THE BIG SIM

One of the Big Theories for the premise of LOST was that the entire series was an elaborate mental dream, a collective dream or a computer simulation. It was not real. It was pure imagination.

Hurley was the perceived imagination engine. He was the one character that actually had vivid, structured and strong imaginary friends. One almost got him to jump off an island cliff, after telling him "none of this is real."

There were other clues that Hurley's mind was in control. The Others lab featured rooms that were based on psychological manipulation to mind control. The lab people were dressed and functioned like the doctors and nurses at his mental institution. Likewise, Hurley was able to move in and out of the institution like he owned the place.

Another strange thing was that Libby was in Hurley's same day rule at the mental hospital, but he did not recognize her when she showed up on the island. Hurley was friendly with everyone at the hospital; just like at the island everyone was his friend. The idea that Libby would fall in love with Hurley is something he could have longed for - - -  recall, he lost the clerk young woman to his best friend.

The idea of the "collective coma" was a theory I stated when the series was still running along. It was basically that a series of coma patients were hooked together on a local area network to track brain wave activities. However, the coma patients minds are much more active than the patients outward appearance, so they have created their own virtual world (all of which predates our current AR and virtual reality headsets). Bits and pieces of the patients memories could have been used by Hurley and others to create the island world, the adventures and action which none of patients could fathom because of their medical conditions.

Locke's miracle recovery when he landed on the island is another example of "mind over matter" imagination. Locke believed he was an Australian outback hunter, but the wheelchair made that dream an impossible nightmare. He created his own path and adventure in the island world.

There is also a possibility that the main characters major accomplishments may have been embellished. Jack had a huge daddy complex. He suddenly became a miracle surgeon, to surpass his father's hospital status. But what if he was not an accomplished surgeon - - - but a mental patient who has hallucinations of his dead father. In order to patch things up, he dreams of a way to show his father that he was worthy of his praise.

It is the same motivational theme with his father's abandonment of him. It was something that stuck in Hurley's mind. He turned to eating to cope with the abandonment. It made him unattractive and unmotivated to succeed in life. He dreamed of being a rich and successful man. The only way that could have happened was the miracle win of the lottery - - - which in turn was his curse that he tried to runaway from.

Kate's own daddy issues made her runaway from reality. Her back story was one of manipulation and adventure but she never suffered any true consequences for her crimes. The unbelievably wrong trial was clearly the outcome of a delusional criminal.

All the bits and pieces of the LOST tangential story lines can be easily merged into one big mental simulation of events. An adventure for those who cannot adventure. Those people who wasted their lives without accomplishment, true friends or a path to enlightenment. Yes, LOST had its sci-fi fantasy elements but those can also be created in the imagination of one or more main characters.

A BAD MAIN THEME

There is one bad theme that ran throughout the LOST story lines.

Bad parents.

The affect of parents' treatment of their child had a dramatic effect on how that character was as an adult.

Jack's father never gave him the praise or encouragement Jack needed in order to complete his socialization process. As a result, Jack was not capable of having strong relationships with other people. His displeasure for his father's treatment of him was transferred onto other people he cared about when he was an adult.

Sayid was pushed into being a man as a child. He had to kill the chicken when his older brother could not do it. Sayid was trapped into following authoritative directions. He lost his own free will to serve his superiors (his father, his army commander). As a result, he did things he did not want to do (torture people) and to give up any dreams he had for his future (Nadia).

On the other hand, Hurley's dad's abandonment of him caused Hurley to develop a severe introversion with other people. Even when he had the courage to socialize, it was with the fear of rejection and abandonment. When the store clerk he liked ditched him for his best friend, Hurley's only escape was into his own dream world, a safe place where he could not get hurt.

Sawyer's mother and father ruined his life. His mother was conned out of the family savings, and his father went nuts by a murder-suicide with his wife instead of trying to rebuild his family trust and savings. That led Sawyer to a life of crime and revenge that de-humanized him to become the person he hated the most in the world, the con man Cooper.

Kate's parents divorced when she was a baby. Her mother fooled her into believing her second husband was her father. This deception led Kate not to trust men but to use them as puppets in her own bizarre rebellion. Kate's situation led her to a life of refusing to take responsibility for her actions, and to run away from her problems like her parents did when they divorced.

Jin and Sun were opposites tied together by their hatred for their family class status. Jin fled his poor fishing village life to vow that he would become a rich man. Sun rebelled against her strict, patronizing industrialist-criminal father. She would never get the status or position in the family business because of her gender. She took satisfaction that her father could not stand her taking a poor man like Jin as her lover. But she mistook Jin's desire for wealth over true love when he turned into her father's lackey. There relationship was based more on fighting back against their parentage than true feelings for others. In a way, there childish selfishness against being like their parents was their demise. No one can believe that one parent would orphan their child by drowning in a submarine; death was better than being a single parent?

Locke's traumatic childhood was the deepest cut of all. He could not find the family that he was searching for. He was blinded by the thought of a perfect, suburban picket fence reunion with his real parents. But their loathsome self-absorbed personalities destroyed Locke for a second time. Locke was so beaten down by his upbringing that he could not see the one woman who truly cared for him. He was so bent on his past he could not live in the present. He lost his family and the one woman who loved him. He created his own destiny of being a poor, miserable, bitter man because of his parents abandonment of him as a baby.

