there is something about the island that is of colossal importance. We've already been shown what the apparent consequences are of failing to press the Swan Station button every 108 minutes. But now that the failsafe key has been turned, there seems to be something even more important going on with the island.

We don't yet know what it is, but Ben certainly seems to be convinced of its importance. After living on the island for about 30 years, he "made a decision that took the lives of over 40 people in a single day"; he shot Locke in cold blood, leaving him for dead; he's conned and manipulated not only the Losties but also his own people; but probably more telling is his despairingly desperate (and seemingly genuine) reaction to Jack's attempt to reach the rescue ship:

He is frantic. Cataclysm is apparently imminent. One almost begins to feel some sympathy for Ben's cause, whatever it is. We begin to feel the gravity of the situation. Even though we may be tempted to feel drawn into league with Ben's goals, we still have to confront the ethical question of whether or not the ends ever justify the means.

The 18 Century German philosopher Immanuel Kant had a lot to say about the matter. Kant was essentially a moral philosopher, concerned with what human beings ought to do in various circumstances. Kant is notoriously abstruse, but he basically argued that human beings possessed an innate faculty of reason - a moral compass, one might say - that was more than merely a guide to the satisfaction of one's desires. He further argued that the possession of this faculty of self-governing reason is what endowed each human being with equal worth and respect. But while we can choose to remove ourselves from certain social institutions, and thereby not be bound by their 'laws', Kant argued that, by virute of our nature as rational beings with the capacity to modify our behavior on the basis of certain principles or 'laws' of rationality, we cannot choose to remove ourselves from our essential nature as rational beings subject to a Moral Law. We are bound to act out of duty because all other rational beings are similarly bound. In fact, Kant's formulation of a proper human ethic is "I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law."

Interestingly - and very relevant to the overall mythology of the show - Kant began his analysis of moral philosophy with a discussion of the concept of a 'good will'. He didn't mean a good will in the sense of someone having certain 'good' personality traits such as kindheartedness or a good-natured disposition, but rather whether or not one is a 'good person'. The Others talk of themselves as 'good people', but clearly not in the everyday sense of the word. I don't think anyone would call the Others kindhearted or good-natured!

What Kant meant was that what makes a good person good is the possession of this faculty of reason and its degree of conformity with the Moral Law, a law which is not determined by any particular culture or society. What he means is that one's decisions and actions should be wholly determined by moral demands, and not just any demands, but the demands required of rational beings. Kant also believes that human beings view this non-denominational Moral Law as a constraint on their desires. So since this Law is universally binding on all human beings, and since the faculty of self-governing reason that human beings possess imputes worth to each of us, we cannot simply pursue our desires without regard for our fellow human beings, using them as means to an end. We possess a sense of duty to act morally, and only those actions that align with this sense of duty have any moral worth at all.

Kant's view of morality seems to lack some basic human emotion, no? He seems to imply that a 'good person' is one who acts out of a sense of duty to the Moral Law by which each of us is equally bound. But many of us would argue that a good person could also be someone who acts from other motivations such as love, sympathy, friendship, or even common decency. But some have argued that Kant's point is not that we don't feel admiration for someone who acts from such motivations; only that, when one is deliberating, the actions that flow from this deliberation express a sort of motivational architecture that gives the considerations of one's moral duty priority over all other interests. Actions that flow from this duty are 'worth more' than actions that flow from any other motivations.

Kant could be said to represent a peculiarly Western mode of thought regarding 'duty'; in that he grounds his sense of duty in that aspect which is common to all rational beings. Further, Kant also maintained that the preservation of one's moral goodness is what makes anything else worth having; otherwise human beings achieve only cheap pleasure or happiness; fraudulent happiness and pleasure.

The Hindu Bhagavad-Gita espouses similar ideals, but the grounding of the sense of duty is in the overall Cosmic order. The Gita is a chapter in a larger Hindu work called the Mahabharata, and it recounts the conversation between Krishna and the warrior Arjuna taking place on the battlefield of an imminent war. Arjuna is confused and filled with doubt by an apparent moral dilemma: he has friends and relatives on both sides of this fight, so how could he possibly continue?

