DREAM THEORY

A recent article in mentalfloss.com suggests that some researchers have found evidence for an alternative possibility: that dreams are a form of threat simulation, readying your brain in the rare event that you do find yourself confronted (pantsless or otherwise) with a dangerous situation.

According to this theory, outlined by cognitive researcher Jim Davies, dreams act as a dress rehearsal for dangerous scenarios in real life. Support for the idea comes in several forms, beginning with the fact that our most vivid and memorable dreams tend to be more like archetypal nightmares.

"They have a tendency to feature negative emotions—fearful, angry, and anxious dreams are more common than happy ones," Davies writes. "And the things we dream about tend to be biased in the direction of ancient dangers rather than more modern ones. We dream about being chased by animals and monsters more than having our credit card defrauded, even though most of us have very little real-life experience of being chased by animals (or monsters)."

Additionally, there are clues to the purpose of dreaming in the way the human subconscious responds to real-world events. In 2008, researchers at Tufts discovered a shift in the way people dreamed immediately after 9/11, as dreams about being attacked increased in intensity and frequency. But while people were having more and worse nightmares, they weren't about plane crashes or terrorism; the central imagery of their dreams remained unchanged, suggesting that their brains were reaching for an ancient script about being under threat —and rehearsing for the possibility of a future catastrophe—rather than reliving the memory of the recent tragedy. Per the researchers, the evidence pointed to dreams being an "emotionally guided construction or creation, not a replay of waking experience."

Another curious link between dreaming and disaster-preparedness: the phenomenon of prescient dreams. Though not formally researched, anecdotes abound from people who've dreamed of a frightening experience only to then live through it in real life. For instance, in 1983, 20-year-old painter James Murphy III survived a terrifying fall from his job site atop the Rip Van Winkle Bridge in upstate New York, plummeting more than 150 feet into five feet of marshy water on the coast of the Hudson River. In an interesting wrinkle, Murphy's mother reported that he had dreamed about falling the previous night, and that in the dream, he took a tuck position upon entering the water, protecting his head and neck—a move he repeated the next day when he plunged into the Hudson. Did dreaming his way through the fall beforehand contribute to Murphy's quick thinking, and subsequent survival, in that critical moment? The theory of dreams as threat simulation suggests that the answer is yes.

There's a lot to learn yet about why and how we dream, and per Davies, the most likely explanation is that dreaming is a multi-faceted and multi-functional process. But in the meantime, everything we know about the usefulness of mental "practice" supports the idea that dreams help prepare you to navigate the waking world. Studies show that visualizing yourself performing a skill makes you substantially better at it. And for the minority of people who are capable of lucid dreaming—the practice of recognizing when you're in a dream and taking control of the narrative—there's no end to the things you can learn to do while you're asleep.

"You can rehearse any skill in a lucid dream," Daniel Erlacher, a researcher at the University of Bern, Switzerland who led a study in which lucid dreaming led to improved performance in a coin toss game, told the Harvard Business Review.  "It has been well established that athletes who mentally rehearse an activity can improve their performance, and it makes sense that dreams can achieve the same effect."

And much like the reports of prescient dreaming, anecdotal evidence certainly supports the concept of rehearsing for real life in your dreams (be they lucid or not). German researcher Paul Tholey, who founded the scientific study of dreams (oneirology), for one, used himself as a guinea pig.
"He claimed that by practicing in his dreams, he’d learned to snowboard so well that he could do it without bindings, which is almost impossible," said Erlacher. "I’ve spoken with people who went snowboarding with him, and they watched him do it. So there has been some validation."

TEST OF PSYCHOPATHS

Robert Hare is a researcher in criminal psychology, and this is officially the "golden standard" for assessing psychopathy.

There are 20 items in the PCL-R checklist. Scoring for each item:

- 0 if it does not apply at all
- 1 if there is a partial match or mixed  information
- 2 if there is a reasonably good match to the offender.

Try to be honest, and add them up to get your score.

