BRAINS IN JARS

The London Daily Mail had a recent article describing what an Australian professor claims that our entire existence could be an elaborate illusion controlled by a genius evil scientist.

The premise is that you are not where you think you are. 

Your brain has been expertly removed from your body and is being kept alive in a vat of nutrients that sits on a laboratory bench.

The nerve endings of your brain are connected to a supercomputer that feeds you all the sensations of everyday life. 

This is why you think you're living a completely normal life.

Do you still exist? Is the world as you know it a figment of your imagination or an illusion constructed by this evil supercomputer network?

Could you prove to someone that you are not actually a brain in a vat?

As the article states, the philosopher Hilary Putnam proposed this famous version of the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment in his 1981 book, Reason, Truth and History, but it is essentially an updated version of the French philosopher René Descartes' notion of the Evil Genius from his 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy.

While such thought experiments might seem glib – and perhaps a little unsettling – they serve a useful purpose. They are used by philosophers to investigate what beliefs we can hold to be true and, as a result, what kind of knowledge we can have about ourselves and the world around us.

Descartes thought the best way to do this was to start by doubting everything, and building our knowledge from there. Using this skeptical approach, he claimed that only a core of absolute certainty will serve as a reliable foundation for knowledge. 

He said: If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

It is from Descartes that we get classical skeptical queries favored by philosophers such as: how can we be sure that we are awake right now and not asleep, dreaming?

To take this challenge to our assumed knowledge further, Descartes imagines there exists an omnipotent, malicious demon that deceives us, leading us to believe we are living our lives when, in fact, reality could be very different to how it appears to us.

This premise has been discussed as a possible explanation to the LOST mythology. 

For example, who did Patchy of the Others survive being killed by the sonic fence and the island visitors to somehow come back to kill Charlie with an underwater explosive? To have nine lives, a human has to be unrealistically lucky or be reincarnated many times over. Or in this premise, he never really died because he was never really alive. He was a computer simulation, a reusable prop, to infuse the subject jar brains with conflict, reality, drama and emotional responses.

Another explanation of the evil genius controlling everything was inferred from the huge military industrial complex that was the island. Human experiments were part of the mission of the island scientists. It is not a great leap to see how an unseen overlord could have been directing the action, just like the man behind the curtain in the series nod to the Wizard of Oz. 

And this article does touch upon the embedded theme throughout the series: philosophy. Characters like Locke and Hume were named after famous philosophers. The characters had to make philosophic decisions between right and wrong, free will or capture. LOST could be viewed as an interactive thesis of philosophic questions being run through various programs in a supercomputer.

Because of the various continuity errors and story line red herrings, many LOST fans questioned the truth of the series story lines. There was doubt that the story writers and show runners actually knew what they were doing. Many have been searching for answers to explain or cover-up the show's big flaws. So, in a way, many continue to do a philosophic autopsy on the show to glean new information and explanations to make the show better in their own minds.

The mind is a powerful but not very well understood thing. It is an intangible element incorporated in the tangible brain. Our current science studies state how we "think" the mind works, but no one has shown the ability to download, in real time, the mental images of a human being onto a monitor. It is merely speculation, educated guess, theory. But what if there were a higher being who could actually tap into the conscious and subconscious mind of human beings - - -  for entertainment or research purposes? That would put the human race on par with gold fish in an cosmic aquarium.

SIMULATION

One premise of LOST was that it was only a simulation of reality.

It could have been a video adventure game with the characters being avatars.
It could have been an interconnected dream experiment.
It could have been a mock mental warfare simulation by Dharma and the U.S. Military.
It could have been an imaginary dream of a coma patient.

Or it could be our reality which itself is not real.

Scientists work to find out how our world actually works.
Recently at the American Museum of Natural History, scientists debated whether or not the universe is a simulation. The answers from some panelists may be more comforting than the responses of others.

Physicist Lisa Randall said she thought the odds that the universe is not "real" are so low as to be "effectively zero."

But on the other hand, celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who was hosting the debate, said that he thinks the likelihood of the universe being a simulation "may be very high."

The question of whether or not we know that our universe is real has vexed thinkers going far back into history, long before Descartes made his famous "I think therefore I am" statement. The same question has been explored in modern science fiction films like "The Matrix" and David Cronenber's "eXistenZ."

