GHOSTS

There will always be a debate on what the characters were on the island: human or spirits (souls).

But a subset of this debate can be the theory that the main characters did not know they were ghosts or spirits, so they lived a continuation of their lives as humans. Another tangent would be that they were spirits but were on the island to redeem their souls to become human once more.

The latter would be an interesting concept. One of the themes were "second chances."  What if there newly deceased had a second chance to reclaim their human life?

How would one go about reclaiming one's humanity?

If you were an evil person, would you have to do something "good" as in sacrificing yourself to save another?

But if you were a normal person, would you have to do something different, to erase a haunting "regret" in order to be saved?

The island whispers were said to have been trapped souls, such as Michael, after he died. Trapped souls infer that the island was some kind of purgatory where spirits could not move on unless something changed or they were released from their bondage.

If the island was merely a series of "humanity tests," who were the people that passed - - - and left the island as humans? It is noteworthy that Ben and the Dharma group both had a keen interest in island pregnancies. What is human life more than a fetus? It is the start of human life. But children could not be born on the island because their mothers were not human. But the experiments tried to create humans from ghosts in order to find the key to transform back into their human bodies.

Frank survived the submarine explosion and was found by Alpert and Miles, who had decided to continue as planned without Ben who had joined up with Flocke. Frank suggested that they escape the Island in the Ajira plane instead of destroying it. Upon reaching the plane, they repaired its broken windshield and damaged hydraulic systems. This brought the plane into good working condition, allowing Frank to prepare for takeoff. As the plane was taxiing down the collapsing Hydra Island runway, it managed to slow down so that Ford, Austen, and Claire could be pulled aboard. The Ajira plane safely took off just as the runway began to crack; its occupants managed to escape the initially self-destructing Island.

Who were the final survivors? Frank was an alcoholic pilot who should have died in the original 815 crash. Miles was a mystic con man who befriended Sawyer. Sawyer was a vengeful con man who killed the man who ruined his life. Kate was a troublemaker who killed her father and fled from responsibility and justice. Claire was bad daughter (her negligence killed her mother) and bad mother (she abandoned her son and went crazy). None of these characters had any major revelations or changes in their personality or morals to deserve to be "re-born" as humans to travel back to their past lives.

Jack was the one who sacrificed himself so the others could flee the island. He took on the guardian role to defeat Flocke (even though it was Kate's bullet that downed the smoke monster human form.)

The Ajira survivors all had deep rooted mental issues tied to self-esteem problems from events early in their lives. They had a sense of abandonment by one parent; they had family secrets which made their skin crawl. They did not want to take full responsibility for their actions. They wanted to escape in their own fantasy image of themselves.

But everyone dreams about their perfect self. Hurley wanted to be a confident, witty, popular and successful businessman with a charming wife and adoring family. But in the end, he did not achieve that self-image.  The same is true with Locke. He also had a strong longing to have a sense of "family" but he had a hard time gathering the trust of even friendships. In the end, he was alone in the church. He never did find the family he was looking for through all the hardships of the island.

What was the greatest "asset" the Ajira survivors maintain during their island ordeals to gather their ticket home? Frank, Miles, Kate, Claire and Sawyer all kept away from making leadership decisions. They were soldiers not generals. They did not want to seize power or control. That fit into their plan of self-survival - - - but in reality, the thing that tied them all together was being selfish.  They generally lacked consideration for others; they were concerned chiefly with their own personal profit, pleasure or safety.

If true, then "self-sacrifice" was a death sentence on the island. It would be the opposite of common sense or a normal story trope. If only the selfish survived, that would be a bad moral to the story.

But LOST was never really about morals. Characters did dubious things for strange reasons.

If Frank, Miles, Kate, Claire, Alpert and Sawyer were ghosts who passed the island test to regain their humanity, what actually was the test?

They all did survive the judgment (and destruction) by the smoke monster(s). None of them really wanted to seize the island's magic powers away from the guardian. Some of them did kill other people while on the island so a good-evil, right or wrong judgment seemed not to apply. But all of them really had no one waiting for them when they returned home (except for Claire and her son who may be of the age to know his mother had abandoned him in order to reject her). The LOST main story could have been told without any of these five characters. So why did they get special treatment at the climax of the show?

Unless they were always humans trapped in a spirit world. All the other characters on the island were spirits. We know Alpert, who left with them, was a spirit. He became immortal by the gift (or curse) of the guardian to serve him as a go-between with the people he brought to the island. But once Alpert cleared the confines of the island, he began to age. He regained his humanity not by serving the new island guardian or fighting for the black smoke monster - - - he got lucky enough to find himself with an opportunity to leave the island.

And this is why LOST will always have mixed commentary and two sides to any issue. There was no clarity in character traits and story line answers. The ambiguity weaved throughout the series fed the imaginations of the viewers to the point where fan theories were more canon than the show runner's scripts. The stories themselves cast ghosts into the mythology of the series.