Krishna advises him on the ideal of dharma (we've heard that before, yeah?), or the doing of one's duty. Dharma essentially boils down to: one should do one's duty because it is the right thing to do. Essentially, Arjuna wants to abstain from action, but Krishna warns him that inaction will only cause the cosmos to fall out of order. He must do his warrior duty. Not doing one's duty is akin to going against the flow of nature, against the natural order and harmony, resulting in the obscuration of reality. Additionally, the Gita teaches that one's essential core - one's soul, if you will - is immortal and permanent and identical with ultimate reality, which is a unity. Corporeal selves are merely ephemeral manifestations of the ultimate reality: kill the body and the soul lives on in unity with this ultimate reality. Identification with and clinging to this false 'self-form' only causes suffering anyway. As Krishna puts it:

Bodies are said to die, but that which possesses the body is eternal. It cannot be limited, or destroyed. Therefore you must fight.

Arjuna must engage in battle even though he has friends and relatives on both sides, and with the full knowledge that they may be killed. He must subjugate his own will to the universal will, you might say. But Krishna states that the physical world must not be forgotten or neglected; on the contrary, one must live one's physically embodied life in accordance with greater laws and truths because that's how the universe works. (Think of Mikhail saying to the Losties: "The Man who brought me here, who brought all of my people here - he is a great man, a magnificent man", and you get an idea of what it means to live life according to 'greater laws'.) Krishna basically tells Arjuna that he must go to war - universal harmony and duty demand it - even if those he knows and loves must be killed. But only transient, temporal and illusory 'selves' will be destroyed, and not the kernel of who they are, which is identical to ultimate reality. Krishna says:

Die, and you win heaven; conquer and you win the earth. Realize that pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, are all one and the same: then go into battle. Do this and you cannot commit any sin.

Basically, he says do your duty because it doesn't matter if your physical form (and the physical forms of others) lives or dies; and to not do one's duty is a greater sin.

Does this view of morality provide Ben and the Others with some wiggle room? Could Ben believe that he is acting according to a universal Moral Law which he assumes everyone - not only the Others - are equally bound by, whether they realize it or not? Of course, Ben wouldn't be a true Kantian because he is clearly treating others as means to an end. But what if Ben adopts a Hindu view of duty? What if he feels he is acting in accordance with a unviersal law that transcends the moral law comprehensible by every rational human being, all the while believing that 'people' are mere illusions anyway, and the essence of who they are is immortal and eternal? And what if the end for which Ben treats all others as means is the Mother of all Ends? As Ben explains to Mikhail in Through the Looking Glass:

Ben: You have to understand, everything I did, I did for the Island.

Mikhail: The Island told you it was necessary for you to jam your own people?

Ben: Yes it did. You've always been a loyalist, Mikhail, now I'm asking you to trust me, to trust Jacob who told me to do this.

Mikhail: Why would Jacob ask you to lie to your own people?

Ben: Because this Island is under assault by forces stronger than anything its had to deal with in many, many years. And we are meant to protect it, Mikhail, by any means necessary. The jamming was for everyone's security. We are in a serious situation here.

So, what if the island is what's keeping all of humanity and civilization from being destroyed? Could the killing of some people in order to save the entire human race be justified?

Does Ben belong in the penitentiary, or is Ben really a good person?

Lost

Did Charlie Pace Win the Race?

2007-06-17T15:19:00.001-07:00

It is better to conquer oneself than to win a thousand battles.

-- The Dhammapada

Fulfill something you are able to fulfill, rather than run after what you will never achieve. We can modestly strive to fulfill ourselves and to be as complete a human being as possible, and that will give us trouble enough.

-- C.G. Jung (Tavistock Lectures)

The race to which I refer in the title of this post is the race we all must run: the race to live up to one's full potential before the end of one's life. It's not really a race against others, but a race against oneself - and time, of course. It is a quest fraught with obstacles, both internal and external - the internal ones sometimes being the most difficult to overcome. It's not the thrilling, quasi-glamorous quest of Frodo of the Shire or Luke Skywalker. It is oftentimes filled with the mundane, the banal, the gritty - and sometimes interminable torpor.

It has been called at various times and in various cultures "the hero's journey"; and it involves some type of 'calling', followed by a gauntlet of trials after which the hero achieves the 'boon', or the prize, and often uses this prize to help the wider world - the world outside his own ego, his own personal interests.

