There is a proverb which states: We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. ... It takes the same amount of effort.
If one takes an honest, introspective look at one's self, that proverb is an accurate statement.
Effort is a vigorous or determined attempt to accomplish something; a strenuous physical or mental exertion.
So effort takes strength, focus and a goal.
The results we get is equal to the amount of effort we put into the task.
Our mind is not our best friend. It tricks us every day. It makes "excuses" that allows us to procrastinate, take risks, go outside one's comfort zone under the security blanket of making sure we don't "get hurt." It may rain today, so I won't go outside to exercise (jog, run, walk). I won't give up soda because it will give me a caffeine withdrawal headache. It takes too much time to go out and meet new people.
Those excuses are in direct contradiction to one's own personal goals such as losing weight, meeting new people, getting out of a social rut, etc. You may want to change your life but your mind and will creates road blocks to starting a plan to achieve those goals.
It seems contradictory, but it may be the last vestige of basic animal instincts in man who for self-preservation was wary of strangers, the dark, animal noises, risky paths and painful experiences.
Every person is given 24 hours each day to use as he or she pleases. Free will gives us choices. those personal choices is what controls what paths we take during our lives. Some of these paths lead to happiness and fulfillment, while other paths lead us to loneliness and sadness.
In LOST, the vast majority of main characters were going down personal paths of unhappiness. For example, Jack chose to follow his father's career path as a surgeon, but that is not really what he wanted to do. His career path sucked the life out of him - - - turning him into a loner whose only purpose was to work at the hospital in order to get some recognition from his father.
Sawyer also chose to take his life down a dark road of revenge. He could have accepted his parents deaths for what they were, a troubled murder-suicide caused by being taken by a con artist. But there had to be something more than financial stress to cause such destruction of his family unit. Sawyer was given a chance by his uncle to become a fine young man, but Sawyer chose to copy the man who caused him grave pain. And once he fulfilled his goal of revenge, it left him hollow - - - he had led a meaningless life with nothing to show for it.
If Jack or Sawyer had put in the same effort on something more positive, a different career path, they would have been better human beings. They probably would not have been loners prior to Flight 815. They probably would have had their own happy families from the lessons learned in their own childhoods. Instead, they took the broken pieces of their lives and obsessed on them to the point of darkness.
Everyone needs to take stock in their lives on a periodic basis. Are you putting in the effort to be happy?
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Friday, July 10, 2015
Sunday, April 5, 2015
LIFE OR DEATH
What would you choose: life or death?
Probably 99.9 percent of us would choose life.
But what if you were so troubled that you felt that in death you would receive new life?
This is the contradiction that is the daily headlines. Suicide bombers attack innocent people under the belief that they will have a better life in afterlife. Some teens under horrible torment of bullies, self-esteem issues, too high expectations and peer pressure weigh that option.
There is also the question of faith. Individuals believe in either an afterlife or not. People hope that there time on earth has a more infinite meaning.
LOST attempted to explore those themes.
It is hard to tell whether Locke convinced himself that he was better off killing himself than trying to help the island or his friends. Recall, he basically mucked up everything in his life, including his relationship with Helen and Jack, who he considered his rival and probable best friend.
It is hard to tell when Sayid came to the conclusion that he was better off dead when he took the submarine bomb and tried to leave the ship. Recall, he had lost his Nadia, then Shannon, in tragic accidents. He was an outsider and an outcast. He may have gotten along with a few island castaways, but he never fit in.
In the big picture of LOST, the writers did dance around to the side that there is hope in death.
The sideways world has to be considered a lukewarm attempt to show the afterlife as a continuation of the human lives we all live, day to day. The sideways purgatory or weigh station to paradise/heaven mocked the same struggles of real life, but with no lasting consequences except perhaps feelings of personal regret or remorse (as with Ben who decided to "stay" on to work out some of his issues with Rousseau and Alex). But that is the odd part about LOST's vision - - - each individual is his or her own judge and jury on what sort of afterlife they will be rewarded by the unknown gods (such as Jacob, MIB, the island, or some other supernatural power).