Out of a maximum score of 40, the cut-off for the label of psychopathy is 30 in the United States and 25 in the United Kingdom.A cut-off score of 25 is also sometimes used for research purposes.

Psychopathy Checklist-Revised: Factors, Facets, and Items

Factor 1
Facet 1: Interpersonal

• Glibness/superficial charm
• Grandiose sense of self-worth
• Pathological lying
• Cunning/manipulative

Facet 2: Affective

• Lack of remorse or guilt
• Emotionally shallow
• Callous/lack of empathy
• Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Factor 2
Facet 3: Lifestyle

• Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
• Parasitic lifestyle
• Lack of realistic, long-term goals
• Impulsivity
• Irresponsibility

Facet 4: Antisocial

• Poor behavioral controls
• Early behavioral problems
• Juvenile delinquency
• Revocation of conditional release
• Criminal versatility

Other items

• Many short-term marital relationships
• Promiscuous sexual behavior

The Macdonald triad (also known as the triad of sociopathy or the homicidal triad) is a set of three behavioral characteristics that has been suggested, if all three or any combination of two, are present together, to be predictive of or associated with later violent tendencies, particularly with relation to serial offenses

- Did you use to be cruel to animals when you were young?
- Did you use to wet your bed frequently and past a certain age?
- Did you use to set fires?

 Do you do any of these professions?

1. CEO
2. Lawyer
3. Media (TV/Radio)
4. Salesperson
5. Surgeon
6. Journalist
7. Police Officer
8. Clergyperson
9. Chef
10. Civil Servant

Then there is a higher chance you are psychopathic.

Do you do any of these professions?

1. Care Aide
2. Nurse
3. Therapist
4. Craftsperson
5. Beautician/Stylist
6. Charity Worker
7. Teacher
8. Creative Artist
9. Doctor
10. Accountant

Then there is a lower chance that are psychopathic.

WHY GIVE UP?

There was one curious plot point which makes little sense.

The desire to escape the island. It was first and foremost in the survivalists minds after the plane crash. Rescue was the goal.

When Michael built his raft (twice), it was clear that some of the castaways were determined to help themselves get back home. And Michael's raft did work - - - they left the island in search of a rescue boat. But what happened next makes no sense.

The raft was attacked by the Others. Sawyer was shot; Jin and Michael were left for dead in the water.

So the survivalists would learn of their fate. The Others were dangerous. The island was dangerous. There should have been a GREATER urgency to leave the island. Build another raft. Go to the Barracks and steal a boat or submarine.

Instead, the castaways turned into sheep.

Why give up?
Why give up hope?
Why give up the chance to see your loved ones?
Why?

Even when Bernard tried to get the beach organized with signal fires, no one wanted to help him. It was no use. They were resigned to their fate of being island sheep. They were resigned that they would probably be killed off, one by one. That is not living, by anyone's definition. That is slow dying.

And when the castaways found canoes, and Desmond's boat - - - why not make a run for it? Instead, there were lame attempts to "rescue" their friends, for whom they did not know whether they were dead or alive. There was no effort to leave until the freighter arrived, but even then Jack refused rescue for all. Again, that was a curious out-of-character course for a man whose sole mission in life was to "save" other people.

Yes, the freighter was a death trap, but Jack did not know that when he made his call. He was basically playing god at that point: who would live (on the boat) and who would die (on the island).

It should have made those left behind mad. Mad enough to start their own rescue plans. But they did nothing but wait for their fate. It makes no sense.

THE GAMES

When I heard about Hunger Games, I thought it was probably another food channel battle show. But it is a teen film with a familiar genre: the human hunt. I can see why the film was popular: it had an attractive lead in Jennifer Lawrence who teen girls could identify. She made a sacrifice to save her sister which starts the action toward a dystopian saga of human sport.  The ruling class look like arrogant French aristocrats who keep the peasant classes the outer districts in line by taking two people a year from their ranks to play a vicious winner take all contest.