The calling can be an external event or person, or it can be an internal yearning or desire. Typically, the awareness of this call - whether or not the hero recognizes it as such - is met with some trepidation, some reluctance to embark on the journey. Leaving one's comfort zone, being drawn out of a comfortable, habitual routine, or being extracted from a life-consuming addiction, can feel almost impossible to do.

But once one commits oneself to the call, one sets out on the perilous path of unknown trials. Typically, however, one receives aid from an older figure: Frodo had Gandalf, Luke had Obi-Wan Kenobi. This figure has an accumulated wisdom, unending patience - and presumably has already undergone his own hero's journey, thus possessing a large measure of empathy. The modus operandi of this guide is not to perform the tasks for the hero, but to teach the hero to do the tasks for himself, to commit his whole being to the process of achieving the goal - only then will the prize be legitimately won.

The story of Charlie Pace in the world of L O S T mirrors just such a hero's journey. Clearly, Charlie's drug addiction has been the biggest obstacle in his life. And it's hard to discern whether or not his self-doubt and apparent cowardice are a result of his addiction, or whether they are personality traits that contributed to his addiction. Tom Clark of The Center for Naturalism and a former research associate for a health and addictions research company in Boston writes:

Poor choices (taking that first, second or third hit of cocaine) certainly figure in the onset of addiction, and choices aren't ordinarily considered part of a disease process. Moreover, poor choices can indeed result from what might be called "personal weaknesses," for instance a genetic susceptibility to addiction related to a particular type of dopamine receptor, or a penchant for risk-taking, whether learned, inherited, or both.

But regardless of the cause or causes of Charlie's addiction, the fact remains that this is the biggest barrier to Charlie realizing his full potential. But the crash on the island provided Charlie with a fresh start, and we could consider this to be Charlie's "hero's call". Of course, at this point, Charlie has no idea what is about to happen to him, and neither do we. And the impetus that begins to draw Charlie out of his drug-induced torpor comes from John Locke.

Locke is Charlie's Gandalf, his Obi-Wan, his guru, his guide. But Charlie is, of course, reluctant to accept the call. One could argue that one might never free oneself from one's holding patterns of life unless knocked out of the trajectory by an external force. Locke is just such a force for Charlie.

Charlie's first challenge is to overcome his addiction, but by his own efforts, his own willpower. After considerable internal struggle, his feelings for Claire and Aaron, and some shady Machiavellian machinations involving Sawyer, Charlie is finally able to move beyond the near-total control his addiction exerted over his life.

Charlie's second main challenge is to overcome what could be perceived as his deficiencies in character: his inferiority complex and the resultant cowardice, or his failure to 'step up to the plate', so to speak.

The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre had this view of cowardice:

But the existentialist, when he portrays a coward, shows him as responsible for his cowardice. He is not like that on account of a cowardly heart or lungs or cerebrum, he has not become like that through his physiological organism; he is like that because he has made himself into a coward by actions...for what produces cowardice is the act of giving up or giving way; and a temperament is not an action. A coward is defined by the deed that he has done.

If this view is true, then Charlie apparently made great strides in overcoming his cowardice first by killing the Other, Ethan:

Clearly the impetus this time wasn't so much Locke as it was Charlie's feelings for Claire, and his newfound need for redemption - so much so that his killing of Ethan temporarily hurt the larger community of which Charlie is a part. But the hero's journey isn't a straight line of victories; it is an oftentimes circuitous route of alternating successes and failures; but each round of trials eventually serves to 'ratchet up' the overall level of success of the hero's journey and pushes the hero further along toward his goal.

Charlie's second, and final, challenge is to overcome his cowardice while at the same time benefiting the larger group. Unfortunately for Desmond, Charlie's final act of courage begins by preventing Desmond from taking his place in diving down to the Looking Glass station to secure rescue for the survivors.

The end of Charlie's race, his hero's journey, ends of course with his death. That's not what we typically think of as an appropriate ending to a hero story: Frodo destroys the Ring yet returns to his beloved Shire; Luke defeats his near-omnipotent father, not only saving the galaxy, but apparently redeeming his father in the process.