But most physicists and philosophers agree that it is impossible to prove that we don't live in a simulation and that the universe is real. Tyson agreed, but said he would not be surprised if we were to find out somehow that someone else is responsible for our universe.

If someone else is responsible for our universe, then we would call those persons or things gods.

In any higher order planetary relationships, the most intelligent, strong, technological and adaptable species are the alpha species who can assert their will on the rest of the known world. In human evolution, mankind had to have come to the realization that it was the alpha species. But instead of adopting a self-sufficient, own legacy approach to species self-esteem, ancient and disconnected cultures adopted religion and worship of superior beings as being responsible for their own self-awareness and life cycles.

Some could argue that religion is a pagan belief system because they did not have the means to investigate their true world. Except, that ancient cultures did have the brain power to solve and predict thousand years of  astronomical cycles with the accuracy of our current atomic clocks. Ancient people were more well versed in nature and the effect of cycles on human existence. They were the first to understand and to ponder the question of whether we are alone in the universe.

Ancient Egyptians constructed the pyramids in 20 years. Our modern technology cannot replicate that feat. Generally, the public does not think ancients were very advanced in their thinking. But they pondered the same "big" questions we do today.

REM

The BBC recently reported that scientists have finally mapped individual brain cells during REM sleep cycles.

For the first time, scientists have recorded from individual brain cells during the dreaming phase of sleep.

After each rapid eye movement (REM) they recorded bursts of activity that match what happens when we are awake and we see - or imagine - a new image. 

They suggest that these well-known flickering movements accompany a "change of scene" in our dreams.

The recordings were made from patients with electrodes implanted in their brains to monitor seizures.
"It's a unique opportunity to look at what's happening inside the human brain," Dr Yuval Nir, from Tel Aviv University in Israel, told the BBC. "We're very thankful to the epilepsy patients who volunteered to take part."

Dr Nir worked with colleagues from France and the US on the study, which is published in the Nature Communications journal. 


Over the course of four years they worked with 19 different patients, recording from electrodes in several different brain areas but largely within the medial temporal lobe. 

This is not a part of the brain directly involved in vision, Dr Nir said.

"The activity of these neurons doesn't reflect image processing. It's more about signalling to the brain about a certain concept. You can close your eyes and imagine Queen Elizabeth, and these neurons will fire. This activity implies a refresh of the mental imagery and the associations."

When the patients were awake and shown a picture, especially one associated with a memory, the researchers saw a particular pattern of activity.

"About a 0.3 seconds after the picture appears, these neurons burst - they become vigorously active," Dr Nir explained. "This also happens when people just close their eyes and imagine these pictures, or these concepts."

Intriguingly, he and his colleagues spotted a "very, very similar pattern" during sleep. In particular, these bursts arrived just after eye movements during REM sleep.

This is the phase of sleep in which we dream, and it is characterized by these occasional, very quick eye movements.

It has long been thought that these movements might reflect the visual component of dreams, but there has been no clear evidence for this - until now, Dr Nir said.

"We are intimately familiar with the activity of these neurons. We know they are active every time you look at an image, or when you imagine that image. And now we see them active in a similar way when you move your eyes in REM sleep, so it becomes very probable that the eye movements represent some type of reset, or 'moving onto the next dream frame'.

"It's almost like when I was growing up and we had slide projectors. You move to the next dream slide, if you like." Our eyes flicker in spurts during the dreaming phase of sleep.

This could help to explain why unborn babies and blind people also move their eyes during REM sleep, he added.

"Even people who are congenitally blind... can still dream about their aunt coming to visit from Florida: her voice, the emotions and all the associations that go with that.

"And when the dream changes from meeting this aunt to, say, taking your dog for a stroll in the park, then the brain activity changes and this happens in sync with eye movements."

Other sleep researchers welcomed the findings. Prof Jim Horne, who established the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, said the study fits with our improving understanding of REM sleep.

He also emphasized that flickering of a dreamer's eyes, which only happens in brief spurts, does not mean they are surveying a scene. 

"The eye movements are not actually scanning your dream - they're reorienting your visual thoughts," Prof Horne told BBC News.

"This study endorses other findings that REM sleep has many similarities to wakefulness. I see REM sleep as rather like the screensaver on your computer; all you need is the touch of a button and your computer leaps to life. It's very close to wakefulness. Non-REM sleep is more like when you switch your computer off, and waking up requires a process of rebooting," he said.