Though we were told that the island contained the power of life, death and rebirth, the sideways world showed us that it was each individual who controlled their own destiny.
Probably 99.9 percent of us would choose life.
But what if you were so troubled that you felt that in death you would receive new life?
This is the contradiction that is the daily headlines. Suicide bombers attack innocent people under the belief that they will have a better life in afterlife. Some teens under horrible torment of bullies, self-esteem issues, too high expectations and peer pressure weigh that option.
There is also the question of faith. Individuals believe in either an afterlife or not. People hope that there time on earth has a more infinite meaning.
LOST attempted to explore those themes.
It is hard to tell whether Locke convinced himself that he was better off killing himself than trying to help the island or his friends. Recall, he basically mucked up everything in his life, including his relationship with Helen and Jack, who he considered his rival and probable best friend.
It is hard to tell when Sayid came to the conclusion that he was better off dead when he took the submarine bomb and tried to leave the ship. Recall, he had lost his Nadia, then Shannon, in tragic accidents. He was an outsider and an outcast. He may have gotten along with a few island castaways, but he never fit in.
In the big picture of LOST, the writers did dance around to the side that there is hope in death.
The sideways world has to be considered a lukewarm attempt to show the afterlife as a continuation of the human lives we all live, day to day. The sideways purgatory or weigh station to paradise/heaven mocked the same struggles of real life, but with no lasting consequences except perhaps feelings of personal regret or remorse (as with Ben who decided to "stay" on to work out some of his issues with Rousseau and Alex). But that is the odd part about LOST's vision - - - each individual is his or her own judge and jury on what sort of afterlife they will be rewarded by the unknown gods (such as Jacob, MIB, the island, or some other supernatural power).
Though we were told that the island contained the power of life, death and rebirth, the sideways world showed us that it was each individual who controlled their own destiny.
Friday, March 20, 2015
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.
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.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
UNIFIED IN SPIRIT
The attempt to unify the various story aspects of LOST is a difficult chore.
One cannot be positive about anything.
As Oscar Wilde wrote, “All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.”
Exactly. What was the true peril in LOST?
What was the one fear that bound together everyone?
It may be a basic human inner terror: dying alone.
The composite feature of any of the main characters were that they were basically loners wandering through life with little or no true friendships. Some say that it is not how you perceive your own life, but your life will be judged by those who attend your funeral.
Human beings have a tribal instinct to belong to a family, a community, kindred spirits. But during one's life, those connections can get lost - - - trampled by the pressures of work, obligations, derailed by alcohol, drugs or quests for power, or tortured relationships including rejection.
That is a heavy dose of DOOM that people think is shadowing them throughout their lives.
If we examine what was below the surface of the island, we find two things. First, we find the ancient Egyptian temple complex, with a drawing of the smoke monster sitting across from Anubis, the god of the underworld. Second, we find the mysterious light force which is said to bring life, death and rebirth through supernatural powers which includes moving both time and space. Despite what is shown on the surface of the island, below is the clear symbolism of death and the after life. And the smoke monster is clearly depicted as part of this underworld realm.
Attached to the subsurface of the island are the roots of the plants, including the banyon trees which some believe have magical powers to ward off evil because spirits reside in their roots. Juliet and Kate were saved from the attacking smoke monster by hiding in the tree roots. What also is tied to the surface of the island? We would learn from Michael that the whispers are trapped spirits who cannot move on in death. Michael was one of those trapped spirits when he spoke to Hurley.
So we could conclude that the island itself is symbolic border between the living and the spirit world. We can also conclude that the smoke monster is a form of a spirit that is trapped on the island. As a spirit, it has magical abilities to change matter and form, to probe the minds and memories of human beings, and to destroy or kill. In all natural systems, there is a balance in order for the system to sustain itself. If the smoke monster is a evil, dark force, then the light force represents the counterbalance of good. It would have its own representative shape or smoke monster form on the island - - - which probably is symbolic of the island guardian such as Jacob.