BETWEEN SLEEP AND AWAKE

The little clue about being "awake," from something, still haunts theorists.

The debate focus is on whether the sideways world was real, paranormal, heavenly or an illusion.

Scientists are researching the mental condition which occurs just before a person wakes up from sleep. There is a distinct period where things can happen to a person: experience a paralysis nightmare or sleepwalk. The sleep paralysis occurs when your mind wakes up prior to your body. The sleepwalking occurs when your body wakes up before your mind.

History is littered with references to "demonic" sleep attacks. No one knew why people acted strangely. Since it was not normal, the explanation had to be it was paranormal. The content of hallucinations can often be thematically linked to the feeling of paralysis –  manifesting as visions of an intruder in the bed who is physically holding the sleeper down. Records of incidents attributable to sleep paralysis can actually be found throughout history, in different cultures,  dating back as far as 400 BC. Some blamed witchcraft and curses.

Sleep paralysis is when your limbs are frozen but your mind is dreaming about a terrible thing, for example, a monster attacking you. Your mind races its instincts to flee or fight back, but your body does not respond. That increases the fear one feels in the moment.

Science states that a person could be awake and been dreaming at the same time. Sleep disturbances include types of parasomnia,  the inability to move, these periods of wakeful paralysis are often accompanied with vivid multisensory hallucinations. Effectively, imagery from your dreams can actually intrude into your waking reality.

The precise physiological mechanisms that result in sleep paralysis are still not entirely understood. What is known is that, typically, when we dream, our actions are confined to our imagination. We all have a built-in safety mechanism, which you can think of as something like a circuit breaker; it effectively blocks your brain’s motor planning signals from becoming motor action signals. This mechanism prevents us from physically acting out the actions that we dream of making. Thus, when you’re being chased by a monster in a dream, you don’t actually rise up and charge into the bedroom wall, or evolutionarily-speaking, tumble out of your tree. However, our brains are highly complex systems, and, as such, are prone to the occasional glitch.

One example is sleepwalking, which occurs when the paralysis eases too early, while you’re still asleep. On the flip side, sometimes the paralysis lingers – even after you’ve awoken. This typically happens just on the threshold of sleep – either just as you’re waking up or just as you’re drifting off. You can be conscious, with your eyes open, but be completely unable to move your body. Again, this is a fairly common occurrence, but the experience can be understandably alarming.

Such problems may be a consequence of more general sleep disruption. Researchers have shown that sleep paralysis experiences can be induced in lab settings when subjects are repeatedly woken from deep sleep. Researchers believe that 50 percent of people will experience at least one episode in their lifetimes.
Why would a person's mind act in such a strange fashion? One theory is that sleeping might serve to ‘consolidate’ memories from our waking life. The brain is de-fragment its information just like a computer software program corrects disjointed stored files. 

In 2000, a team of scientists at Harvard Medical School reported that participants who played the video game Tetris would continually report seeing game-like imagery, the iconic falling blocks, just before falling asleep. Similar results have been obtained using other types of video games.  This evidence has been used to support the idea that sleeping might serve to ‘consolidate’ memories from our waking life - consolidation is term that refers to the process of reinforcing and strengthening newly created memories. Experiments have demonstrated that people who are given memory-based tasks will perform better if they’re given the opportunity to sleep after learning. It seems as though after we’ve been engaged in a learning task, our minds might be using sleep as a sort of rehearsal space to practice problems.

But the sleep disturbances occur when the normal sleep process (and its mental sorting process) goes out of whack.

There is an old saying that you should never wake up a sleepwalker. It would be too traumatic for them to wake away from their resting place. People have had actual conversations with sleepwalkers. The idea that a person can be living in two "different states," awake and asleep is part of the issue with the LOST mythology paradoxes.

Were the main characters always awake? They were rarely shown sleeping - - - or was that purposeful to mimic the projection of a dream state. Why were clues such as "Illusion" on the name of a boat so clear at major story points? Why were Egyptian symbols of the dead used so often?

It begs the question of whether the characters were in some sort of "in-between" state of existence: partially awake (which accesses their personality traits) and partially asleep (which accesses their memories, fears, desires, emotions, etc.). Science research is beginning to think that there is such a place in daily human life.

COMPUTER FUSION

Several theories describe the possibility that LOST was merely a technological construct of digital ties in the brain or brains of the main characters. A neuro-network fused together to share dreams, memories, fears and nightmares. The island story was merely the expunged data of a wired community in a bizarre experiment.

These theories may not be that far fetched after all. Science is continuing to press computer technology to new limits. Currently, it is trying to be integrated more into every person's daily life. From powerful hand held smart phones to wearable technology (like fit bracelets), humans are being merged into data collectors.

Google's Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil, who has made 147 predictions since the 1990s and has a success rate of 86 per cent, stated recently in a Daily Mail (UK) article that within the next 12 years the human brain will be directly connected to computers.

Kurzweil says when we live in a cybernetic society we will have computers in our brains and machines will be smarter than human beings.  He claims this is already happening with technology - especially with our addiction to our phones - and says the next step is to wire this technology into our brains.

Technological singularity is when carbon and silicon-based intelligence will merge to form a single global consciousness. "By 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence," Kurzweil said in the  interview with SXSW.