The idea that no one survived Flight 815 break up and crash was probable. The idea that the deceased souls could not pass over in the after life because of unresolved personal issues was plausible. The idea that the island ghosts could have a chance to reclaim their humanity is possible.

MAN OR MACHINE

In 1973, a movie called Westworld captured the sci-fi world with its realistic but imaginative look at an artificial intelligence based theme resort. The concept has rebooted itself in an HBO series.

In the original movie, guests could chose to live out their sexual pleasures in either a Wild West town (filled with brothels, prostitutes, drunks and gunslingers) or at a Roman orgy (with its own backstabbing senators, harlots and slaves).

The sci-fi foundation for the movie (adapted from Michael Crichton’s popular book) was that advanced robotics would come to recreate the human body to almost flawless perfection. The skin, eyes, pores, hair and features would look and feel real. The artificial brain would be almost as fast as a human brain. The last leap would be whether the androids would find a consciousness in their programs.

The drama unfolds when the robots malfunction. The gunslinger goes on a killing rampage when its "do not harm guests" governor malfunctions.

It is a classic trope of machines taking their program intelligence into conscious rage against their human creators.

This does go back to one theory of LOST. A few viewers believed that the island itself was a Westworld-type creation. It contained human robots interacting with "guests" in an adventure theme park setting. The theme was a cross between Survivor and Robinson Caruso. Two teams, the 815ers and the Others, battled to control the island. Each team was filled with robots to churn the game activity.

One example was Patchy, the Other who apparently died several times during the series. Yet, he continued to pop up to turn a story line gruesome. He was like the gunslinger in Westworld who continually got gunned down by a guest, only to return after repairs.

There is no clear distinction between who were the "guests" and who were the android game players. One could assume flight attendant Cindy was an android as an Other she mixed with both groups. One could think Jacob was also robotic. Even though his body was burned to cinders, he appeared again to the 815ers in human form to guide them on their island decisions. Even Desmond, who was jolted in the EM machine, and had program glitches (his visions) could be considered an android prop in the storylines. Even Locke would be considered a hapless robot since his form was found dead in the Ajira hold at the same time he was walking the island (with new character program of Flocke).

If you put LOST into the context of a Westworld sci-fi world, it does add some unique "what ifs" in the mythology of the series.

WE ARE ALONE, FOR NOW

The Washington Post recently had a story about a question that humans have pondered forever: where are the other intelligent beings in the universe?

Italian physicist Enrico Fermi once famously exclaimed "Where is everybody!" “Scientists have been trying to answer his question with this logic: we exist, so aliens should exist too.

According to one new solution, we have not seen or heard from any galactic neighbors because we are still waiting for them to be born. And it will, according to the calculations, be a long time before we can throw other solar systems a baby shower. If you grade earthlings on a cosmic curve, as recently hashed out by Harvard and Oxford University astrophysicists, we’re at the head of the class.

And this done make some common sense. In school, we learned the basics about our universe. And we were told about the Big Bang Theory, that the center of the known universe exploded outward to form all the mineral, chemical and cosmic properties (galaxies, stars, comets, etc.) Earth sits at the outer edge of the center of the universe. When science has been trying to find other life, they direct their telescopes and listening devices towards the center. But should not they be pointing them at the sides of the Earth's outer edge - - - to systems as old as our solar system?

A new study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics calculated the probability that life as we know it should exist at any given point in the universe. Based on their assumptions, Earthly life is quite likely premature.

By the standards of the universe, humans are some of the earliest intelligent life around. You may have heard of ancient aliens on basic cable television. But, according to cosmic probability, the ancient aliens are us.

For life as we know it to arise, organisms require three things: carbon-based chemistry, liquid water and an energy source. The most crucial source of all three requirements is a star. Stars  fuse protons and electrons into carbon and other elements; stars heat up water in the so-called habitable zone and stars provide a steady sunny stream of radiation. Scientists scan the solar systems to find the right combination of star, planet distance and likelihood of water to see if it possible for organic life.

Stars play such an important role in our understanding of life that they dominate the researchers’ equation. The scientists’ timeline begins about 30 million years after the Big Bang happened, which as far as we can tell was 13.8 billion years ago. Their timeline ends far in the future due to the long-lasting red dwarf stars, which have lengthy wicks that burn for roughly 10 trillion years. (A yellow dwarf, by comparison, has a only 10 billion years of fuel.

Crucially, what red dwarf stars also have going for them is strength in numbers. The Milky Way is filled with red dwarfs. About three-quarters of all the stars in the galaxy are red dwarfs.

Our sun is not a red dwarf. It is a rarer thing, a yellow dwarf, a star 10 times more massive but one that will flare out much sooner. That we exist around a yellow dwarf, per the scientists’ equation, makes us the true space oddities.