Prof William Wisden, a neuroscientist at Imperial College London, was also convinced by the similarity of brain activity between awake and REM states - but he said there are bigger questions still to answer.

"The most fascinating question of all is why do we have to have REM sleep? Why does our brain have all this circuitry to do that?This paper doesn't answer that, but it does emphasize how similar being awake and in REM sleep are, for particular circuits in the brain," he concluded.

One of the popular theories to LOST was that it was part of an elaborate dream sequence, whether it was an individual creating their own sleep fantasy world, or a collective dream by networking the sleep cycles of patients together to form an interactive video-like game, or a laboratory experiment in human behavior where stories, characters and the like are feed back into the subjects who use experience it as a vivid dream.

UNIVERSAL ILLUSION

Nature News had a recent article which poses the question of whether the Universe is merely a holographic illusion.  There is scientific debate on how the universe operates, with string theory being one of the explanations. But science has trouble verifying its various theories.

A team of physicists has provided some evidence that our Universe could be just one big holographic projection. In 1997, theorical physicist Juan Maldacena proposed that in his model of the Universe, which gravity arises from infinitesimally thin, vibrating strings could be reinterpreted in terms of well-established physics. The mathematically intricate world of strings, which exist in nine dimensions of space plus one of time, would be merely a hologram: the real action would play out in a simpler, flatter cosmos where there is no gravity.

Maldacena's idea thrilled physicists because it offered a way to put the popular but still unproven theory of strings on solid footing — and because it solved apparent inconsistencies between quantum physics and Einstein's theory of gravity. It provided physicists with a mathematical Rosetta stone, a 'duality', that allowed them to translate back and forth between the two languages, and solve problems in one model that seemed intractable in the other and vice versa. But although the validity of Maldacena's ideas has pretty much been taken for granted ever since, a rigorous proof has been elusive.

Yoshifumi Hyakutake of Ibaraki University in Japan and his colleagues reported evidence that may prove Maldacena’s conjecture is true. Hyakutake computed the internal energy of a black hole, the position of its event horizon (the boundary between the black hole and the rest of the Universe), its entropy and other properties based on the predictions of string theory as well as the effects of so-called virtual particles that continuously pop into and out of existence. He and his collaborators also separately calculated the internal energy of the corresponding lower-dimensional cosmos with no gravity. The two computer calculations match.

“It seems to be a correct computation,” says Maldacena,  who did not contribute to the Japanese team's work. “(The findings) are an interesting way to test many ideas in quantum gravity and string theory," Maldacena adds. The two papers, he notes, are the culmination of a series of articles contributed by the Japanese team over the past few years. “The whole sequence of papers is very nice because it tests the dual [nature of the universes] in regimes where there are no analytic tests.”
“They have numerically confirmed, perhaps for the first time, something we were fairly sure had to be true, but was still a conjecture — namely that the thermodynamics of certain black holes can be reproduced from a lower-dimensional universe,” says Leonard Susskind, a theoretical physicist at Stanford University in California who was among the first theoreticians to explore the idea of holographic universes.

Neither of the model universes explored by the Japanese team resembles our own, Maldacena notes. The cosmos with a black hole has ten dimensions, with eight of them forming an eight-dimensional sphere. The lower-dimensional, gravity-free one has but a single dimension, and its menagerie of quantum particles resembles a group of idealized springs, or harmonic oscillators, attached to one another.

Nevertheless, says Maldacena, the numerical proof that these two seemingly disparate worlds are actually identical gives hope that the gravitational properties of our Universe can one day be explained by a simpler cosmos purely in terms of quantum theory.

The concept of "duality" was present in the LOST series. In fact, duality has been a theme of mankind throughout its history. Ancient people thought in terms of a dual system: heaven and earth, gods and man, fire and water, time and space, good and bad, etc. There was also duality taught in religious believes between the two worlds: material and spiritual. Ancient Egyptians took the concept further to state that after death, a person's soul splits into different forms, the ba and ka,  to journey through the underworld. So it is not surprising that human beings view the world around them through the concept of duality.

The LOST story structure wound up to be in two dual planes of existence: the island and the sideways worlds. Was one real and the other a projection? Were both real but in different time space? Or were both projections of the same universe but reflected back as illusions? The parallel that cutting edge science is still cannot figure out the universe, and LOST fans still cannot agree on what the show's main premise was is somewhat comforting and troubling at the same time.