This genre story line is fairly simple. A person is taken out of their normal routine, and placed in the position of being a hunted animal by some superior being, usually a pyscho millionaire hunter. There is no educational value to the exercise. It is pure kill or be killed mentality. Since humans are the clever ones in the food chain, hunting them is more appealing to the deranged masters.

In LOST, there have been several theories which involved the castaways being human subjects in various Dharma-like experimentation, from female reproduction to psychological evaluation such as watching monitors all day, and sending reports in tubes that go no where (unread). Or, Desmond being placed in a hatch to type in numbers every 108 minutes. Why would anyone need to video that cruelty? To measure the breaking point of the human spirit.

How people cope with the stresses placed upon them is something that scientists continue to try to measure. Even the benign folks at Facebook have been accused of secretly manipulating data streams in order to get reactionary information from its users. Toying with people's emotions seems to be fun sport for some, even in a digital world.

So let us assume the Dharma folk built their stations on the island for the purpose of human experimentation. The various stations were built to test the human operators tolerance for the mundane, the entrapment and the longing for home. Dharma had the ability to view its test subjects, and manipulate the controls to get reactions and more data. The facilities also contained Room 23, a mind control unit.

So what happens when the manipulated realize that they are being manipulated? They rebel, like in Ben's purge. But what takes the place in the new island order is really much of the same. Power corrupts, and newfound power is addictive. The captor leaders then use the same techniques to control their own subjects (the Others). Human nature is a endless loop.

As in the Hunger Games, there are rules, but they can be changed at any time to serve the purposes of the overlords. In an advanced society, technology is used to repress the lower classes. Also, in the Hunger Games, the key point of power to control the unhappy workers was to give them hope. For hope is more powerful than their fears.

Those in power will seek to maintain their power at all costs. So when an unexpected airplane crashes onto the island with survivors, the powerful believe that it is an immediate threat to their order. So spies are sent to the camps. The Others begin to kidnap the children. They spread "fear" through the new visitors in order to mask or destroy any hope they have for rescue or peaceful coexistence on the island. And thus the game of tug of war starts between the factions.

The survivors are like the district tributes, taking out of their normal world and placed in an unfamiliar and dangerous situation. They have to learn quickly, adapt or die. And the Others find hunting humans more fun than trying to avoid the confrontation with the smoke monster.

If one looks at the show as a battle between two factions, the old and the new, then LOST goes back to its pre-pilot roots of being a Survivor like drama show. Perhaps that was supposed to be the real direction of the show. But we will never know since the basic show outline quickly diverged from that path into sci-fi and supernatural mysteries.

The off-premise that the survivors would be pitted against the Others in a battle royal (Jacob vs. MIB as game masters) where sacrifice is badgered on individuals "for the good of their friends" like ghost Christian told Locke in the FDW pit.  Like in the game of Senet, the immortal island rulers could have set up the conflict in order to eliminate players. The game was finally over when Jacob's last ally, Jack, died on the island after the other survivors flew overhead.  (Both Hurley and Ben were technically followers of Flocke at the end). How this actually represents a "game over" moment is quite unclear because we don't know what the actually was the Jacob-MIB game.

Actually, LOST could have worked as a cooking show. Deposit 24 cooks on a deserted tropical island to fend for themselves, and make occasional "offerings" or tributes to their judges (in exchange for needed supplies). The contestants would have to live off the land, and survive the elements and each others if there were "no rules." If the stakes were high enough (one winner only), and losers were destroyed or sacrificed, would the nation view such a bloody spectacle? Probably. There was a undercurrent of cruelty throughout the series that taps the subconscious and whispers that it is only entertainment.

PREGNANCIES

One of the early serious plot lines revolved around the danger of pregnant women on the island. They all died before giving birth.  This was a serious story line, repeated twice in the show: first with Claire and her abduction, and second with Sun's "miracle" conception. (There is major flaw in the sideways arc that both women who gave birth in the island time-sphere gave birth to their daughters in the sideways after life.)