He believes that implanting computers in our brains will improve us."We're going to get more neocortex, we're going to be funnier, we're going to be better at music. We're going to be sexier," he said. 

But once computers are integrated directly into a person's brain, people can be networked like machines. The fantasy world of Ghost in the Shell seems to be the premise of this scientific research.  People will have the option of swapping their internal organs with sophisticated machine parts. 

But this begs to ultimate question: would this end our humanity?

THE GRAND EXPERIMENT

LOST had many controversial elements. One was that so much of the criminal activity on and off the island was not punished. One could literally get away with mass murder.


In civilized society, the rule of law, a code of right and wrong, is necessary to stop the general public from turning into aggressive savages. In some ways, the island was its own uncivilized society where the normal rules did not apply to the characters.


It is possible to equate this element with a new scientific study which attempts to map "criminal intent" in the brain activity of potential criminals. In order to convict a person of a crime, the prosecution must prove mens rea, or the "intent" to commit the crime. It is done mostly by circumstantial evidence and common sense. For example, if you carry a gun into a store and demand money from the clerk, you are intending to rob the store. Judges and juries often have to gauge a defendant's mental state at the time he or she committed a crime in complex cases or where the defendant may have mental impairment. They have to decide whether a defendant committed a crime "knowingly" or "recklessly." In some cases, the difference could be a matter of life or death.
A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has turned to the brain to find a basis for this distinction. The researchers were able to find distinct brain activity patterns that revealed whether participants knew they were committing a (virtual) crime or were recklessly taking a risk.


“All the elements of the crime being the same, depending on which mental state the court decides that you were in when you committed the crime, you can get probation or 20 years in jail,” said the study co-author Read Montague,  a neuroscientist at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. “I can't think of anything more important than loss of your liberty, so understanding these distinctions or the subtleties in them is important.”


For this study, 40 participants played a game inside a brain scanner. They had to decide to carry a suitcase that could contain sensitive documents through a maze where they could encounter one or more guards. The number of suitcases and the guards were altered in each round of the game to play with the level of risk the participants had to take.


The researchers used a machine-learning method of data analysis that looks at activity across the entire brain to find patterns. This revealed two activity patterns that corresponded to the conditions in which participants knowingly decided to carry a suitcase containing contraband, or the conditions where the participants made an uncertain but risky choice.


The distinct brain patterns they found suggest that these two legally defined mental states—knowing and reckless—are not arbitrary, but indeed map to different psychological states.


Montague is quick to point out that this study is not something you could use to avoid harsher punishment.


“It has no implications within a courtroom, and probably won't for quite a while,” Montague told mentalfloss.com  “This is a proof-of-principle study that informs the idea of mental-state distinctions.”


In fact, what neuroscience in general could potentially offer in a courtroom is heavily debated.
Our relatively recent ability to scan the brain and look for otherwise undetectable injuries has raised the idea that neuroscience could be used to inform the circumstances of a criminal case. If you have a brain lesion, after all, your behavior could be profoundly affected.


Taking this scientific study to the LOST world, Dharma was interested in various aspects of brain activity. From manipulation to brain washing, Dharma and Ben used methods to control the Others and the survivors. But it is unknown whether the original Dharma researchers had more civil aspects to their experiments such as finding clues to criminal behavior through tests and brain scans.


In order to get samples from various types of people, it makes sense for the island scientists to bring various people to the island and let the boundaries of civilized society be negated in a new world where basic survival is the only thing that matters. Call it a grand experiment to determine how normal people react in an abnormal environment. And if it was an experiment on how humanity is changed under those circumstances, it would appear the verdict would be that normal people mostly fail both their own moral codes with increased criminal behavior.

PRUNING THE MIND

Arstechnica reported new findings on memory and sleep.

REM sleep is known to help solidify memories, but the mechanism for making memories more permanent is not well-understood. A recent study published in Nature Neuroscience shows that, during REM sleep, some of the structures neurons use to make connections with each other are pruned, while others are maintained and strengthened. The findings indicate that sleep's role in solidifying memories comes through allowing the brain time to selectively eliminate or maintain newly formed neural connections.

Dendritic spines are small outgrowths on a neuron’s dendrite, which is the portion of the neuron that receives chemical signals from other neurons. These spines enhance the strength of connections between neurons so they can play an important role in strengthening new neural circuits and solidifying new memories. These spines aren't permanent structures; instead, nerve cells can create new ones or get rid of existing ones (a process called pruning) as the importance of different connections shifts.

The new memories in this case were formed in mice, which were trained to complete a treadmill-like motor task. Then, the mice were either deprived of REM sleep or allowed to experience this form of sleep. The mice that were allowed REM showed significantly higher pruning of new dendritic spines compared to the mice that were REM sleep deprived. This difference in pruning was only seen for new dendritic spines, and previously existing dendritic spines were pruned at the same rate.

The researchers looked at how REM sleep influenced dendritic spine pruning at various points throughout the mice’s lives. They found that this neural pruning occurred while the mice were in REM sleep during their development (during the equivalent of mouse adolescence) but could also occur when the mice experienced REM sleep later in life after motor learning tasks. REM sleep increased the size of the spines that were retained, both during development and after motor learning tasks—these unpruned new spines were strengthened, reinforcing the developing neural circuitry.
In other words, during REM sleep, the brain selects which portions of new neural circuitry it wants to eliminate and which portions it wants to strengthen and enhance for future use.