So if Earth humans are the only intelligent life in the universe, why did our ancient ancestors almost universally say that the planet was seeded by alien beings? Why do most religions believe in a creation story of extraworldly gods and angels creating mankind? 

It could be the natural curiosity hard wired into the human brain - - - ancient humans looking up at the stars in the sky may have asked the same question as Fermi. We cannot be alone in the vastness of space.

Human beings also have a sense and need to belong to a bigger group, a family and a community. At a planetary level, that need stills exists. Ancient ancestors were wandering nomads scraping by a subsistence existence. They were one with nature and nature was bigger than them. And when small bands of people found other people in their journeys, it solidified the notion that they were not alone in this world. Communication and trade of ideas and beliefs would reinforce the global notion that there has to be life in the magical stars.

Scientists are still searching for confirmation of that magic in the stars.

OBSERVATION

An observation by George Carlin:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. 

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. 

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less. 

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete. 

Remember to spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.
Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side. 

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, 'I love you' to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you. 

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.

Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.
And always remember, life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by those moments that take our breath away.

SEX

"I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy." - - - Steve Martin.

Sex was an element in LOST but it was not truly associated with love.

Kate and Sawyer's affairs were more animal lust than true, deep passion. It was the spark of danger between people running away from their problems.

Kate and Jack's romance was more a convenience (in order to keep Aaron in LA) than a deep bond of attraction, friendship, trust and mutual respect. They may have loved each other but they were not in love with each other. 

Kate used sex as a manipulation of men to do what she needed to do to maintain her freedom.

Sawyer used sex as a means of conveying trust to one of his con artist victims.

Jack appeared to have a cold distance to sex and romance, perhaps because of the chill between his parents while he grew up. He was passionate with Sarah, his first wife, not because of her but because he promised her a miracle. She was more a trophy of his success than a real life partner. Sarah quickly understood this through Jack's jealousy of his father so she divorced Jack.

Sun quickly felt that sex with Jin was more a marital obligation than true love. Her feeling for her husband quickly changed when Jin began to change into the mirror image of her business oriented father. 

Claire and Shannon used sex as a means of finding comfort and support from men. They chose interloper boyfriends than real permanent bonds. Both paid the price for looking for an easy path to acceptance. 

Then there were a large group of sexless loners including Hurley, Daniel and Charlie. They were looking for a special woman, but could not overcome their own insecurities until they reached the island. But events took their potential lovers away from them until the reunion in the after life.

Many fans believed the only true love story in the series was the relationship between Desmond and Penny. The star-crossed lovers went back and forth; questioning their own feelings and self-worth; longing for each other when Widmore put himself between them. Then, the long search to be reunited after Desmond was lost at seas. When they were reunited, they pledged themselves to each other. Their sexual union brought forth a true family, which Desmond vowed to protect from Widmore. And it was Desmond's love for Penny that broke the barriers in the sideways world so every major character could remember their closest island bonds. It was that break that caused humanity to prevail in the sideways world.

SACKS AND HUME

Oliver Sacks has died at age 82. He told us how the knowledge of his death sat with him, as a man, and to some extent as a doctor. He wrote the following for the New York Times in February, pausing to quote David Hume:

"It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can. In this I am encouraged by the words of one of my favorite philosophers, David Hume, who, upon learning that he was mortally ill at age 65, wrote a short autobiography in a single day in April of 1776. He titled it “My Own Life.”

“I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution,” he wrote. “I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment’s abatement of my spirits. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company.”

I have been lucky enough to live past 80, and the 15 years allotted to me beyond Hume’s three score and five have been equally rich in work and love. In that time, I have published five books and completed an autobiography (rather longer than Hume’s few pages) to be published this spring; I have several other books nearly finished.

Sacks was both a doctor and writer. In his medical work, he sought to understand what made people different and the same. He struggled to awaken patients who had suffered from a sleeping sickness, and recounted that experience in his 1973 book Awakenings (later a film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro). He realized that the experience of human consciousness is both shared and unique, and regardless of what consciousness is, it is valuable. He helped to awaken in his readers a sense of the shared human experience, via stories of people suffering from neurological conditions.

Among many poignant stories Sacks related in his 1985 book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, he introduced us to "Jimmie G.," a patient who had been unable to form new memories since 1945. In that book, like his recent NYT column, Sacks returned to Hume, in this passage about Jimmie's diagnosis (emphasis added):

 ‘He is, as it were,’ I wrote in my notes, ‘isolated in a single moment of being, with a moat or lacuna of forgetting all round him ... He is man without a past (or future), stuck in a constantly changing, meaningless moment.’ And then, more prosaically, ‘The remainder of the neurological examination is entirely normal. Impression: probably Korsakov’s syndrome, due to alcoholic degeneration of the mammillary bodies.’ My note was a strange mixture of facts and observations, carefully noted and itemized, with irrepressible meditations on what such problems might ‘mean’, in regard to who and what and where this poor man was—whether, indeed, one could speak of an ‘existence’, given so absolute a privation of memory or continuity.