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.

QUANTUM EXPERIMENTAL VIEW

There is a new way to look at the LOST conundrums.

It is an analogy often used to explain difficult situations in the show, The Big Bang Theory. It is called "Schrodinger's cat." Schrodinger's cat is a thought experiment, sometimes explained as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Edwin Schrodinger in 1935. Though he never actually created the experiment, he wanted to illustrate a problem in one interpretation of quantum mechanics as it  applied to everyday objects. The issue Schrodinger had was the this interpretation of quantum mechanics did not yield a description of an objective reality but dealt only with probabilities of observing, or measuring, various aspects of energy quanta, entities that fit neither the classical idea of particles nor the classical idea of waves. The act of measurement causes the set of probabilities to immediately and randomly assume only one of the possible values.

Schrodinger's experiment postulated that a cat would be placed in a sealed box with a vial of poison. The poison would be released at an unknown, random time. This uncertainty of what is happening inside the sealed box presents the possibility that a cat that may be both alive and dead, depending on an earlier random event. This thought experiment is also often featured in theoretical discussions of quantum physics.  In the course of developing this experiment, Schrodinger coined the term Verschränkung ("entanglement").

LOST is the cat in the magic box we all call our television sets.

Based upon the information we have received, we did not know whether the characters were dead or alive at any given moment in the series.   Also, the show featured themes that included paradoxes (time travel events), various aspects of unique energy properties (the heart of the island) and most certainly the entanglement of various diverse character lives with each other. Faraday thought of the island dynamic as a measurable place in time and space, until he found that the set of probabilities could be adversely affected by "variables," which in some viewers minds meant the free will decisions of the characters.

Further, Ben clearly described the concept of the Magic Box to Locke. Ben said that if Locke wanted something badly, the magic box would produce it. Locke wanted to see the box, but Ben scoffed that aside. In Locke's case, suddenly Anthony Cooper was captured and on the island (as he said right after an automobile accident; and that the island was hell). At the time, Locke's whole life revolved around the betrayal of his father and the revenge he sought for the downfalls in his life. Those strong emotional thoughts created the situation where Locke could confront his worse nightmare face to face.

The island as a magic box does not yield an objective reality, but dealt with the probabilities of observing various aspects of a person's life outside the classical ideas of religious thought (judgment, punishment, penance, accountability, and redemption). It gave the main characters various opportunities to relive difficult moments in their lives, to give them second chances or the possibility to change (their perceived outcome of key life events). The island could be viewed as one large interactive, interpersonal experiment in which the viewers got an inside peek of the events transpiring therein.

PERCEPTION

"Perception is reality."

It is a common phrase.

Perception is the the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses: the normal limits to human perception. It is the state of being or process of becoming aware of something in such a way, such as the perception of pain. It is  a way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something through a mental impressions It also means having intuitive understanding and insight.
In science, it is the neurophysiological processes, including memory, by which an organism becomes aware of and interprets external stimuli.

The word itself comes from Old Middle English for  "seize, understand."

Reality is the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them. It is a thing that is actually experienced or seen, esp. when this is grim or problematic. Reality is a thing that exists in fact, having previously only existed in one's mind such as the paperless office may yet become a reality. It can also mean the quality of being lifelike or resembling an original. It is also the state or quality of having existence or substance such as death has no reality to young people.

In Philosophy, reality is an existence that is absolute, self-sufficient, or objective, and not subject to human decisions or conventions.


So, how a person sees, hears, or becomes aware of the world around him is his reality.

This is the foundation for the LOST mythology. Viewers has to use their own perception of the images and events on the screen to filter through their own experience and understanding to interpret the show for personal meaning and insight. This is why it is difficult to change a LOST viewer's mind on how they reacted or felt about the show. In a show about light and dark, there were no black and white answers.

Whether the island was actually a Pacific Island, or vegetation atop of alien tortoise, or a space ship, or a time vortex, or another dimension, it cannot set in stone.

Whether the characters were actually who they said they were is also open to debate. Were the characters "real" lives in the sideways world, and they dreamed of island adventures, or was it the other way around? Was Sawyer always a police officer who dreamed of being the bad guy? Was Hurley always a lottery millionaire or was he just a chicken fry cook who dreamed of being a millionaire?

