SOCIAL REGULATION

In the past few weeks, there have been many international stories revolving around the concept of free speech, its regulation and concepts of political correctness. As one commentator put it, the world is wired together but torn a part by the notion of the apparent need for "social regulation."

In the U.S., the FCC turned the internet into a telephone utility by enacting 400 pages of new rules which will be challenged in court. Internet advocates wanted the FCC to make certain that the internet be neutral, i.e. that service providers could not block content, charge extra for higher speeds, or throttle down heavy users like video streamers. That is all well and good, and opponents said market forces already regulate business plans (such as the cellphone data plan changes and unlocking of phones from contracts).

But with the FCC rule making comes with it the first government step to regulate content on the internet, something net neutrality advocates failed to understand. The FCC has "content" rules for broadcasters, what can be said when, on television using the public airwaves. Cable got around some of those restrictions because it was a private, pay service. But even then, regulators got involved mandating parental controls and v-chips to limit certain content access.

FCC utility regulation also can involve regulations which raise the cost to consumers, such as forcing internet providers and broadband services "open access" to their networks, i.e. subsidizing poor rural areas or consumers. Those costs will be added to everyone's bill.

Also in the U.S., there have been an assault on college free speech. Under the constitution, free speech is immune from government regulation or censorship. Even what some people would consider offensive or politicially incorrect speech is protected under the law. Some college administrators and some students themselves, have been trying to limit the type of speech on campus. One incident was the vote to ban the display of the American flag in campus buildings.

Social media has ratcheted up the amount of public intolerance to other people's opinions. We no longer have civil debates on important public issues by discussing facts. Today, social media are bursts on condensing snipes and snark aimed at shaming another person or organization to change their point of view. This builds a culture based on intolerance.

The waves of social regulation has to erode the pillars of society over time. Culture can overwhelm and undermine the basic moral and political foundations of a civilization.

With this current background, one can look back at LOST to see if the setting, character dynamics and stories foreshadowed today's current culture clashes.

There was always a heavy shadow of authority in the series. At one early level, the authority figure than seemed to repress, control and dominate the characters lives were fathers. The "daddy issues" element seemed to dominate many characters' focus. Jack was only on Flight 815 because of guilt over his unresolved daddy issues. Kate was on the flight as she was running away from her crimes based in part on bad daddy issues. Locke was also running away from his daddy issues by trying to become an outback fantasy survivalist. Claire was abandoned by her baby father, so she was in the midst of abandoning her own baby.

The next authority figure on the island was Dharma. It had a paramilitary bent to dominate and control the island over the alleged "native" population, which probably were taken over and destroyed by the Others (the remains of the potential candidates from Jacob's game with MIB.) Since only Jacob could allow people access to the island, everyone of the island was subject to Jacob's power (whether they realized it or not). Within Dharma and the Others camp, there was an internal struggle for power and control by leaders. It took Ben's sociopathic mass murder of the Dharma folks to solidify his complete dominance of the island. Ben's mental breakdown and quest for power has to be considered in his hatred for his own father blaming him for killing his mother.  Just as the Others felt distrust and anger toward Dharma, the Others turned on the castaways in order for Ben to control "his" island (again, even though Jacob brought the 815ers to the island as candidates to replace him.)

Even if Ben felt Jacob was his surrogate father, Ben turned on him by murdering him in a classic manipulation by Flocke. Once Ben killed Jacob, his power base was destroyed and only the mercy by one of Jacob's last followers spared Ben's own life. It was probably the harshest lesson of humility on the show, if you don't count Locke's life.

Locke continually lashed out against authority. "Don't tell me what I can do!" was his personal battle cry. But Locke never understood himself. He felt he was a strong, leader, a popular jock, a man people would look up to, respect. Except, in reality, Locke was a follower. And since he could not come to terms with his own conflicted personality, he became a fool.

Locke died a meaningless death after living a meaningless life of his own creation. In physics, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In humanity, a person's action will elicit a reaction. It is how a person deals with those reactions is how he or she fits into her social circle.

Locke did not fit well into the survivor's camp. The Hatch and the dumb Numbers input gave Locke an actual purpose. But when he got fed up with that, he thought he knew better - - - but he was wrong and the station went critical and time flashed the island setting off dominoes to his own demise.

The characters on the show pretty much said their own minds. Sawyer was as politically incorrect and verbally cruel as one could get . . .  but since there were more important risks to be met, his behavior was secondary to survival. One could say the more comfortable one is in their life (emotionally, financially, etc) the more one has time to criticize others. Like an old aristocratic parlor game of dunning and belittling the lower classes.

The beach camp did have his own high school-ish clique system. You had the "cool" kids (Jack, Kate, Sawyer), the nerdy outcasts (Hurley, Charlie, Sayid), the cheerleader-jocks (Boone, Shannon, Claire) the foreign exchange students (Sun, Jin) and the hip faculty (Rose, Bernard). But just in high school, these groups did function at one level together, but socially operated separately.

And these sub-social groups did start to regulate conduct amongst themselves. The cool group began to dominate the planning and execution of missions and priorities. The beach camp extras like Artz and Frogert, who may have been intelligent and had certain skills, had their opinions neutralized by the dominate voices of Jack, Sawyer or Kate. Jin and Sun took a secondary role because they knew they did not fit in with the Americans. Rose and Bernard slowly worked their way out of the politics and danger of the games the leaders were playing to set up their own retreat in the jungle.

If Jacob and MIB were the puppet masters in their island theater, they regulated the actions and interactions between the various competing social groups. There was placed in many minds that the other group was "dangerous" or "out to get them."  This mistrust was a foundational story element. Even if it was irrational and being manipulated by the shadows, it was a form of social regulation. The rules (unwritten and confusing) were the rules. But that order often created disorder.

The beach camp may have began as a democracy with everyone allowed to speak their own mind. But in the end, a new caste system emerged from the dominant personalities instilling their own cues on the rest of the group. Peer pressure may have ultimately fused followers to leaders out of a sense of necessity. In the Others camp, Ben's followers walked on egg shells around him because one offensive remark or action could lead to their own death.

It is said that television mirrors modern society. In some respects, LOST did show that even in a diverse cast of characters, a clear pecking order will emerge in any society. And once that dominance is established, social regulation certainly follows.