I kept wondering, in this and later notes—unscientifically— about ‘a lost soul’, and how one might establish some continuity, some roots, for he was a man without roots, or rooted only in the remote past. ‘Only connect’—but how could he connect, and how could we help him to connect? What was life without connection? ‘I may venture to affirm,’ Hume wrote, ‘that we are nothing but a bundle or collection of different sensations, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.’ In some sense, he had been reduced to a ‘Humean’ being—I could not help thinking how fascinated Hume would have been at seeing in Jimmie his own philosophical ‘chimaera’ incarnate, a gruesome reduction of a man to mere disconnected, incoherent flux and change.

Sacks, the fascinated neurologist, driven not only to identify disorders of the brain, but to understand the creation of the brain: the mind. What is the mind? And what do we make of it? If our experience of life is altered or reduced because a misfire of the brain, can it be understood, treated, or accommodated? Why are some patients so cheerful despite their plights? What joy is innate in humanity? 

The irreducible fact of life is that death is coming; Sacks of course realized this and celebrated what life he had left. This is logical, although it's sad for those of us who remain.
Sacks reflected on the future:

    “I rejoice when I meet gifted young people — even the one who biopsied and diagnosed my metastases. I feel the future is in good hands. I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.

    “I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”

In the end, it's wholly appropriate that Sacks would find time to write his way through his final months, finishing up books, and sharing his thoughts as he approached the inevitable. What remains is not just a large body of his work,  but the memory of a man who recognized his own position among his fellows, who took it upon himself to heal when he could, to explain when he could, and simply to live when that was what remained as his legacy.

THE FUTURE PAST

"Computers will overtake humans with AI at some within the next 100 years. When that happens, we need to make sure the computers have goals aligned with ours." - - - Steven Hawking.

Hawking is one of the great scientific minds of our generation. But he is one of a growing number of scientists who are cautioning humanity on the technology trend and future dependence on artificial intelligence.  He is also a true believer in the law of unintended consequences.

Currently, industry has focused in on "mechanical" artificial intelligence programs, those computers which run machinery instead of trained human workers. The idea that computer controlled machines can do more delicate or detailed work than the human eye is debatable, but the potential cost saving of robotic assembly has been proven.

There are the Terminator fearists that believe that advanced AI systems will find their own "consciousness" and turn on their human masters. The Borg in Star Trek could be considered a flawed computer code turning humans into machines. It is probably the dependence on technology that is most worrisome to scientists because it signals the dawn of "less human intelligence" in the general public.

Think of it this way: if computers are going to do the work for you, solve your problems from making a pot of coffee in the morning to building an entire smartphone in less than an hour, then humans won't have to think about doing any physical work. Humans mental capacity to apply knowledge into a tangible thing (such as making a smartphone) will atrophy. With everything given to us, there would nothing we would give to society. Such were the grotesque human sloths in the movie WALL*E.

One of the better examples of this kind of cause and bad effect is LOST's smoke monster. Since the island could flash between time periods (we only saw it flash to the past, and then back to the present) it is possible that the smoke monster was some form of future technology that got transported to the island. Since it was advanced technology from the distant future, it would be viewed as a mystery, supernatural or magic (as would you handing your smartphone to an 1880s merchant).

There is an analogy that our current technological dreams can manifest in our future technological nightmares.

How would the world be different if Nazi Germany perfected the nuclear bomb prior to the end of World War II? Would half the world now be speaking German?

How would the world be different if the Roman crusades in the Middle East had armored tank divisions against horse drawn Calvary of the Muslims?

How would the world react if a spacecraft landed in Washington D.C. and astronauts from the Mars colony said they have come home after 100 years in space?

One has to put context in the present. But in order to do so, one relies upon the past for experience but also the expectation of the future. As one could say, "the present is the future past."

One cannot readily untangle the twisted time threads in LOST's story lines. The jumps made little sense. The resulting paradoxes never explained or corrected. One cannot say that elements of an unknown future controlled the events on the island. Or that past civilizations were allowed to fully develop in the island cocoon to greater technological advances they we could imagine.

SOUL POSSESSION

In the new British series, Intruders, the premise is that after people die, their souls can live on . . . by possessing a live individual. It is an interesting concept of demonic possession from ancient times (which in many instances was misdiagnosis of actual medical conditions like seizure disorders).

LOST did feature elements of multiple souls. In ancient Egyptian death rituals, the person's soul is divided at death into the ka and ba which separately have to journey through the underworld to try to be reunited in the after life. If souls were released upon death, sci-fi allows for these intelligent vessels to inhabit other human beings.