The reason why pregnant women died on the Island before they could successfully give birth was vaguely couched as an "infection." People, especially pregnant women, had to have shots in order to save themselves and their babies. But the cause was never explained. Ben kidnapped Juliet to have her investigate the island birth problem because she successfully got her infertile sister pregnant. Juliet was supposed to solve the problem, but did not. There was some aspect of the pregnancies that may have been tied to fetus "time skipping," but that was actually before the FDW was introduced as a deux machina device.

In Season 1 when Claire was pregnant with Aaron and got kidnapped and experimented on by Ethan, was a member of The Others who had a focus on children. They would later kidnap the tail section children.  Ethan was likely working with  Juliet to help Claire – he gave her injections, but those cause strange pyschotropic events in Claire's mind.  Claire was rescued Aaron was born on the island (something that was not supposed to happen). One explanation is that it was likely Aaron born on the Island without incident because Claire was already far enough along in her pregnancy before coming to the Island (just like Jacob and the Man In Black’s mother).

However, the pregnancy issue popped up again in Season 3 when Sun learned that she was pregnant (“The Glass Ballerina” & “D.O.C.” ) and was a the prominent focus of Juliet’s flashback arch (“One of Us“). If Sun conceived on the island, she was in mortal danger just like the dead Other women who could not come to term. One hard explanation was that Sun was pregnant before she arrived on the island, and that the baby was not Jin's. However, the baby problems occurred in island women in their third trimester, so both Claire and Sun would have been in danger. Another factor for Sun was that her daughter was born off the island which somehow saved the mother and child from the island's deadly "infection?"

One simple observation is that the motherhood drama was a story arc that fizzled out after Claire gave birth and Juliet was killed off.  It was filler drama because who is more at risk on a dangerous island than a pregnant woman?

However, in Desmond's island back story, we were told that everyone on the island was at risk. That Desmond had to take injections and not go outside because of the infection. We later learned that Kelvin was lying to Desmond. So it is possible that there was no island"infection," and that the pregnant women never came to term because of some other factor, such as poor prenatal care or individual risk factors (because at some point, there was a thriving community with Dharma, with children and a school).

One other explanation I had during the original series run was that pregnant women could not come to term on the island because the island was hell. In hell, sinners were not allowed to bring new life into a realm of punishment. A newborn has no sin to be punished so it would not be allowed to be born. And Ben, as a minion for Satan, was trying to get around that rule by finding a way to regenerate a new army for the devil himself (who could be the evil incarnate - - - smoke monster).

Likewise, there is a story problem with pregnant women in the sideways after life. If the sideways was purgatory or even a slice of heaven, why would dead women give birth to their already born children? That does not make any logical sense.

It would seem the infection of the island, whatever realm state it was, could have been a misstatement of some kind of dream-hallucination state that women with issues believed that they were pregnant and going to have a child. In the sideways world, in a similar vain, the reward for certain women was to give them what they dreamed about but did not achieve in the real human life: having a baby.

The fact that we never found out why pregnant women were dying on the Island still bugs a great deal of LOST fans. It is one of those sub-plots that was conveniently dropped but then later contradicted by other events.

FRIENDS

Life is difficult for everyone. We all have stress and we all need someone in our lives that we can lean on. Never think that you cannot talk to someone because they have problems too or that your friend or loved one would be better off without you or your problems. You'll soon find out that they need you just as much as you need them. — Joshua Hartzell

 The consensus is that the cast members who wound up in the sideways church at the End needed each other in order to get into the after life.

That may be true, but were they really friends? 

Friendship is the emotional bond and personal conduct of individuals towards others in their group;  a state of mutual trust and support.

It is fairly clear that most of the main cast had no true friends prior to landing on the island. We never saw them hanging out shooting the breeze with a friend or close colleague. Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, Locke, Desmond - - - they really were loners. Hurley and Charlie used to have best friends, but events changed and broke those relationships. Even Ben had one childhood friend, but we don't know what ever happened to her.  Due to Ben's power lust, he had no adult friends but followers.

But even throughout the island events, the main characters really did not form strong bonds or undivided loyalty or trust amongst each other.

