CONTROLLING THE FUTURE

We can have peace if we let go of wanting to change the past and wanting to control the future. — Lester Levinson

It is probably universal for a person to want a few basic social acknowledgements in their life: acceptance, security, friendship, love, trust or accomplishment. It is when a person tries to go to extremes to reach those goals, he or she becomes anti-social.

In all of our character studies, the most extreme spectrum may have been Ben.

His back story is cruel. For no apparent reason, his parents decide to hike through the Oregon woods on December 19, 1964 while his mother, Emily, is very, very pregnant. As a result of the walk, she goes into premature labor. His father, Roger,  panics, but is there to deliver Ben. But his mother bleeds to death, sending Roger into a spiral of anger, depression and regret. He would blame Ben for killing his mother, which is a false statement  but it would haunt and change Ben forever.

After Ben's birth, a distraught Roger flags down a car driven by Dharma leader Horus. Horus and his wife, Olivia,  help the Linus family. It is this random meeting that would lead Roger and Ben to the island. Roger was unable to cope with the pressure of fatherhood, the loss of his wife, and the responsibility of caring for an infant. He drank heavily, and could not hold a job. This increased his hatred towards Ben. 

At some point, Roger reconnects with Horus, who invites him to work for Dharma. Roger accepts the offer, and Ben and his father reach the island with other new workers. But the cruel reality of Roger's life hits him again hard, when he finds that the job he gets is that of a lowly janitor. 

Ben has an opportunity to change his life on the island. He is an quiet 8 year old boy. He is smart, attentive, and polite, but extremely shy. His social skills have been repressed because of his father's mental abuse and alcoholic rages. Ben becomes bitter about his lot in life. He longs for a normal family life, and the Dharma group, even though they are nice people, cannot substitute for his family.

Ben's life was immediately different than from the states. The Dharma compound routinely faced attacks from the Hostiles, the native people on the island. Roger, now an alcoholic, neglected his son. Ben did make one friend on the Island - a young girl named Annie. On Ben's ninth birthday, Annie carved two dolls, likenesses of the two children, and Ben kept them for the next 30 years. That same night, he saw his mother's ghost in the jungle. He later packed his belongings and went out in search of her, and he came upon Richard Alpert, one of the Hostiles. Richard was intrigued to learn Ben had seen someone who'd died off the Island, and he said Ben may be able to join the Hostiles one day, if he was patient. 

Three years later, Ben thought he found his chance when he heard that Dharma had imprisoned one of the Hostiles. Ben brought the man a  book and food (earning Roger's abuse). Ben later broke him out of his cell, setting fire to a van to distract those watching. But the prisoner turned out not to be a Hostile at all - Sayid was a time traveler from Ben's future. Knowing what Ben would become, an evil psychopath, Sayid shot Ben in the jungle, leaving him for dead. Jin found the wounded Ben and brought him back to the Barracks where Juliet tried to operated on him and  Kate donated blood. When it became clear that they could not save him, they sought the help of Alpert. Alpert told the time travelers that if he took Ben, it would be irreversible; he would be changed forever. Ben was taken to the Other's Temple, where we would later assume he would have been put into the reincarnation pool like Sayid would be during the final season.  Apparently, the temple ritual  robbed Ben of his recent memories of being shot by Sayid (but we cannot be for certain) and changed him forever. According to Richard, from this point on, he would "always be one of us."

The Others returned Ben to the Dharma camp, but told him to be patient. When the time was right, he could join the Others. Young Ben was then primed with the mental time bomb of leaving his father and the Dharma collective. It was a long ten years or so that Ben endured living at the Dharma camp after his temple rebirth. 

Ben would remain with the camp, eventually becoming a "work man" like his father. But he remained in touch with the Others, and when Widmore ordered the Initiative eliminated, Ben sided with the Hostiles. On Ben's birthday one year, he  released gas that killed all the Dharma members. Ben killed his father personally with a separate gas canister, responding to years of ill treatment. Richard offered to retrieve Roger's body, but Ben declined.
Though he'd helped defeat the Others' enemies, Ben still answered to Widmore, and the two maintained a rivalry before and after the Purge. In 1988, Widmore ordered Ben to kill a Rousseau who'd crashed onto the Island. Ben discovered she had a baby girl and spared them both, kidnapping the baby Alex and bringing her to the Others. Widmore initially ordered the baby killed as well but eventually relented and allowed Ben to raise her. Widmore had a daughter, Penny, of his own with an unknown woman from off the Island. When Ben discovered this infidelity some years later, he had Widmore exiled from the island. Ben then replaced him as the leader of the Others. As leader, Ben frequently traveled to the mainland, developing a wide network of resources. He restricted most of his people from leaving the Island and used deception and secrecy to control them. Ben found himself a victim of secrecy as well - despite being the Others' leader, Ben never got to visit the Island's Protector Jacob.  Jacob communicated only through Richard and sent Ben instructions and lists to follow. It was a bit ironic that Ben's entire plan was to join then lead the Hostiles, but once he reached that position he continued to be controlled and put into his place by an unknown man, Jacob. 

Ben would become to associate Jacob with his father. Everything Ben did for them, he would not receive the acceptance, security, friendship, love, trust or accomplishment that he craved from a father figure. This simmering torment would lead Flocke to manipulate Ben into killing Jacob, thereby changing the balance of power on the island forever.

Ben only found peace when he gave up control, his ambitions, and his personal darkness, to become Hurley's assistant guardian. When he awoke in the sideways world, filled with his past memories, he decided to stay to "work things out" with his father, Rousseau and continue to protect Alex, even though they were apparently in the after life, and Rousseau and Alex's island memories of Ben would be harsh hatred for what he did to them. Even if Ben could try to "change" that past, in the sideways world he realized that he could not. Further, he could not control their future responses when they awoke, but Ben seemed to be okay with that - - - because he would try to influence the sideways present to repent for his past by being a kind, caring and trustworthy person. But we really don't know if that would have worked.

All of the couples in the sideways church has at least a strong bond on the island. Those who did not, like Locke and Boone, were left alone. It would seem that would be Ben's fate as well because he passed on moving on with Hurley's group. So there may have remained a hint of Ben still trying to change his past by trying to bond with Rousseau and Alex in the sideways world.

If there was a lesson here it is that no matter what you do, you cannot change the past or control the future because it has too many variables.