In a bait-and-switch type theory, the 815 survivors could have been "possessed" by lost souls, the whispers, trapped on the island. In fact, the only reason the survivors "lived" after the crash was that they were re-possessed by island souls.

For example, what if Jack was near death in the bamboo grove when dead Horace, the former leader of the Dharma group, possesses his body? There were many of the Dharma group that was purged by Ben's Others. And when the Others member died, they destroyed the body which may be so that that body could not be repossessed by an island soul.

If there were possession by island souls, that could explain why Jack immediately took to pushing back against Ben and the Others because deep inside he knew of their threat and danger because Horace's soul was influencing his decision making process. When they talked about "a war" on the island, it may be a never ending saga of souls reanimating their revenge with new visitors time after time for eternity (much like the reality of the Middle East conflicts).

The island souls could become the dominate personality in a person's body; repressing the person's actual soul until its "second death." The real soul may be in a sort of suspended animation, a dream state of confusion, during the island time line. Perhaps the suspended animation of souls is a better explanation of the sideways limbo state.

COMPARABLE HEARTS

There is probably a connection between the human heart and the heart of the island. Both represent the cycle of life and death. Both want to be controlled by other people. Both are powerful forces for good or evil. And the basic literary role each symbolizes, could be applied to the other heart.

HAPPY GOALS

If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes. — Andrew Carnegie

Carnegie was a turn of the century business mogul who obtained great happiness through the accumulation of wealth. Wealth equaled power, freedom, luxury and philanthropy. 

There were only a few characters focused on a set goal.

Bernard's goal was to find a cure for Rose's terminal cancer.  He failed (unless you believe the island's magic prolonged Rose's life).

Sawyer's relentless goal was to find and kill the con man who destroyed his family. He succeeded by killing Cooper on the island, but not after becoming the man he hated his entire life.

Locke had a very weak goal of finding a "new family" unit or home where he fit in as an equal. He never found one.

Jack also had a very weak goal of getting his father's approval and acceptance. He never really received that acknowledgement from Christian.

Widmore had the ruthless goal of conquering the island. He failed when Ben killed him.

Kate had the transient goal of avoiding justice for her crimes. She also failed, but she really was not punished for them.

Sayid had the goal of reuniting with the love of his life, Nadia. But he failed in his own quest, both in real life and in the after life.

Desmond also had the goal of reuniting with the love his life, Penny. He found her and they moved on together.

Charlie had the unrealistic goal of getting his band back together. But he failed. Then on the island he had the goal of saving Claire. But he also failed in that rescue promise.

Then there were many characters who really had no goals. Hurley. Boone. Shannon.

None of these stated goals and resolutions were compelling or realistic. None of these goals had profound happiness as the end result. As such, LOST is really a series of sad consequences masked by an action-adventure overlay.

There are some universal basic human goals.

1. Goal of affiliation
In the most part humans are social so they want to be liked. Rejection is no fun and we'll do almost anything to avoid it. Not only do we want approval from specific people, we also want it from society at large.

2. Goal of accuracy
People who don't care about doing things correctly never get anywhere in life. To achieve our goals in what is a complicated world, we have to be continually trying to work out the best course of action.
Influencers understand our need to be right and so they try to offer things that appeal to our need for accuracy. For example, experts or authority figures influence people heavily because they offer us a 'correct' view or way of doing things, especially one that we don't have to think too carefully about.

3. Goal of maintaining positive self-concept
People want to protect their view of themselves because it takes a long time to build up a semi-coherent view of oneself and one's place in the world. We want to maintain our self-esteem, to continue believing in the things we believe in and to honour whatever commitments we have espoused in the past. Persuaders and influencers can leverage this goal by invoking our sense of self-consistency.  

Further, there are six basic attributes to build, foster and maintain an intellectual, human society:

The six basic pillars to build a sustainable society are equity, sustainability, productivity, empowerment, cooperation and security.

Equity is the idea of fairness for every person, between men and women; we each have the right to an education and health care.

Sustainability is the view that we all have the right to earn a living that can sustain our lives and have access to a more even distribution of goods.

Productivity states the full participation of people in the process of income generation. This also means that the government needs more efficient social programs for its people.

Empowerment is the freedom of the people to influence development and decisions that affect their lives.

Cooperation stipulates participation and belonging to communities and groups as a means of mutual enrichment and a source of social meaning.

Security offers people development opportunities freely and safely with confidence that they will not disappear suddenly in the future.

The main characters, at times, exhibited the three basic human goals affiliation, accuracy and positive self-esteem, but for the most part those personal goals had brooding negative connotations inside each character.

Perhaps as a result, the main characters could not come together as a cohesive community on the island because they lacked the will or consensus to build one using the six pillars  equity, sustainability, productivity, empowerment, cooperation and security.