LOST writers did not set down a set of story principles as authority;  incontrovertibly truths. As a result, we are left with any perception as reality.

WAR OF THE WORLDS

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the most famous radio play in the history of American broadcasting.

Orson Welles wrote and produced a radio adaptation of the classic H.G. Wells novel, The War of the Worlds for his Mercury Theatre group.  It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938, and aired over the CBS radio network. Directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Welles,  the  first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated news bulletins,  which suggested to many listeners that an actual Martian alien invasion  was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a show which ran without commercial breaks, adding to the program's realism. Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic in response to the broadcast, the precise extent of listener response has been debated over the decades.

In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage and panic by certain listeners, who had believed the events described in the program were real. The program's news-bulletin format  was described as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast. Despite these complaints—or perhaps in part because of them—the episode secured Welles' fame as a dramatist.

Welles used the most modern technology of 1938, and transformed it into a complex fictional illusion which fooled many in the general public. The idea of the power of technology such as radio could mold, control, create fear or panic a community would later be adapted by German propaganda leaders in pre-World War II Europe.

It is not debatable that the Welles broadcast had lasting impact on American culture and in broadcasting. Today, we are surrounded by modern telecommunications and instant access to news and events. We would think it would be hard to fool us by such a Welles broadcast. But that would still be as naive as those radio listeners in 1938.

Radio came into people's homes with a purpose to inform and entertain. It's news format led listeners to believe in what the news reporters were telling them was true, as this was merely an electronic version of their daily newspapers and their motto of truth and accuracy in journalism. It was the exploitation of the familiar format that led to Welles genius to create a believable illusion in reality

ISLAND AS MACHINE

In combing the LOST cemetery like cobwebs on a tombstone, I find this interesting quote:

"The thing that's cool about the Island is that the Island can sort of conjure up these images of great importance from your life. Then the characters on the show have to sort of deal with the consequences. Those visions often provide tests, and those tests are right along the axis of what is most important for the character." -- Carlton Cuse, "The Main Behind the Curtain" commentary.

"The Man Behind the Curtain" is the twentieth episode of Season 3 and the sixty-ninth produced hour of the series as a whole.  After bringing Anthony Cooper's body to Ben,  Locke demands to see Jacob. Locke, having killed his father to gain the group's respect,  demands to know everything about the Island. He tells Ben to start from the beginning. Inside his tent, Ben pours a drink for himself and Locke as they discuss the Others in a little more detail. Ben admits that, although Locke may think Ben is in charge, it is actually Jacob who is in charge of their group. Ben comments that we all answer to someone. Ben says that only he is allowed to see Jacob. Locke is skeptical, but Ben defends himself by saying that the reason Jacob only talks to Ben is that Ben is the only one remaining that was born on the Island. Ben insists that Jacob only tells him what to do and only trusts him. Locke accuses Ben of being the "the man behind the curtain, the Wizard of Oz" and says Ben is a liar. Ben asks Locke what he bases that assumption on and Locke says that if Ben were telling the truth, his hand wouldn't be shaking. Ben looks down at his shaking hand. 

Ben takes Locke to a small cabin in the middle of the night. Ben tells Locke to turn off his flashlight because Jacob hates technology as much as Locke does. As Ben lights the oil lamp that is hanging outside the wooden hut, he warns that after opening the door, there is no turning back. Locke remains determined. Inside, Ben introduces Locke to Jacob and gestures towards an empty chair. There appears to be nobody else in the room but Ben and Locke. The contents of the room are very old; there are jars on a windowsill containing red liquid. Ben proceeds to chat to "Jacob" and argue, while Locke stands in complete disbelief. Locke accuses Ben of "putting on a show," but Ben insists that there is someone sitting in the chair and that Locke is too limited to see him. Locke tells Ben that he is pathetic and turns to leave. As he does, he hears a deep, sepulchral voice saying, "Help me."
Locke asks Ben to repeat himself but Ben says that he didn't say anything. Ben seems shocked that Locke had heard a voice. Locke shines his flashlight onto Ben's face, and as he does so the room starts to shake. Ropes and chains shake on the wall; chairs rock and windows smash. Ben's lantern falls to the floor and catches fire; the fire is quickly extinguished, as if by magic. Ben also appears to shake someone in the chair, telling him to stop and that he has had his fun; immediately after which he is thrown hard against a wall by an unseen force. Locke sees a man sitting in the chair for a brief moment. He stumbles outside in fear and confusion. The chaos stops as quickly as it began. Ben, ashen faced, follows him and hangs up the (now intact) oil lamp outside the house. Locke asks what on earth was in there. Ben simply replies that it was Jacob.