But Charlie can still be viewed as being successful. He has redeemed himself; he has succeeded in doing what Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson has termed "accomplishing one's death": the idea that one has earned the right to die, one has lived up to one's full potential. If death is viewed as the end of the race, then Charlie earned that victory. Not only that, but Charlie can be viewed as a true hero (as defined by the hero's journey) because he did sacrifice himself for the rest of the group, and he did legitimately earn the prize of turning off the jamming signal in the Looking Glass station, which was a necessary step in securing rescue for the survivors.

Of course, we don't yet know if what Charlie helped to secure was in fact rescue, or a mixed blessing that secured rescue, but may also in fact have caused great harm to come to others. The prize may have come at a great cost; it may have come at a cost greater than it was worth.

But we don't know that yet. We can say at this point that Charlie has overcome himself, he has transcended himself and has truly earned and accomplished his death. Charlie Pace did indeed win the race.

Lost

Desmond: Free Will or Fatalism?

2007-06-14T09:38:00.000-07:00

Morpheus: Do you believe in fate, Neo?
Neo: No.
Morpheus: Why not?
Neo: 'Cause I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life.

In case you haven't noticed, two of my favorite things are L O S T and The Matrix trilogy. But I thought the above quote would be a good entrée into a discussion of fate versus free will as embodied in Desmond David Hume's character. We don't seem to have as much of Desmond's backstory as, say, Jack or Locke. But I think there is enough there - as well as in his on-island experiences - to warrant a discussion.

Perhaps no other subject has received as much attention - in the ivory towers of academia as well as the booths of smoky pubs - as free will.

Even English philosopher Galen Strawson has lamented:

The facts are clear, and they have been known for a long time. When it comes to the metaphysics of free will, André Gide's remark is apt: 'Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.'

The debate continues; some have thought that philosophy ought to move on. There is little reason to expect that it will do so, as each new generation arises bearing philosophers gripped by the conviction that they can have ultimate responsibility. Would it be a good thing if philosophy did move on, or if we became more clear- headed about the topic of free will than we are? It is hard to say.

As the 18th Century English literary figure, Samuel Johnson, once opined with regard to free will: "All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience is for it." Didn't he hit the nail right on the head with that one? In almost every moment of our lives we feel free to do whatever we choose, and we don't feel like we are caused to choose by anyone or anything. In our more clear-headed moments we concede that we are influenced by certain factors, but we are not determined to act in ways that are out of 'our' control. As I sit here typing, I could choose to have another cup of delicious coffee - or not; I could choose to pack up my computer and instead go for a run, etc. I have absolute control over my choices and, therefore, my life.

Or do I?

I can certainly sit here and deliberate over whether or not I want another cup of coffee. I can think about how delicious it is, how the caffeine might help me think more clearly about this blog post, and how the extra antioxidants in the coffee itself might be beneficial to my body. Or I can think about how jittery an extra cup of coffee will make me, and how annoyed the people sitting next to me in the café will be while my leg keeps bouncing up and down uncontrollably, or how long it will take me to fall asleep tonight because I've exceeded my personal caffeine tolerance.

But who or what is the arbiter in this decision? Theoretically it would seem that I could go on and on like this, deliberating until the cows come home, never arriving at a decision. What tips the scales one way and not another? This line of questioning actually touches on topics such as the nature of the self and causal determinism. But more on that later. Let's look at Desmond's life, as much as can be gleaned from his experiences both on the island and off it.

First of all, the look on Des's face in this moment of his Catch-22 episode pretty much captures his dilemma, wouldn't you say?

You can see the pained deliberation, torn between reaching his beloved Penelope and saving Charlie's innocent life. We know he does the 'right' thing and saves Charlie instead. Is this Desmond exercising his free will? Could Desmond have chosen otherwise? Most of us would say he could have.

In contrast to this traditional and, most would say, commonsense view of the freedom of human will, is the idea of fatalism. The concept of fatalism basically comes in two flavors. The first one says that human beings do in fact have free will, but it doesn't matter: all events in the world are predestined. It doesn't matter what one does, the outcome will inevitably and inexorably be the same. The other variety says that human beings do not have free will, and thus everything is determined to happen exactly as it does.