The researchers then looked at the role calcium channels, which let calcium ions across membranes, may play in these decisions, as changes in the levels of calcium in cells is a normal part of brain activity. They found that sudden changes in the amount of calcium seen during REM sleep were critical for selective pruning and strengthening. When these calcium channels were blocked, the previously seen changes in dendritic spines no longer occurred.

Too little REM sleep during development is known to have detrimental effects on brain maturation, and this recent study provides new insight regarding the mechanisms that may be at play here.

Without sufficient REM sleep during development, juvenile and adolescent brains may not be able to adjust the connections among their neurons to hold on to what they've learned. Similarly, REM sleep is known to help with learning during all stages of development, including adulthood. In both cases, lack of REM sleep prevents the brain from eliminating unneeded spines generated during learning and prevents the strengthening of critical new spines that make newly learned tasks stick.

The interesting caveat to this study as it relates to LOST is that the main characters had a hard time grasping and retaining island knowledge. Many fans were upset when a group would return from a mission, the other castaways would not ask them basic questions of what happened to them. Other times, a character would continue to get manipulated, such as Locke. 

So were the main characters unable to retain knowledge because of sleep deprivation? We did not see extended periods of time when the characters were asleep, except for Jack when he was captured at the Hydra station. At that point, Jack was asking Juliet many pointed questions, but did not get the responses he wanted (and recognized it).

If the island was a metaphor for some other place, such as a medical research facility, could the characters have been test subjects in sleep and REM research? And if it is true that lack of sleep can effectively strip your brain's ability to make or break connections to retain important memories, could that have been the real power that Widmore and Ben wanted to control?

AFTER DEATH

An unusual study of drug addicts concludes that an addict's body continues to crave drugs even after the person dies. The persistent addictive cravings are caused by a protein from chemical dependency which continues to transmit signals to the brain.

The shortened protein, FosB,  in the reward center of the brain is altered in those suffering from a chemical dependency.  The protein is a transcription factor in the brain which, together with other molecules, is involved in so-called signal transduction (transmission of stimuli to the cells). It is said to convey genetic information between the cells and also determines whether certain genes are activated or not.

Following numerous autopsies, Austrian researchers found the modified protein in deceased heroin addicts - suggesting cravings for the stimulus continued after their death.

The evidence that the modified protein lingers after death was discovered by the Medical University of Vienna's Department of Forensic Medicine, which examined tissue samples from the nucleus accumbens (an area of the brain) of 15 deceased heroin addicts.

When someone abuses drugs, such as heroin, it turns into DeltaFosB, which is increasingly stimulated in cases of chronic use and even influences growth factors and structural changes (neuronal plasticity) in the brain.  Due to a constant supply of drugs, such as heroin, FosB turns into DeltaFosB, which is increasingly stimulated in cases of chronic use and even influences growth factors and structural changes (neuronal plasticity) in the brain - approximately in the region where memory is formed.

The team found the protein was still modified even after a heroin addict had died.

Researchers believe the period is much longer in the living who are trying to recover – and it can last for months.

FosB is part of the activating protein AP1, which is involved with regulating gene expression in response to a range of stimulus, including stress and bacterial infections.

If this protein still stimulates the brain's reward and memory centers, one could speculate that a person's memories can still be active even though the person had died. In other words, there may be a transitory state between life and death where the brain continues to function. Perhaps this is what happens to people who claim to have experienced "near death." They are clinically dead for a time, but their brain continues to function to create new memories.

There were numerous LOST theories about the show being merely a connected memory of a character or characters. But this science study sheds another potential basis for the show's unknown foundation element: if it was a memory, a dream or illusion of a person, was that person alive or dead?

THE BASIS OF LOST

One of the grand mysteries to unify the LOST mythology is the scientific key to help explain everything and everyone.

If we turn to science and what could induce human behavior, we find one portion of the brain that many have deemed the gateway to the soul.

René Descartes once described the pineal gland as “the principal seat of the soul.” Though medical knowledge has vastly progressed since then, here are a few things you might not have known about this critical organ. It was recognized as an important organ since the time of the ancient Greeks (130-210 CE).

Descartes was fascinated with the pineal gland, considering it “the place in which all our thoughts are formed.” Scientists now credit that function to the neocortex.

Descartes thought that within the pineal gland, "tiny animal spirits" were like “a very fine wind, or rather a very lively and pure flame,” feeding life into the many small arteries that surround the gland. This was likely due to his abysmal understanding of anatomy and physiology.

The pineal gland was commonly dubbed the "third eye"  for many reasons, including its location deep in the center of the brain and its connection to light. Mystic and esoteric spiritual traditions suggest it serves as a metaphysical connection between the physical and spiritual worlds. 

It is a tiny gland, located very deep in the center of the brain. It gets its name from its pine cone-like shape, (French pinéal, or "like a pine cone"), itself from the Latin for pine cone (pinea). However, at about one-third of an inch long in adults, it's smaller than your average pine cone.

Though located in your brain, the pineal gland is actually a crucial part of your endocrine system   which regulates major bodily processes such as growth, metabolism, and sexual development through the release and control of hormones. The gland translates nerve signals from the sympathetic nervous system into hormone signals.