Jacob being an energy being, a spirit, can explain why he could give Alpert the gift of life on the island because he was connected to the life spirit who can give life and rebirth. Thus, it is fair to assume that there are more than one smoke monster on the island. This could explain why Rousseau's reanimated dead crew members came after her, to turn her into another smoke creature. It could also explain why there was an obsession with new born children. Evil spirits who are trapped or chained to the island because of their evil past may believe that taking a new born, free from sin (pure goodness), absorbing that soul could be the key to releasing their bonds to the island underworld.
We have an island filled with symbols of death and the rituals of the underworld. We have an island inhabited by immortals and spirits. Indeed, the island is thus a magical place not fully of Earth.
If spirits are energy beings, the uncontrolled release of the EM pulse such as Desmond's failure to input the containment numbers causes the spirits to surge into time and space to attach themselves to human beings or to draw them (shipwreck them) on the island. So we can have the 815 plane crash survivors being live, human beings living in a spiritual realm that seems, on the surface, just another Pacific island.
There has to be some sort of unwritten bargain at play. The trapped spirits need to have humans come to the island for their own redemptive purposes, so their chains can be released so their souls can move on. But redemption is not what happens to any of the main characters on LOST. In fact, no one really has a defining revelation and life changing redemption on the island. There was no more compass that judged good or evil in their hearts. So what could the island spirits give the castaways that was so important, so valuable, that it could redeem them?
Since the spirits are dead, they had experienced the human frailty of dying alone. The island visitors have not gone through that end life moment. The spirit world would give them one last chance to find true connections with other human beings to avoid the fate of the whispers. Friendship, which includes affection, love, respect, trust and deep memories, was the passport for the 815 survivors to reach the sideways church, which was symbolic of their own group funeral.
When Christian said that "they" created the sideways universe, he was probably mistaken. It was the released spirits who created the supernatural alternative sideways world to hold departed souls in a state of ignorant limbo until everyone in the group was ready to "move on." The freed island spirits created the sideways world as their last penance before they themselves could move on. When know MIB could shape shift forms, so we can assume other spirits can too. And using the memories of the human visitors, the spirits and the island magic could create a realistic alternative world. And this could explain why it was slightly different, because a person's memories contain both factual recollection of past events as well as a person's dreams. So that may be why the spirit sideways world had Jack married to Juliet.
The bargain was simple: if the trapped island spirits could change human beings to be good, then they could be released from their island purgatory, and thus helping the humans from their inglorious fates of dying alone (and being unable to move on, like trapped spirits). The theme of redemption had little to do with the main characters, but it was the stake for the invisible characters, the island spirits.
This bargain unites two major elements of the series: life and death. How one lives their life is important, but it is also how one lives in death that is just as important. It answers the question of why people were brought to the island (to release trapped spirits). It answers the question why MIB was frustrated (most humans became corrupt-evil and turned into more whispers trapped on the island like himself). It also answers why an unlikely bunch of diverse people from Flight 815 could do something no other visitors could accomplish - - - because they truly changed their lonely paths and made strong friendships and bonds with unlikely people which enhanced the goodness in the island's life force. The reward for this bounty was the release of the whispers, who in turn rewarded the castaways with something they could only dream about: dying together, and not alone.
One cannot be positive about anything.
As Oscar Wilde wrote, “All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.”
Exactly. What was the true peril in LOST?
What was the one fear that bound together everyone?
It may be a basic human inner terror: dying alone.
The composite feature of any of the main characters were that they were basically loners wandering through life with little or no true friendships. Some say that it is not how you perceive your own life, but your life will be judged by those who attend your funeral.
Human beings have a tribal instinct to belong to a family, a community, kindred spirits. But during one's life, those connections can get lost - - - trampled by the pressures of work, obligations, derailed by alcohol, drugs or quests for power, or tortured relationships including rejection.
That is a heavy dose of DOOM that people think is shadowing them throughout their lives.
If we examine what was below the surface of the island, we find two things. First, we find the ancient Egyptian temple complex, with a drawing of the smoke monster sitting across from Anubis, the god of the underworld. Second, we find the mysterious light force which is said to bring life, death and rebirth through supernatural powers which includes moving both time and space. Despite what is shown on the surface of the island, below is the clear symbolism of death and the after life. And the smoke monster is clearly depicted as part of this underworld realm.
