THE SCHOOL JAIL

"Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog."--Mark Twain

I found this quote and thought it could have some application here. Recall, when we were introduced to the Others, we were led to believe that they were members of the Dharma Initiative, which brought scientists to the Island to study its abnormal properties. Dharma was a research and educational community. All seemed to be going well, except for the occasional Smoke monster attack and the native Hostiles causing a stink. But Dharma had existed for at least twenty years and created numerous high tech (bunkers) stations.

But things began to turn as time passed; the arrival of Roger and Benjamin Linus was like an infection for the island. They were not happy people. They were not believers. In essence, that attitude seeped into other Dharma zealots, like Radinsky, who side stepped the pursuit of knowledge for the capture of power. The decline of Dharma was led by an outsider, Benjamin Linus, who helped lead the Purge, a mass execution of all outsiders except Rousseau, Alex, Ethan, Radinsky, Kelvin and Linus. Brain snap: could these people have been the Original Candidates?

So a place of knowledge turned into a place of jail. Under Ben's leadership, recruits to the island were not allowed to leave, like Juliet and the 815 survivors. Without a counterbalanced truce with Dharma, the Others grew into a shoot first, ask questions later mentality of a prison yard.

With a trained acceptance of solutions through educational examination, people tend to revert more to a primordial, instinctive behavior set. At some time, it begins to feed upon itself. And that point of no return apparently could be MIB's game to kill Jacob in a vicious cell block turf war for control of the prison.