Because the pineal gland was the last of the endocrine structures to be discovered, scientists considered it a "mystery organ."  Today, we know that unlike much of the rest of the brain, the pineal gland is not isolated from the body by the blood-brain barrier system.

As scientists have learned more about the functions of the pineal gland, they’ve learned it synthesizes the hormone melatonin from the neurotransmitter serotonin. Melatonin production determines your sleep-wake cycles and is purely determined by the detection of light and dark. The retina sends these signals to a brain region known as the hypothalamus, which passes them on to the pineal gland. The more light your brain detects, the less melatonin it produces, and vice versa. Melatonin levels are highest at night to help us sleep.
 
Melatonin inhibits the release of pituitary reproductive hormones, known as gonadotropins, from the pituitary gland,  affecting male and female reproductive organs. In this way, melatonin—and therefore the pineal gland—regulates sexual development.

In the LOST mythology, many key plot points can be related back to the pineal gland: the gateway to the soul; the third eye (which connects to ancient Egyptian rituals); animal spirits (such as Hurley's bird or the smoke monster); and the hormonal relationship (sex) between male and female characters (including the fears, lack of growth or social development). There was also the cross-connection between the physical and metaphysical in regard to being in two places apparently at the same time (the island and the sideways world).  Since the pineal is a center for both growth and metabolism, it is a life and death organ. Any disruption of the gland function can cause serious health problems.

Depression, peptic ulcers, and sexual dysfunction may be exacerbated by a deficiency of melatonin. Stress and dietary habits may lead to deficiencies of both serotonin and melatonin. Melatonin inhibits the release of cortisol via the release of vasotocin. Abnormal circadian rhythms of cortisol may occur in states of decreased melatonin. A circannual rhythm of melatonin has troughs associated with peaks in the incidence of peptic ulcers and psychotic depression.

The pineal gland secretes a single hormone—melatonin (not to be confused with the pigment melanin). This simple hormone is special because its secretion is dictated by light. Researchers have determined that melatonin has two primary functions in humans—to help control your circadian (or biological) rhythm and regulate certain reproductive hormones.

A body's  circadian rhythm is a 24-hour biological cycle characterized by sleep-wake patterns. Daylight and darkness help dictate your circadian rhythm. Light exposure stops the release of melatonin, and in turn, this helps control your circadian rhythms.

 

Melatonin secretion is low during the daylight hours and high during dark periods, which has some influence over your reaction to photoperiod (the length of day versus night). Naturally, photo period affects sleep patterns, but melatonin’s degree of impact over sleep patterns is disputed.

 

But the theme of dark vs. light was apparent in the LOST world. The fact that a person cannot sleep can lead to fatigue, memory loss, confusion and mental problems. When one's sleep pattern is disrupted to the point that the person cannot tell between day time and night time, serious brain function can be inhibited including memory and reason.

 

Pineal tumors may manifest symptoms from the blockage of the flow of fluids to the gland which can cause some of the common presenting symptoms of these tumors, which including headaches, nausea, vomiting, seizures, memory disturbances and visual changes. These elements were present in LOST by the fact that many characters saw non-island visions (Jack's father, Kate's horse), headaches and bloody noses to seizures (the island effect that killed Charlotte) and the memory losses (or lack of learning the characters showed during the island time). 

 

In aging, the gland may begin to harden like calcium in the the development of teeth. Science studies indicate that this may cause memory loss or dementia.

If one was going to form a scientific theory to base the LOST premise, the pineal gland would be an good choice. The damage or disorder of the gland could explain many of the LOST elements. From that point, one could speculate that the main characters had pineal gland issues which caused memory disturbances and acute dementia. This could be the basis for any mental issue theory to explain the premise of LOST: the hidden mental states of group patients suffering from similar diseases, linked together by a trial study or protocol (the images of the Dharma institute probing them).

HUGO

Author Victor Hugo wrote, "There is nothing like a dream to create the future."

In Dream Theory, your subconscious mind recreates worlds in which to run simulations, fantasies and comparisons with data collected by your conscious mind. This duality or mirror image of information is used by humans to frame future references, categorize experiences and hard wire memories.

The signals get crossed when the  subconscious mind escapes from the darkness of the dream state and into the light of reality.

Escape, such as the release of the huge "purple wave" when the Numbers were not put into the computer in time. The Numbers, a sequence of digits to be imputed by rote into the operator's mind. It is symbolic of counting numbers backward in order to fall under anesthesia or like counting sheep in order to achieve slumber.

Once the subconscious mind bleeds over into the real cognitive operations of the mind, one may become unstable, delusional, paranoid, extremely introverted, isolated or angry at the harsh inconsistencies between what should be (as found in the dream state) and what is (reality).

There were many fan theories about LOST which centered on the fact that Hurley was the key character who was always around the action, but never got hurt. Why? Because in the dream state, the person's build in primal safety mechanisms of instinct and reaction will not allow you to get hurt. And if you live in the dream state long enough, you can begin to control it - - - and its perceived outcome. Once you believe you can control your own destiny, you can stand by the sidelines and watch the action knowing that since you created it, you cannot get hurt.

Not getting hurt is another basic human defense system. No one outwardly goes forward in life wanting to hurt themselves, either physically or emotionally. People try to connect at deep, interpersonal levels, to help to cope with the pressures, struggles and pain of normal life activities and relationships. Families are the first and foremost bonds of safety and companionship. But if that bond is weakened or broken early in life, a child may rush to the safety of his own dream state in order to cope with a terrible loss.