Attached to the subsurface of the island are the roots of the plants, including the banyon trees which some believe have magical powers to ward off evil because spirits reside in their roots. Juliet and Kate were saved from the attacking smoke monster by hiding in the tree roots. What also is tied to the surface of the island? We would learn from Michael that the whispers are trapped spirits who cannot move on in death. Michael was one of those trapped spirits when he spoke to Hurley.
So we could conclude that the island itself is symbolic border between the living and the spirit world. We can also conclude that the smoke monster is a form of a spirit that is trapped on the island. As a spirit, it has magical abilities to change matter and form, to probe the minds and memories of human beings, and to destroy or kill. In all natural systems, there is a balance in order for the system to sustain itself. If the smoke monster is a evil, dark force, then the light force represents the counterbalance of good. It would have its own representative shape or smoke monster form on the island - - - which probably is symbolic of the island guardian such as Jacob.
Jacob being an energy being, a spirit, can explain why he could give Alpert the gift of life on the island because he was connected to the life spirit who can give life and rebirth. Thus, it is fair to assume that there are more than one smoke monster on the island. This could explain why Rousseau's reanimated dead crew members came after her, to turn her into another smoke creature. It could also explain why there was an obsession with new born children. Evil spirits who are trapped or chained to the island because of their evil past may believe that taking a new born, free from sin (pure goodness), absorbing that soul could be the key to releasing their bonds to the island underworld.
We have an island filled with symbols of death and the rituals of the underworld. We have an island inhabited by immortals and spirits. Indeed, the island is thus a magical place not fully of Earth.
If spirits are energy beings, the uncontrolled release of the EM pulse such as Desmond's failure to input the containment numbers causes the spirits to surge into time and space to attach themselves to human beings or to draw them (shipwreck them) on the island. So we can have the 815 plane crash survivors being live, human beings living in a spiritual realm that seems, on the surface, just another Pacific island.
There has to be some sort of unwritten bargain at play. The trapped spirits need to have humans come to the island for their own redemptive purposes, so their chains can be released so their souls can move on. But redemption is not what happens to any of the main characters on LOST. In fact, no one really has a defining revelation and life changing redemption on the island. There was no more compass that judged good or evil in their hearts. So what could the island spirits give the castaways that was so important, so valuable, that it could redeem them?
Since the spirits are dead, they had experienced the human frailty of dying alone. The island visitors have not gone through that end life moment. The spirit world would give them one last chance to find true connections with other human beings to avoid the fate of the whispers. Friendship, which includes affection, love, respect, trust and deep memories, was the passport for the 815 survivors to reach the sideways church, which was symbolic of their own group funeral.
When Christian said that "they" created the sideways universe, he was probably mistaken. It was the released spirits who created the supernatural alternative sideways world to hold departed souls in a state of ignorant limbo until everyone in the group was ready to "move on." The freed island spirits created the sideways world as their last penance before they themselves could move on. When know MIB could shape shift forms, so we can assume other spirits can too. And using the memories of the human visitors, the spirits and the island magic could create a realistic alternative world. And this could explain why it was slightly different, because a person's memories contain both factual recollection of past events as well as a person's dreams. So that may be why the spirit sideways world had Jack married to Juliet.
The bargain was simple: if the trapped island spirits could change human beings to be good, then they could be released from their island purgatory, and thus helping the humans from their inglorious fates of dying alone (and being unable to move on, like trapped spirits). The theme of redemption had little to do with the main characters, but it was the stake for the invisible characters, the island spirits.
This bargain unites two major elements of the series: life and death. How one lives their life is important, but it is also how one lives in death that is just as important. It answers the question of why people were brought to the island (to release trapped spirits). It answers the question why MIB was frustrated (most humans became corrupt-evil and turned into more whispers trapped on the island like himself). It also answers why an unlikely bunch of diverse people from Flight 815 could do something no other visitors could accomplish - - - because they truly changed their lonely paths and made strong friendships and bonds with unlikely people which enhanced the goodness in the island's life force. The reward for this bounty was the release of the whispers, who in turn rewarded the castaways with something they could only dream about: dying together, and not alone.
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