The next morning Ben and Locke walk through the jungle. Ben asks Locke what Jacob said. Locke responds by telling Ben that there is no Jacob, that everything that happened at the cabin was a trick and that he is going to expose Ben as a fraud. Locke also notices that Ben is leading them back by a different path. Ben tells Locke that there's something he wants Locke to see first. Locke says he has seen enough, but they keep moving. On the way, Ben admits that some of the things he has said on the Island were "not the truth." He admits to not having been born on the Island like he said. They finally reach what Ben wanted to show Locke. Locke gazes down into an unfilled  mass grave full of DHARMA skeletons.  Ben explains that the skeletons are the remains of "his people." Ben says they came here seeking harmony, however, they could not even coexist with the original inhabitants of the Island. 

He explains that when it became clear to Ben that one side had to go,  he did what he had to do. He says he was smart enough not to end up in a ditch like the DHARMA Initiative. Ben states that this also makes him smarter than Locke. As Locke spins around and pulls his knife, Ben shoots him in the left abdomen, in the kidney area. Locke falls backwards into the pit of DHARMA corpses. Ben calmly asks what Jacob had said to John. As he lies amongst the corpses, John asks Ben why he did this. Ben says he did it because John "heard him." John manages to say "help me" but Ben doesn't realize that John is repeating Jacob's words. Ben points the gun at an already severely injured Locke and demands to know what Jacob said to him. John raises his hand and says, "He said, 'help me.'" Ben, visibly shaken by these words, replies to Locke that he had better hope that Jacob will help him now. Ben leaves, and Locke is left gasping for breath. 

Meanwhile,  Sawyer returns to camp, already in an uproar over Naomi's comments that the plane was already found with no survivors,  with the tape recorder he got from Locke on Juliet's spying on the camp, causing everyone to finally confront Jack and Juliet. about her intentions.  

The episode did show the dark evil back story of Ben. This episode showed Ben's purge of the Dharma camp, including killing his father on Ben's birthday. It puts forth the theme who can you trust on the island.

Here is how TPTB help explain the darkness of this episode:

1. The island can project images of great importance from character's lives.
2. Then the characters must deal with the consequences of the island's projections.
3. The island's visions provide tests to the characters.
4. The tests are what are most important for the characters.

What I gather from this is that the Island can be considered a machine. It is taking personal information, recreating those personal experiences into projected images in order to test the characters' (will, feelings, emotions, intelligence, spirit, intentions, beliefs or reactions). It could be considered a diagnostic tool, a torture device, a means of punishment, a cruel game or judgment on one's soul. But it seems to be programmed to pull out the best and worst character traits of the people brought to the island. 

It is like some person creating a movie biography of your life, but then put you into a holographic 3D version of it to see how you would react. Then add layers of other people's bio projections to determine whether you can filter out you own "most important" aspects of your life while experiencing the tests of the other people around you.

In that respect, it seems more like a collective dream psychosis experiment. The variables are the subjects personal backgrounds. The island is the stage to test behavioral aspects of people with deep emotional scares, criminal behavior tendencies and mental illnesses. 

But to what end does the Island machine serve? It could be a cosmic sorting machine like one of those old room size IBM computers that spits out punch cards. It could be a real world computer game simulation like Westworld but using people's own memories against them. It could be what the Dharma Initative was all about in the very beginning: testing the end of humanity (the Valenzetti Equation, a large doomsday-predicting formula) but in a small scale, contained experiment on the island.

A POET

During any holiday, American radio stations play classic rock and roll tunes because most parents and adults are driving to and from their weekend destinations.

So it is not surprising to hear a classic like "American Pie" by Don McLean.

In junior high, my science teacher spent an entire class period explaining the lyrics to this song to us. It was an important piece of music that incorporated a key moment in his past. Music does creates markers of memories to people.