The mix of both views seems to be espoused by the shopkeeper Desmond meets when he goes to find a ring for Penny - Mrs. Hawking:

Desmond: Oh, my God! You knew that was going to happen, didn't you? [she nods] Then why didn't you stop it? Why didn't you do anything?

Mrs. Hawking: Because it wouldn't matter. Had I warned him about the scaffolding tomorrow he'd be hit by a taxi. If I warned him about the taxi, he'd fall in the shower and break his neck. The universe, unfortunately, has a way of course correcting. That man was supposed to die. That was his path...just as it's your path to go to the island. You don't do it because you choose to, Desmond. You do it because you're supposed to.

However, it should be noted that we don't know if Mrs. Hawking is a true exponent of fatalistic thinking, or if she's merely trying to manipulate Desmond in the grander scheme of things. We don't even know who she is, for Pete's sake. But her notion of the universe having a mechanism for 'course correcting' sounds an awful lot like fatalism. However, her formulation here also seems to impute some property of purpose to the universe - but that gets into an area we really don't have time for in this post. That's a quasi-religious issue.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that Mrs. Hawking is a true exponent of fatalism: the idea that no matter what one does, the ultimate outcome will be the same - it is 'fated' to happen in a certain way and no other. As a knockered Desmond tells Charlie and Hurley: "You can't change it, no matter what you try to do! You just can't change it!" Clearly the experience of turning the key, having the (apparent) chance of going back in time to make things right, yet still ending up in the 'bloody snow globe' of the island has had an effect on poor Desmondo. Given all that, I can appreciate his despondency.

But does Desmond need to adopt such a defeatist attitude? Obviously his experiences are unique and profoundly disturbing - and convincing - at least to Desmond. I don't think any of us can say we've experienced anything similar - at least not sober. But I think there is a way to see fatalism for the misguided philosophy it is.

Indulge me for a moment. It seems that modern neuroscience combined with the well-supported scientific theory of evolution by natural selection (i.e., common descent with modification) shows that human beings are completely included in the natural order of things, including being subject to the laws of cause and effect. The brain is a physical organ like the liver or the pancreas, subject to the relevant laws of biology, chemistry and physics. The theory of determinism basically says that every event is the result of prior events. To have true free will, one would have to be able to circumvent or otherwise bypass this chain of cause and effect; otherwise one's choices are not free because all of the factors that led to that choice have been determined. And if we were omniscient, we would be able to trace all of those causes, back to the moment we were born. In that regard, free will could be seen as 'super-natural'.

But fatalism could also be seen as super-natural, in the sense that whatever is causing the inevitable outcome in question is not influenced by human action. That doesn't seem quite fair, now does it? But my assessment is what I could call backward-looking. Sure, we can (theoretically) trace all of the causes of our actions and show how they were determined, but what about forward-looking? Can we start at the present time and project all of the cause and effect relationships into the future so that we will know what will happen? I would say no, because the future hasn't happened yet. (Although, J. Wood has a provocative and seemingly plausible account of 'Minkowski space' that might prove my theory wrong - at least in the L O S T universe. See his blog post about it for more info.)

So, if the future hasn't happened yet, then how do we know what the outcome will be? It has been argued that the future is not inevitable, and that we only discover the future as we live it and make choices. Our decisions and actions contribute to determining the course of our own life and those affected by our lives. One could say that the total aggregate of all human action is what produces the future. On this view, the future is not fixed. What we do, and the choices we make, do indeed matter. And we may have gotten a subtle clue to this when Desmond took a cricket bat to the face for the bartender:

It's always tricky to try and speculate about the show because, not only do we not have the whole story, but the powers that be haven't yet given us a definite ontology of the show - and for good reasons.

Desmond seems to epitomize the idea of free will. He seems to realize this in that bar when he took the hit for the bartender, and he regrets not making things right with Penny - making the assumption that he could make things right, if only he could go back in time again. He even desperately tries to save Charlie repeatedly. But what if, as our best and most current science seems to indicate, free will is an illusion? Do Desmond's choices and actions still affect the future outcome of events? Is there a middle ground between contra-causal free will and outright fatalism?