If LOST was meant to be mostly a character study of individuals and their behaviors, it is difficult to argue that the individually and collectively the main characters reached many "happy" goals or achieved happiness on the island.

APPEARANCES

“Men, in general, judge more from appearances than from reality,” the philosopher Machiavelli once said.  His remark draws a sharp division between the obvious and the subtle, and suggests the need to look for the latter, whereas the former is often right in our faces.

Was LOST a series of appearances or real events?

That is a core question.

As viewers, we judged the events on the small screen as facts in a complex puzzle which was supposed to have a clear resolution (the reveal of the puzzle box lid for example). 

A classic example of judgment by appearance is the single guy at a bar. He looks across the way and sees a beautiful woman. His immediate response is that she is the woman of his dreams. Perfect in every way. All is fine and good until he goes up to meet her. The reality quickly hits him with her squeaky voice, and insane, incoherent thoughts of a psychopath rather than a potential girlfriend.

Appearances can be deceiving to down right dangerous. It depends on how the reality of perception is cloaked from the projected appearance.

LOST was good at projecting the characters interacting with the island dangers. But pull back for a moment and ask the core question again: were all those dangers real or were they illusions of reality?

It makes a big difference on how the show would be perceived by the fans.

THE DARK

A major theme of LOST was fear. Many characters dreaded the jungle, the unknown wild, and the appearance of the smoke monster. They also feared the island's Others and the dangers they posed to their survival.

Fear of the dark is common and an almost universal fear for at least a part of our lives (usually some part of our childhood). Though it's not so much the dark that we fear, but the unknown. There is an inner sense of danger that brings it to the conscious mind. Things one cannot see can hurt you. This trait or human characteristic is from early man's development, when mankind was not the top predator in his environment. 

As humans mature, we internalize the real odds of something dangerous hiding in the dark, and that calms us in appropriate situations, but that fear can come back when we are in unfamiliar places. The reason we are all afraid of the dark at times is because that fear gave us an advantage during our evolutionary history. Since man relies upon his senses for survival, taking away one of them (sight) because of darkness would naturally lead to anxiety about what could be out there in the dark.
Ancient man quickly learned that many predators prefer the cover of darkness to hunt and over time that association strengthened into a subconscious absolute: stay out of the dark because that's where the danger is.

 

While fear of the dark can manifest itself as an acute reaction—like panicked screaming when someone suddenly turns out the lights, or as insomnia, as a recent study conducted at the University of Toronto suggests—it more commonly manifests as foreboding anxiety. The emotion of anxiety plays a specific role in our behavioral responses to stimuli just as the emotions of love, anger, and sadness do, acting to increase our ability to cope with stress and more fully exploit beneficial opportunities.

Each emotion can be thought of as a computer program designed to accomplish some specific fitness task particularly well. If the current task is courtship, romantic love is helpful. If one is being betrayed, anger is useful. If a tiger is attacking, then fearful flight and avoidance are best. If people are disapproving, then social anxiety may be appropriate. Different emotions, however, must be orchestrated, just as endocrine function must be coordinated in an endocrine orchestra. Emotional responses must fit changing adaptive challenges, with each emotion fitting a particular kind of situation.

Specifically, anxiety increases your awareness of situations that may damage your reproductive resources. Not just your vital signs, but your relationships, income, social standing, physical features; anything that makes you more attractive to the opposite sex and more likely to reproduce.
Unlike anger or sadness, which occur in direct response to a specific event, the study showed responses to environmental cues indicating a potential future loss with anxiety prior to the expected event, since that's when it is most evolutionarily beneficial. Our ancestors who best recognized and responded to these cues increased their chances of survival and reproduction compared to their more less-aware peers.

Since that response is correlated with natural selection, certain cues—such as snake- or cat-eye patterns, spider-like objects, and darkness (where the snakes, leopards, and spiders all live)—more easily invoke that emotion. This is the result of generation upon generation of early humans reacting to and subsequently preparing for dangers such as these. That's why many ancient threats—uncontrolled fire, spiders, snakes, predators, and darkness—are more easily instigate a negative response, even in small children, than modern threats like automobiles, nuclear war, or guns do.

While anxiety is deeply rooted in our psyche, it is not entirely instinctive. We also learn fear and anxiety responses from our parents. If a small child is frightened of an new or unknown object and its mother responds in a calming manner, the kid learns that the item is not a threat. If the parent responds with apprehension herself, however, the child's fears are confirmed and enhanced. This allows for offspring to rapidly learn of the dangers around themselves without actually having to be bitten by snakes, mauled by lions, or be electrocuted by a penny in the wall socket while simultaneously figuring out that everything from leaves and small rocks to thunder and scary scenes on TV aren't actual threats.