Hurley did so when his father left him. His abandonment issues were never resolved in the pre-island world of reality. One could speculate that the island, with a broad base of strange people, was created by Hurley's dream state in order to find permanent replacement friends to fill the void of his lost father since as a child he decided he did not have a future without a father figure to guide him.

Hurley was the one character that got along with everyone on the island, which is a statistical improbability unless Hurley predetermined he would get along with everyone on the island. It is the self-fulfilling prophecy which in itself is a self-directed con, or cheat. He created great, lively, charismatic imaginary friends in order to create a fun, adventurous future for himself (a loser with no ambition or prospects in real life).

In this context, LOST is really a sad, sad story of a young man escaping his own reality in order to hide in his subconscious dream state.

NEW FALSE MEMORIES

In the Boston Globe recently, Linda Rodriguez McRobbie tells the story of a British man named Alpha Kabeja, who came out of a coma with clear recollection of memories of things that had never happened.

Kabeja, McRobbie writes, was biking, when he was hit by a van with enough force to knock his brain out of place inside his skull. When he came out of a medically induced coma three weeks later,
McRobbie writes, "doctors told his family he might not remember anything from before the accident, or remember them or who he was, that he might have amnesia." But Kabeja woke up full of memories.

The only problem: None of those things were true!

In the immediate aftermath of the accident, Kabeja clung to his new memories, and his family and friends played along. But there was no pregnancy. There was no private plane. There was no job interview, which Kabeja realized only after he called MI6 and learned their offices had been closed the day of the accident.

But the "memories" weren't totally fantastical — related things had been happening in Kabeja's life before the accident, leading him to believe that his subconscious had twisted real pieces of information into new forms:

In that sense, McRobbie argues, Kabeja's brain was simply going a step further than ours do, every day, when we recall a piece of the past. No autobiographical memory is a fixed, literal record of what really happened; memories are malleable, morphing each time we call them forth, to accommodate new information stored elsewhere in the brain. Sometimes, this means small tweaks; other times, it means we're left with recollections that others might see as outright fabrications. Even people with extraordinary capacities for recall, research has shown, are prone to inadvertently making things up.

Kabeja's false memories then, may have been an attempt to make sense of the long gap when he was unconscious in the hospital — without any real autobiographical memories of that stretch of time, his brain may have simply pulled other memories from elsewhere to fill in the lost weeks. "When you wake up, your brain is trying to reconnect pieces because your brain is trying to recover that sense of you, that sense of memory, that sense of history," Julia Shaw, a memory researcher at London South Bank University, told the Globe. "And in that process of recovery and essentially healing, you can make connections in ways that are fantastical and impossible" — but not so far removed from memory as we might like to think.

If our brain has its own operating program where it writes, stores and re-writes information like a computer hard drive, then any interruption of this normal brain function could lead to dramatic "new false memories" being created to explain one's current situation.

Memories (or in LOST, at times, the loss of the collective memory of the characters) was an ebb and flow in the story lines. Where the flashbacks and backstories really true? Or were they the reconstruction of different bits of information and fantasy caused by brain injuries to the surviving passengers of the plane crash?

ZOMBIE TRAIN WRECK

Another functioning LOST fan site had its review of Wrecked, the TBS parody of LOST. It concluded that the show was awful.

Some commentators remarked that the Wrecked show's monsters were going to be jungle zombies.

Another commentator replied:

I wonder whether the makers of this show are either insiders or figured out "Lost" themselves.
The makers of "Lost" kidded about a season 7 of zombies, and that was actually a funny clue to the plot of "Lost", because it recalls the way zombies are said to be produced: You induce brain damage in someone, then convince hir that s/he's a certain identified person risen from the dead. That's close to what some of the principal characters on "Lost" had undergone. They were knocked out, convinced they'd been in an airline wreck that in reality killed everybody aboard, and made to believe they were particular individuals known to have been on the flight. It helped that they'd been selected for their resemblance to those persons, and in some cases given plastic surgery to improve the resemblance. They were threatened with disillusionment when they found out flight 815 was found on the bottom of the ocean, but the cover story was that that had been a fake wreck populated with dug-up dead bodies. However, planted among these characters were those who knew all along what was going on, or discovered it at some point.

 I had not heard about the potential LOST tangent theory of the characters actually being zombies. But it does contain many of the plot elements of LOST.

LOST was filled with medical experiments and military-industrial complex stations. To hijack a plane or create a plane crash to re-program other individuals into believing that they are someone else falls within the Big Con aspect of the series tangents. There was really never a reason for the castaways to be told that the Flight 815 wreckage that was found was a "fake." (In previous posts on the subject, I found it an unrealistic and unbelievable plot point - - - if wreckage was found, investigators would have retrieved the black boxes and bodies for positive ID. But when the alleged black box showed up on Widmore's freighter, all sense of truth was lost in that story plot.)

Room 23 was used for mental conditioning experiments; brain washing. The Hydra island was used to implant control technology into sharks. There was a scientific foundation to explain was what really happening on the island.

Can you take a bunch of "lost" people from around the world - - - loners, unhappy folks, fugitives and the depressed - - - and crash their lives to the point where they are living the life of another person? Jack was not Jack but someone playing Jack.