Yes - if we combine the fact that human choice and action affect future outcomes with the notion that humans can deliberate and make voluntary choices. Some of you might recognize this description as the philosophical position of compatibilism. Compatibilism says that determinism is true, but that human beings nevertheless have free will - at least the varieties of free will worth wanting. The contemporary English philosopher Galen Strawson describes the compatibilist position this way:

According to compatibilists, we do have free will. They propound a sense of the word 'free' according to which free will is compatible with determinism, even though determinism is the view that the history of the universe is fixed in such a way that nothing can happen otherwise than it does because everything that happens is necessitated by what has already gone before.

Suppose tomorrow is a national holiday. You are considering what to do. You can climb a mountain or read Lao Tse. You can mend your bicycle or go to the zoo. At this moment you are reading the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy . You are free to go on reading or stop now. You have started on this sentence, but you don't have to... finish it.

In this situation, as so often in life, you have a number of options. Nothing forces your hand. It seems natural to say that you are entirely free to choose what to do. And, given that nothing hinders you, it seems natural to say that you act entirely freely when you actually do (or try to do) what you have decided to do.

Compatibilists claim that this is the right thing to say. They believe that to have free will, to be a free agent, to be free in choice and action, is simply to be free from constraints of certain sorts. Freedom is a matter of not being physically or psychologically forced or compelled to do what one does. Your character, personality, preferences, and general motivational set may be entirely determined by events for which you are in no way responsible (by your genetic inheritance, upbringing, subsequent experience, and so on). But you do not have to be in control of any of these things in order to have compatibilist freedom. They do not constrain or compel you, because compatibilist freedom is just a matter of being able to choose and act in the way one prefers or thinks best given how one is.

So I think it's safe to say that for Desmond to adopt a fatalist position toward life is unwise at best and flat out wrong at worst. Additionally, Desmond does have the power to affect the future even though he doesn't have what most of us would call 'free will'. But suffice it to say that Desmond's actions can alter the future in ways that are beneficial to him and to others. After all, he kept Charlie alive long enough to secure apparent rescue for the survivors, right? The time travel aspect of the show keeps all of this speculation up in the air somewhat, at least until we know more about what exactly happened to Desmond when he turned that fail safe key.

An interesting aside would be to explore Desmond's apparent 'cowardice' in light of determinism and free will and what Sartre has to say about it. But this post is already too long. Maybe I'll return to it in a later post...

Lost

Man of Science, Man of (Bad) Faith

2007-06-10T06:49:00.000-07:00

When one 'takes the red pill' and apparently sees the world for what it is, when one is faced with all the vagaries and vicissitudes of life with no recourse to a heavenly keeper, when one realizes that the responsibility for one's life is squarely on one's own shoulders, when one is assailed with doubts, unsure of one's purpose, and when one is the object of other's projections, both flattering and derogatory - what does one do?

If you're Jack Shepard, you take refuge in a airtight rationalism, obdurately immersing oneself in an almost Puritan-like work ethic.

Although pre-island Jack has not undergone such a dramatic awakening as Neo from The Matrix did, he nevertheless continues to trudge doggedly through his life in an almost Sisyphean manner, moving from one task to the next, in an alternating series of accomplishments and frustrations.

After Neo is liberated from the Matrix, he goes through a period of almost rudderless labor, battling agents, freeing minds from the Matrix; yet while this gives him a temporary sense of purpose and accomplishment, along with a growing confidence in his own abilities, he remains in search of a greater purpose, or at least a possible Archimedean point by which he could gauge his life's work, a way of knowing if he's on the right path - if there even is such a path.

And Jack could be considered to have a somewhat anti-Existentialist outlook on life. From a Sartrean Existentialist perspective, someone who lives life through an exclusively rationalistic lens could be said to be acting in 'bad faith'; that is, using rationality as a means of assuaging one's existential anxiety and dread betrays an essential (and possibly unconscious) fear of being in the world.

Jack doesn't seem to have an overt fear of being in the world, but one senses that fear, or sees a shadow of that fear, in Jack's at times overly obstinate courses of action - a kind of compensation, if you will. What did Jung say, fanaticism is always a sign of repressed doubt? Jack's rationality could be seen as an attempt to impose order and normalcy on phenomena that are fundamentally irrational - like the idea of pushing a button every 108 minutes.