"The Day the Music Died, " as stated in McLean's 1971 song, was about an aviation accident that occurred on February 3, 1959, near Clear Lake, Iowa. The accident  killed rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Jiles "The Big Bopper" Richardson, and the pilot, Roger Peterson. After terminating his partnership with The Crickets, Buddy Holly assembled a new band consisting of Waylon Jennings, Tommy Allsup, and Carl Bunch, to play on the '"Winter Dance Party" tour. The tour also featured rising artist Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper, who were promoting their own recordings as well. The tour was to cover 24 Midwestern cities in three weeks.

Kids today may not realize that their Disneyifed pop music has its roots in a turbulent crossover in the 1950s when blues, country and old standards became electrified by a new brand of rebels called rock and rollers. Buddy Holly was one of the new pioneers of the rock sound that defined a new generation.

Although McLean dedicated the American Pie album to Buddy Holly, none of the musicians in the plane crash are identified by name in the song itself. When asked what "American Pie" meant, McLean replied, "It means I never have to work again." Later, he more seriously stated, "You will find many interpretations of my lyrics but none of them by me.... Sorry to leave you all on your own like this but long ago I realized that songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence."

McLean has generally avoided responding to direct questions about the song lyrics, such as saying, "They’re beyond analysis. They’re poetry." He has acknowledged that he did first learn about Buddy Holly's death while folding newspapers for his paper route on the morning of February 3, 1959, (the line "February made me shiver/with every paper I'd deliver"). He also stated in an editorial published on the 50th anniversary of the crash in 2009 that writing the first verse of the song exorcised his long-running grief over Holly's death:

A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to make me smile
And, I knew if I had my chance that I could make those people dance, and...
Maybe they'd be happy for a while
But, February made me shiver with every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep - I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside the day the music died

It is interesting to note that an artist such as McLean is still careful to not explain his lyrics. He wants people to interpret them in their own way. He may have been inspired by actual events, but may have wrapped all his childhood memories into a collage of images that only he will truly understand.

There was a passage that caught my ear:

And, there we were, all in one place - a generation Lost in Space
With no time left to start again
So, come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick - Jack Flash sat on a Candlestick, 'cause...
Fire is the Devil's only friend
And, as I watched him on the stage my hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in Hell could break that satan's spell
And, as the flames climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial rite, I saw...
Satan laughing with delight the day the music died

He was singing, bye bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good ol' boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singing...
This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die 

None of the musicians who died that fateful day were named Jack. Jack is from a nursery rhyme. And nursery rhymes are the first fantasies told to little children as they fade off to dream.

The main characters' parents would have been the start of the Boomer generation, the first generation of rock music. The main characters would have had this sound in their memories growing up as children. In the LOST series, most of the music bridges were from the 1960s (except for Charlie's own music). The mood of the series from its background music is like it was frozen in time in the 1960s just as McLean's musical memory seized up when the pioneers died in a plane crash.
There are many similarities between "American Pie" and LOST: a plane crash, time standing still, death, and symbolic images.

The LOST characters were all in one place, a cast of lost people in a generation that should have been on Easy Street living the American dream. When they reached the island, there was no time to start their lives again. Fire was an important symbol tied to Jacob. It was in his statue home, and the campfire when he told the remaining candidates that they needed to act so their friends deaths would not be in vain. Jacob was called The Devil. He did cast spells over the Others and Ben to do his work. And if Jack had to be nimble and quick to defeat MIB, it was his sacrifice in the island succession ritual that allowed the other survivors passage to the next life. He knew it in the bamboo field that that was the day he died.

Many ancient cultures believed that human spirits would wander and haunt the world unless they "accepted" their own deaths. How souls would block out the memory of their own demise is unclear. How souls would want to change the outcome of their deaths for a greater purpose or remorse for things not accomplished is also unknown. Modern society does not stress the importance of the ancient belief of preparation for one's after life. Kings and Pharaohs built grand tombs and stockpiled it with weapons, food, gold, servants and livestock for the journey to the next level of existence. Rock and roll led to rebellious freedom from past tradition. It allowed the Boomers to reach new heights of accomplishment, but also new levels of selfish behavior. One mantra was Live for Today.

Many LOST fans are still melancholy about the end of the series. Everything must end in order to have a new beginning. They miss the rhythm of the series, not caring about the symbolism; they miss the wild ride, not whether the story lines made sense. They still wait since the day their show died.