Why would this be important? If a person or government could perfect this personality implant in a stranger, that stranger can be weaponized to take the place of generals, presidents or powerful people in the real world. Dopplegangers could be controlled by an elite group, such as Dharma or Widmore or the U.S. military.

The Zombie Theory to LOST seems as plausible as any other fan theory.

THE MOMENTS OF DEATH

Scientists continue to probe on what happens to a person at the time of death. They have tracked down the chemical components that are released on death which may explain how people perceive and feel death.

Inside the center of one's brain is a vestigial gland. It was thought to have little function. The pineal gland,  roughly the size of a grain of rice, is more heavily protected than even the heart with its literal cage of protection, because if something happens to your heart you die, but if something happens to your pineal, some say you can’t go to heaven.

The pineal gland  influences on both melatonin and pinoline, its end of life role in the creation of dimethyltriptamine  or DMT. This chemical, DMT, may well be the reason we, as a species, are capable of sentience itself.

DMT is a narcotic substance. It is a powerful psychedelic. The pineal gland produces this substance every day.

DMT is also the trigger that elicits dreams. So the reason one has dreams is that the brain is producing a narcotic.

However, at the time of death, the gland floods the brain with massive amounts of DMT.

Science has studied the effects of DMT on normal people. These drug users experience two major themes while under the influence:

1) A stretching of time – they experience the hectic 6 or 7 minutes as a near eternity or lifetime.

2) They experience religious incarnations with a tilt toward whatever sect the subject is affiliated with.

This compound has been known for a long time. Cultures have known about the pineal, more widely known as the inner eye, all-seeing eye, or the like – considered the body’s gateway to the soul.

Egypt had its "Eye of Horus"  Hindu culture has its bottu (the familiar forehead dot). Even the ancient art of yoga recognizes the brow chakra, or ajna, as blossoming at the pineal, or third eye.

Since science is aware that DMT is released at death, they have also observed that there is a mysterious several minutes of time after death where the brain still functions. These last  few minutes after death, subjectively, are experienced as an eternity, engrossed in the DMT universe. Also, the trip itself is a highly personal experience dictated by the deepest realms of the subconscious.

The scientific chemical basis of death helps explain LOST.

Each person was experiencing a traumatic event (the plane breaking a part mid-flight). They were charged with adrenaline, anxiety and fear. Their minds would have "flashbacks" on their lives, their experiences, their families and their regrets. "Your life flashes before your eyes" is a common recall from near death experiences. But at the moment of death, the people on board Flight 815 did "survive" for several minutes through the massive release of DMT into their brain. A wash with an intense psychedelic narcotic drug which induces a dream state. A dream state that would seem to last for an eternity because there is no "time" barrier in the subconscious. One could feel or experience days, months, years of livid events in the minutes after death.

Those passengers whose final thoughts were centered on the will to survive the crash did so in their last dream state upon death. 

So we did not view one coherent interaction between the survivors and the island, but hundreds of layers of final dreams stitched together like an overlapping quilt.

MEMORY OBSERVATION

Last month, William Shatner was being interviewed on a Chicago radio station. He was on to promote his new book, Leonard, a retrospective of his life with Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy.

He wrote the book as a tribute to his late friend. But in the process, he had an interesting observation on life.

He said that people share experiences with friends. And in order to remember them, re-live them, they have to be together - - - "do you remember the time we did such and such?" Then laugh about it.

He said those conversations keep those memories alive.

But once someone dies, a person loses that connection to the other person. Those strong memories begin to fade because the deceased friend is no longer around to share them with you.

That was why Shatner wrote the book. It keeps his memories of Nimoy alive in a tangible form.

This is a deep observation that makes logical sense.

Our memories fade of lost loved ones because we don't see them anymore. A daily, weekly, monthly or annual face-to-face helps reinforce past memories because you re-connect with the person, their face, their voice, their mannerisms, their personality, and humor. The stronger the bonds between two people, the clearer the memories will be retained.

So when we lose people, at some point we will lose the memories of those departed souls.

That is a sad dilemma. You want to remember. You need to remember.

We have things to help us remember. Family photograph albums. Pictures speak a thousand words. Grave stones. We visit the departed to pay our respects and to remember their life. Their children and siblings. They are the living images of their departed family members.

If you are a film star, friends can find  the permanent footage of your acting career. It helps ease the problem of losing touch.

But those are mere substitutes for the real thing. The real experiences in life hold more meaning than just mere memories. But at a certain point, memories are the only things left to hold on to.

In LOST, there was the odd notion that the main characters "forgot" their island past while "living" in the sideways world. Perhaps, they lost their memories because people died and they faded from conscious memory.

HARD DRIVE

The human brain is the most complex organ in the body. Scientists still do not fully understand how it operates; how it can capture images, store them and recall them as vivid memories. Some believe that the brain works like a computer hard drive, in which proteins that bond to neurons communicate and store information. The body's program code may be at an atomic level which would be exponentially greater than the largest and faster computer systems on the planet.

To equate the brain with a computer hard drive is a good comparison. But what happens when a brain misfires? Is it like a crashing hard drive? When information in a computer hard drive is fragmented, the bytes of information are dispersed on various parts of the drive - - - to be sewed back together by the operating code to be then displayed on the screen. In the human brain, when its information and recall gets fragmented, we call it a form of mental illness or disease.