But by limiting oneself to apperceiving the world's phenomena through a strictly rational lens in an attempt to suppress one's feelings of anxiety and dread, one is prevented from finding meaning in a meaningless world. Additionally, one thereby confines oneself to the mundane and the banal, relinquishing one's claim to true freedom in the process. This, in turn, opens oneself up to being possessed by the 'look of the other', in Sartre's words; that is to say, to take on the projection of other's subjectivity where one's sense of oneself, one's sense of personal identity, is effectively controlled and defined by what others think.

That is precisely what has characterized Jack's life, both pre-island and on-island. Pre-island Jack is seemingly repeatedly told by his father that he "doesn't have what it takes". On-island Jack is repeatedly seen as a savior and a leader, not unlike Neo in The Matrix mythology. The true challenge for Jack lies not in putting out fires and 'fixing things', as Ben condescendingly asserts in the Season 3 finale, but in transcending other people's views of himself, and becoming the person he chooses to be, given the talents and resources he has.

Will Jack look inside himself and find his own authentic life, divested of the projections of countless others in his life? Has he already endured his 'dark night of the soul'?

Or will he continue to play the role which others (and possibly the Others) have prescribed for him? Or will he continue to look somewhere else, outside himself?

Or will he fall prey to the kind of despair to which one of Kierkegaard's characters had fallen:

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it, why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

Jack may have secured salvation for the survivors (or he may not have):

But has he secured it for himself? Can he? Can he finally embrace existence and disentangle himself from everyone else's expectations, desires and wishes, and be born anew, the way Locke seemingly has been?

Lost

Echoes of the Übermensch

2007-06-09T05:53:00.001-07:00

From time immemorial it seems that humans have harbored the desire to feel special in some way, from the monotheistic religious view of human beings as the pinnacle of creation and human activity as the focus of the entire universe, to the desire to be recognized, acknowledged or otherwise validated by our fellow human beings.

Additionally, it seems that we humans have tended to see patterns in, and impute intentions to, phenomena we encounter in the world. Meteorological happenings were the tantrums of the gods. Aberrantly acting animals were the spirits of dead ancestors; or worse - the machinations of powerful spiritual enemies.

Coincidence is revealed to be synchronicity. Chance is the manifestation of Fate. The invisible guiding hand never ceases. Everything happens for a reason. It takes faith to see what can't be seen; faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.[*]

And so with this we come to John Locke....

Although Locke does not seem traditionally religious, his view of misfortune and calamity is consonant with that of more traditional faiths; that is, those who see such experiences as trials of faith that purge us of dross and leave our characters strengthened and shining brilliantly. Life is all about such trials, they say, and the teleology of life itself is the perpetual refinement of one's being, leading to moral or spiritual perfection - if not in this life, then in some other life to come. It is the process of being put through our paces by a power greater and wiser than ourselves. It requires tremendous faith to acquiesce to such a process when the Power in question is intangible at best and unknowable at worst.

John Locke has certainly had his share of tribulation and disappointment. He was conned out of his kidney - and subsequently defenestrated - by a trusted familial figure; he was rejected by possibly the only woman he's ever gotten close to and loved; he was duped and betrayed by his surrogate family at the commune; and he's worked in menial jobs for condescending bosses who are, as Rilke would say, "raised to the rank of Prince by the slippery ease of their light judgments."

It's amazing that Locke remains a man of faith through all of this. Or maybe it's not; we've all heard of victims of horrendous disasters and grotesque injustices who nevertheless thank God for saving their lives, and then claim that their ordeal just serves to strengthen their faith. In fact, Locke comes through all of this with a certain moxie, forcefully declaring, "Don't tell me what I can't do!"

Locke seems to assert or affirm his life despite his defeats. And upon crashing on the island, Locke seems to have been born anew; he seems to have traversed the furnace of fire, emerging a resplendent kernel of molten metal. In Locke, we can hear echoes of Nietzsche's Übermensch.

