DISASSOCIATION

There has been a trend in Japanese society where its youth disassociate themselves from their culture to escape into their own fantasy worlds, such as anime. It may be based upon economic conditions, the lack of work, or burn out from educational stresses to pass exams. America had a similar bout with a "drop out" culture.

While this may be a temporary delay in finding oneself, it does have the possibility to create self-delusion.  While extreme self-delusion within literature certainly dates back to at least Miguel de Cervantes’s 1605 novel Don Quixote, the recent prominence of anime that specifically concentrate on the the tendency of Japanese youth to disassociate with reality or create false personas has to be accepted as a deliberate observation of an existing trend. People are trying to find out what is  motivating Japanese youth to disengage from everyday reality. Is it willful psychological disassociation?  Or is illustrating real-world causes and impacts to a teen's cognitive disassociation?

As a matter of social commentary,  LOST did not hit the big pivot points like poverty, environmental issues or morality. Since TPTB keep saying that it was all about the study of the characters and character development, it may mirror the functional disassociation within American society norms.

The series did contain more than one psychopath. The unyielding quest for unmentioned and unobtainable power drove many characters like Ben and Widmore into killing rampages. Megalomania is a form of psychological transference of one's meek reality into some grand self-righteous plan (usually with the tenor of a destiny or a righteous position to uphold). When Ben kept telling us he was one of "the good guys," did we ever believe his banter?

Many of the characters were disillusioned by their mainland lives. Collectively, most of them were going no where fast. There was no mention of an American Dream goal. And even if they had a chance to start one, like Kate in Florida with her husband, she screwed it up and fled at the first hint of trouble. Criminals have a built-in distaste to follow the norm placed on individuals in society. Likewise, creative people seek to break the normalcy to shock people into recognizing their self-belief genius. Some succeed, but most fail. It used to be that failure was a good thing (you would learn more from your mistakes) but in the new uber-competitive sports culture, failure is no longer an option. You have Tiger Moms creating home educational sweatshops so their child can get into the "best" schools. You have Soccer Moms treating their athlete kids like full time professional ball players. Society's value system can easily be skewed from generation to generation.

The island really had no value system. It did not value life over death. It did not value trust over distrust. It did not value success over failure. If the island was a brain of a teenager, it would be an apathetic, escapist video game console.

What is really sad is that the characters in LOST thought that their miserable time on the island "was the most important part of their lives."  How shallow and desperate is that conclusion? The prospect of being killed in a horrible place trapped by monsters and demons was more appealing than an American middle class upbringing to the freedom of young adulthood?

The island did give some characters the ability to "re-create" themselves in their fantasy images, such as Locke as the outback survivalist. But it also allowed others such as Kate to re-stage herself as the "girl next store" flirt to cover her criminal secrets. Both Locke and Kate disassociated themselves from normal society long before they landed on the island. In some respects, they had already given up their lives prior to the crash. They did not take the crash as an opportunity to change their lives, but to fantasize what could have been. Escape to an island where one's own perceived genius and wit can outsmart and out maneuver anything that comes in your way is a compelling fantasy scenario for those persons who have lost their will to become a productive member of society.