Jack never trusted Locke. Locke never trusted Jack.
Kate was flippant on whom she aligned herself with, either Sawyer or Jack.
Hurley was friendly to everyone on the island, but he was probably closest to Charlie until Charlie decided to make his move with Claire. 
Sawyer only trusted Sawyer.
Ben sought the trust of the candidates, but it was all a manipulation.

How Ben became Hurley's island buddy post-Jack guardianship is one of those mysteries that we will never know. Congenial colleagues, maybe.

So in the church, we have a mixture of people who really did not get along with each other. Rose and Bernard left the group over the group's petty bickering and insane confrontations with danger. Desmond was always the lone outsider in the group after the Hatch imploded. Penny was never part of the island circle. And Jack and Kate's relationship was one of love-hate; why they sat together was that was the best leftover among the group. Even Locke had no friend sitting next to him in the church finale. In the sideways world, he had a perfect life with Helen. But she was not with him. How sad was that?

 I think friendship is a major theme in the series. But even throughout the dangers of the island, the bonds of friendship between the major characters was weak. Many veterans come back from the battlefield stating that the men in the foxholes became their best friends. It was the situation and need to survive that brought units of individuals together as a single mind. But once they return home, and disperse across the country, it is rare that those veterans keep in contact. They move forward in their lives.

The concept of moving forward is another theme in the series. But even as the island events ended, it seems the LOST souls never truly wanted to move on. That is evidenced by the fact that they wound up together in the church, not knowing what would come next.

DISSOLVING ISSUES

It recently struck me as odd that throughout the series, MAJOR CRISIS (life or death) problems seem to fade away, lose survivor interest and become non-issues without any true resolution.

It is like the attention span of a child being bombarded with multiple stimuli. Once he has had enough of one thing he goes on to the next.

Things started off in a logical manner. The survivors needed food and water, so they plundered the plane and baggage for supplies. When the threat of disease from the dead bodies (and boar attacks), the survivors torched the plane's fuselage.

When there was an issue of safety with the reveal of the smoke monster, the camp started to become divided. It got worse when they were running out of drinkable water. When Jack found the water fall cave, his plan was to move the survivors to this safer location. But he was rebutted by half the group. So the significant water issue and relocation faded away from being a crisis to a non-factor.

Then there was the natural drive to be rescued. When no one showed up for weeks, Michael got the ball rolling on building a raft to get into the ocean current and cargo traffic lanes. Despite this being the only viable option, very few survivors actually helped with the plan. And after Michael's boat was ambushed, the survivors remaining on the island no longer planned on how to seek rescue or leave the island. It was only at the very end of the series did the subject come up with the Ajira plane.

The next great crisis was the attacks by the Others. Again, in a moment of personal safety, the panic was felt throughout the camp. But after a while, the idea of enhanced security at the beach was dropped like there were no problem by most of the survivors. Out of sight out of mind.

Then there was the infection or disease which Desmond and Claire were told about. The Others had a serum to ward off the effects of the infection especially in pregnant women. It was said to be fatal. If there was a serious pathogen on the island, it faded from memory quickly. Some fans believe that it is was just a false ploy to gain confidence of the survivors or keep people dependent on those in power.

The time travel and time skips were major issues for those main characters. Instead of trying to figure out what was truly going on, and possibly use the supernatural properties to their advantage, they just rode the time rifts like surfers until they stopped. And afterward, the time skippers did not discuss their adventurous plight with any of the non-skippers.

The story pattern is fairly clear: set up an improbable situation. Throw the main characters into a dangerous mix. As that story line is about to unravel, set up a new improbable situation and drop the old one. One of the better examples of this switch was when a small group went on a mission to stop Ben from using the poison gas plant. The unguarded facility was used briefly as a "trust exercise" between the survivors and the freighter science team, but there was only a faux emergency. And once that mission ended, the poison gas was never referenced again, including when the candidates were about to brainstorm how to defeat Flocke.

Because of LOST's story format, the individual story events seem to show the final pattern of a preschool pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game.