Nietzsche's philosophy was basically an Existentialist one, in that he believed there was no "possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven", to quote Sartre. He argued that the absence of moral absolutes or objective values leads to fatalism, nihilism, and pessimism, but that humanity is left with no choice but to overcome these defeatist attitudes. Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch is of a person who is able to overcome nihilism by three methods: rejecting or rebelling against prevailing societal ideals or moral codes; re-evaluating these old ideals and creating new ones; and by a general process of self-overcoming.

The on-island Locke could be said to have created, or be in the process of creating, both himself and his adopted 'society' anew. He has evolved into a type of unassuming guru, guiding and coaching other Lostaways into awareness of their own innate potentialities and special destinies. So he could be said to creating new ideals for the on-island society, as well as refashioning his own self into an image he could only fantasize about in his pre-island life. At times he even embodies the destructive aspect of Nietzsche's Übermensch: he tried to prevent Sayid from using the transceiver to locate and access the mysterious distress signal, resorting to physical force; he knocked Boone unconscious and drugged him in an attempt to help him overcome his attachment to his sister; he smashed the Swan Station computer (albeit in a moment of doubt); he blew up the Flame Station and (apparently) the Others' submarine; and he killed Naomi as she was about to contact her ship.

But while Nietzsche's world-view could be said to be emphatically secular, Locke certainly doesn't seem to discount the supernatural or other-worldly. In fact, on the island he seems to embrace it, even though he's had his bouts of doubt. The supreme act of courage - or authenticity, one might say - in Nietzsche's view is to base one's entire life in this world. In his view, the ultimate Übermensch is one who can take ultimate responsibility for oneself, conceiving and accepting reality as it is, in all its horror and grandeur. Locke has never seemed to be able to do this, instead relying on 'faith' in some hidden power or guiding force. However, certain events on the island - most notably his ability to walk after being paralyzed - serve to reinforce his faith in the unseen. But the island seems to be categorically different from this world; it seems to be a 'special place'.

Will Locke's experiences on the island ultimately be justified, providing at last that certainty of what is unseen? Will his faith be finally validated and rewarded? Will we see the actualization of the innate human longing for meaning, purpose and specialness?

Well, that remains to be seen...

[In the next post, I will be focusing on Jack, and comparing and contrasting both Jack and Locke, as well as teasing out a little more of the echoes of Nietzsche's philosophy.]

Lost

Locke vs. Jack

2007-06-05T17:24:00.000-07:00

The first post on this blog - which I will be writing this weekend - will center on two world-views that are diametrically opposed to each other: one that could be called 'natural' (Jack), and one that could be called 'supernatural' (Locke).

I will be using these designations to show how a supernaturalist like Locke believes in Fate or Destiny, and how a naturalist like Jack believes in an orderly universe based on reason and logic.

Who is right? How can we know? Does it even matter?

I will be discussing what philosophers, both classical and modern, have thought about these issues, as well as what we 'laypeople' think about such things.

I look forward to the discussion!

Cheers,

Juno

Lost

The Hearts & Minds of L O S T

2007-06-02T07:25:00.000-07:00

Fate. Destiny. Chance. Coincidence. Connection. Choice.

Free will, or futility? Noble Savage, or Evil Seed? Sacrifice, or self-interest?

Heroism. Cowardice. Loyalty. Redemption. Rebirth.

Empathy for the Other? One for all, or all for one?

These are the vagaries and vicissitudes of life in the world of L O S T. These are the quandaries the characters contemplate and confront. These are the issues we all face.

This blog will explore the human condition through the characters and narrative of L O S T. While it is superficially meant to be a means of satisfying our collective L O S T fix until the 2008 season, it is at the same time a sincere effort to acknowledge the things that make us human, the things that occupy most of our intellectual and emotional resources throughout our lives, the things with which we are confronted once thrown into the world, and the realization that a human being is uniquely "something which propels itself forward towards a future and is aware that it is doing so", in the words of Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

I will be publishing a weekly post that will address the issues embodied in a character, situation, or story arc of the show from any of the first 3 seasons. I won't be discussing the over-arching 'mythology' of the show per se, unless it is inextricably tied to the human element of the show. I also won't be discussing any rumors or spoilers about the show.

So welcome to an attempt to elucidate the human situation; and instead of finding ourselves lost, we will simply find ourselves.

Welcome to the hearts and minds of L O S T...

Lost