It is a system that is based on experience and transfer of knowledge, but triggers an instinctive response. This subtle gnawing emotion has been honed and refined over millennia by both nature and nurture into a vital survival response that remains as useful in the modern world as it did in the Neolithic Period of Humanity. As environmental cues have changed over time, anxiety over social interactions and property such as finding shelter and not starving to death, remains the same. Humans have the inner voice that tells us to keep safe so you can live to reproduce another day. 

The fear of the dark, and by extension the fear of the unknown, are hard wired tools to make sure humans don't ever forget the basic purpose of all human beings. Fear itself is a survival mechanism.

HUMAN EXPERIMENT

In all civilized societies, there are limits which set acceptable behavior.

In LOST, those social governors were stripped away once individuals reached the island. There were no rules. People either tried to hold on to the moral compass, or fell deep into the darkness of instinctive savagery.

In a land where there is no accountability or responsibility, how would a average human being operate?  LOST could be seen as a window into human behavior if all controls were turned off.

It is not a theory, but a new way to look at the show.

Early on, many of the passengers came to the conclusion that their past did not matter anymore. They could start fresh, a new, without the baggage of their past mistakes or daunting secrets. It is quite the gift to eliminate one's past and create your own new future.

So this may be the human experiment that MIB loathed for centuries. Human beings were brought to the island but they all wound up corrupting it. The Flight 815 arc was no different. Ben turned mass murderer with his purge of the Dharma folks. The survivors ambushed the Others at the beach camp. Widmore's people on the Hydra Island allegedly wiped out the people on board the Ajira plane.

It would seem that individuals who gain or seize power tend to allow it to consume their souls in the quest for more power.  That is the basic grease that spins the wheel of corruption.

If you would view the series as a space alien, could you actually analyze the data (the show and its events) in any way other than being a series of barbaric episodes with no social redeeming qualities?

Human beings have done bad things under the cause of being just (i.e. The Great Wars). But in the LOST island environment, there was never even a cause identified to justify the brutality that human beings inflicted upon each other. How did the brain washing of Karl in Room 23 have any greater good?

If the characters were symbolic lab rats wandering the island maze of missed opportunities, broken dreams, deep rooted fears, childhood fantasy and low moral self esteem, how did the human race do?

SCALE OF NICENESS

Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good. — Ann Landers

 There were many Machiavellian characters on LOST. But who was the "nicest?"
Different people may have different definitions or parameters for the term "nice."
The dictionary defines the term as:

1.  pleasant; agreeable; satisfactory;  (of a person) pleasant in manner; good-natured; kind: he's a really nice guy.
2.  fine or subtle: a nice distinction;  requiring careful thought or attention: a nice point.
3.  archaic term:  fastidious; scrupulous (very attentive to details).

Nice is more a middle of the road, nonconfrontational, safe person to be around.

Under definition number 1, most people would say Hurley would be the nicest. He was always respectful to other people's thoughts or opinions. He was not judgmental. He had an easy going outlook on island life. He kept his own issues hidden as to not burden his friends with his problems. He was good natured and kind.

Under definition number 2, Jack may be a choice because at times he dwelled on the fine points of a situation. He was detail oriented in a calm way.  He did not like to go half-cocked into the jungle without first making certain of the details of any plan. 

Under definition number 3, the most scrupulous, anal-retentive person on details had to be Ben. Most people would not consider Ben a "nice person," but he was a nice villain. There were a few other characters who bent toward detail analysis such as Artz, who started science projects on the beach (including toxic spiders) to the lecturing on the instability of explosives (which led to his demise.)

On the other side of the scale, Sawyer was probably the least pleasant of the main characters. He was irritable, got under other people's skin, rude, crude, snarky and rarely thought of the group ahead of himself. Kate was a pleasant person to be around, but she had a cold distance that made it difficult to make friends or trust other people. Sayid also had a cold dispassion about him that made many character uncomfortable around him. Part of this could have been stereotypical prejudice; part of it could be that others viewed him as a dangerous person capable of harm.

NICE SCALE
NICEST                                                                                                                       LEAST NICE 
Hurley * Frank * Bernard * Libby * Rose * Jack * Claire * Charlie * Kate * Sawyer * Ben

It appears that being "nice" was not the key to salvation from the Island.
Both Hurley and Ben wound up on the doorstep of the after life church. Together.
Frank, Claire, Kate and Sawyer all made it off the island on the Ajira plane.

THE HUMAN EQUATION

I stumbled across an interesting quotation:

"To solve the human equation, we need to add love, subtract hate, multiply good, and divide between truth and error." Janet Coleman

In a formula:

Human = ( Love - Hate) x Good/ (Truth + Error)

So the factors to quantify are:

Love
Hate
Good
Truth
Errors

Truth and errors are objective facts that could be proven by research into the character actions.
Love and Hate are emotional observations that could be analyzed by a character's actions.
Good is a subjective determination of a person's personality and deeds.

To test the hypothesis, let us use a standard zero to ten scale for the variables. Zero would be none and ten would be absolute positive.

Let us take a simple character like Rose. She had the devotion to her husband, Bernard. They were totally in love with each other. She loved her life, but hated her cancer. But she accepted its truth that it was terminal and she would die. She would make mistakes and follow the wrong people on the island. She cared for other people and worked well at the beach camp. But in the end, she decided that it was best for her to leave the group and go off with Bernard to live in their own camp. Rose never actually hurt anyone during her stay on the island.

It may be debatable and subjective to assign points to Rose's character, but let us try:
Love 8, Hate 3, Truth 8, Errors 5, Good 9  

Rose = (8-3) x 9 / 8 + 5
Rose = 5 x 9 /13
Rose = 1.0769
  
Let us now take a more complex character like Sayid. He was raised in a poor dictatorship of Iraq. At an early age, he learned to kill. He accepted it with cool detachment, He garnered favor with his father as a result. He went into the military which drew out the dark side of Sayid. He never had a true love growing up. His relationship with Nadia was at first as torturer, then as a crush. He let her go and killed a soldier to cover up his treason. He further went to work for the U.S. military, abandoning his family. His decision led him down the path of being a pawn, a hired killer and mercenary. He was given a new opportunity to change when he crashed on the island. He had more street savvy than the others; he could tell when people were lying to him. He could find the truth in their actions, or by torturing them. He worked to protect the beach camp from the Others. He risked his life to save his colleagues when they were captured and held hostage. He killed may people while he was on the island. He hated himself and the life that he led. When he was shot and re-born, it was as a dark ("infected')  person. He would side with Flocke in the final team alignment.

To assign numbers to Sayid is also debatable and subjective:
 Love 2, Hate 8, Truth 7, Errors 6, Good 3 

Sayid = (2 - 8) x 3 / (7 + 6)
Sayid = (-6) x 3/ 13
Sayid =  - 1.3846  

Rose had a positive number. She was a positive person. 
Sayid has a negative number. He was a troubled soul who landed on the evil ledger of life.

If you look at the equation, the tipping point comes down to two true variables.
If Hate is more than Love, you will be a negative human being.
If you have more Errors than Truths in life, you will be a negative human being.

A final example of the most complex of characters, Locke.   Locke was a miracle baby born premature in a rural town after his mother was hit by a car. He grew up in foster homes. He was a loner. He rejected his intelligence (he was good at science in school) because he wanted to be with the cool kids. He was awkward in social settings. As a result, he dealt with his problems by fantasy (games, imagination).  He was too trusting and got burned by co-workers and his father (who stole his kidney). He was bitter and resentful of his life. He could not accept his paralysis. His hate pushed away the only person in his life that truly cared for him, his girlfriend Helen. That mistake made Helen die alone. On the island, Locke was given another miracle, the ability to walk again. He tried to be a different person, a leader of the camp. But he made error after error in judgment. Those mistakes caused the island to time skip, and his friends to get hurt. He killed many people on the island. He was at first obsessive about the Hatch, which killed Boone. He then gave up on the Numbers thinking nothing would happen: it imploded and began the island path to destruction. He was a failure since he could not in life convince any of the O6 to return to the island. He trusted Ben, but in an instant Ben murdered him. Locke's life was terribly sad and meaningless. He remained a bitter man. He could not understand his past mistakes; he was a poor judge of character. He wanted to be good and be accepted in a group of friends. But he was easily manipulated and used for other purposes. It made him shameful and resentful. His social history was his personal down fall.

Locke's assigned factors:
Love 3, Hate 6, Truth 3, Errors 8, Good 5 

Human = ( Love - Hate) x Good/ (Truth + Error) 

Locke = (3 - 6) x 5 / ( 3 - 8)
Locke = (-9) x 5 / (-11)
Locke = 4.0909

Rose had a positive number, 1.0769.  We concluded she was a positive, good person. 
Sayid has a negative number, - 1.3846.  We concluded he was a negative, bad soul.
Locke has a higher positive number, 4.0909. Was Locke four times more positive than Rose? Was he happier, more content or more human than Rose?

Locke's role in the series was larger than Rose's, but not that much different than Sayid's. 

Locke had more hate and made more errors than most of the characters in the series. Those two negatives somehow created a large positive final human value. Was it his pain and misery that allowed his final friends to reach the sideways church? Locke himself was not present or a factor upon the O6's return to the island to fight MIB. The only aspect of Locke's off-island death was that it motivated Jack to return to the island. Jack's return allowed Jacob to give the island guardianship to Jack. Jack accepted the guardianship, reset the light stone, and helped defeat MIB. Jack then died giving his remaining survivors a chance for a new life by taking off on the Ajira plane. 

Was Locke's sacrifice, as foretold by Christian (smoke monster or possibly Jacob in disguise) at the FDW, the key to resolving Locke's pitiful life by changing Jack's?