Multiple personality disorders include hallucinations, paranoia, violent behavior, illusions and illogical actions. Those traits were found in many of the main characters in LOST.

One can take the hard drive theory for the show and break it down into differing premises. First, the show could have been a large, on-line multiplayer, role game of Survivor which had its main server programming break down into a different kind of game. Add the component of augmented or virtual reality, the players (characters) could have been so absorbed into the game that it turned into their new reality. Some addictive personalities could then have been trapped in this virtual world.

Second, the premise could be a metaphor that the main characters brains were malfunctioning like a crashed drive. There are many examples of characters shown with mental illness (Hurley and Libby), mental breakdowns and suicidal thoughts (Jack and Locke), murder (Ben, Sawyer, Kate), torture (Sayid and Ben), and even justified homicide (Bernard, Hurley).

There seems to be a great deal of violent criminal behavior as the undercurrent of the series.

The bonds between these main characters could reflect that they were brought to a place collectively in order to protect the rest of the world from them. This idea would fit into the statements by Jacob that he alone brought people to the island. And the fact that MIB was called a "security" system, it would seem they would symbolize a warden and a guard in a prison.

The people brought to the island were not candidates but prisoners. Perhaps it was found that each of the main characters had dangerous mental traits that could trigger abhorrent behavior in the real world. So the authorities ditched them on a private, secluded, high security island to test new penal rehabilitation techniques.

What happened on the island would confirm the authorities worst fears about some of the prisoners. There were violent episodes, Some people changed and went crazy (Claire), others went psychopathic (Ben). Without the structure of prison cells, the inmates ran the asylum.

Which is fine. The prison revolt was orchestrated by the prison guard (MIB) who was fed up with the warden and his games. MIB needed help from the inmates in order to escape the island. But it seems that the only true escape from the island is death.

Third, you can combine the two theories into one in the respect that this prison escape adventure is being a transformative hallucination of a criminal mental patient. The vivid illusions drawn upon the stories of other inmates in therapy sessions can be the building blocks for the action, the escapism, for a person who is serving a life sentence without parole. And the dream aspect could be confirmed by the "happy" ending for the inmates in heaven - - - which is very odd since all their misbehavior, crimes and sins all "vanish" once they leave the island. This is odd finish - - - except that is the fantasy outcome for someone who has committed vile acts without comprehension or accountability or guilt. The dreamers miswired brain allows him or her the fantasy of justification, free will and acceptance by his or her fellow rogues and misfits.

THE CON MAN

Author Maria Konnikova recently spoke to Business Insider about her book about the psychology of con artists. She said three attributes make a good con artist:

The dark triad is three things, obviously, including psychopathy, the inability to feel emotion in the way that normal people do. It's kind of a lack of empathy. Your brain is actually different, you process emotional stimuli differently. To you, they don't mean that much. It's very difficult for a non-psychopath to understand, but basically everything that would really make you emotionally engaged would leave you cold as a psychopath, so that's one part of it. 

The second part is narcissism, this overblown ego where you not only think you're just the best thing that's ever happened to anyone, but you also think you deserve a lot. You deserve basically everyone to bow down to you. And you have it coming to you, all these good things. So if you notice a lot of the con artists in the book, they want shortcuts, they don't want to work hard for their rewards, because they think they deserve them. They are people who steal credentials because they don't feel like getting a Ph.D. But they think they're smarter than the people with Ph.D.s.

Finally, it's Machiavellianism, or the ability to manipulate people into doing what you want. Kind of like Machiavelli's Ideal Prince, you have your own ends and you use whatever means you want to get there. And you're very good at tricking those people and getting them to do what you want.

The reason those traits are so important to con artists is that you are taking advantage of people, and in order to do it well, you can't think that you're taking advantage of people, because the moment you do, you start feeling bad for them. What this triad allows you to do is not have to deal with that, you don't feel bad for people, because you don't feel empathy. And you don't think you're doing anything wrong, because you deserve it. And you have the means, because you're Machiavellian, and so you're very good at convincing other people that what you say is correct. Those three things can really operate in tandem to create the perfect story. That said, and one thing that I do say in the book. It's not destiny. There are plenty of people who have these traits who don't become con artists. And there are also con artists who probably don't have the entire dark triad of traits.

Lacking emotional empathy. A belief in deserved alpha dog status. Ability to manipulate other people.

This was the blueprint for a few LOST characters. Sawyer was a known con artist, a process which he adopted in order to get revenge on another con artist, Cooper (Locke's biological father). Ben also conned Sawyer into submission on the Hydra Island kidnapping story. And Kate regularly conned men to do her bidding - - - such as helping her break into a safety deposit vault. Shannon manipulated men to pay for lifestyle of doing nothing constructive. 

Of the main characters, Ben showed the strongest abilities in the three elements of the dark triad. Sawyer had spats of remorse during his cons. Kate did not think she deserved a lot, except for her freedom. Shannon was more of a spoiled brat than psychopathic behaviorist. Cooper was a close second to Ben on tricking people to give up their prized possession - - - like an internal organ from Locke.

So there was a clear scientific basis for the character traits of the theme of con artists in the series.

LOST DREAMS

There are various resources to interpret one's dreams.

Dreams are often viewed as a subconscious exercise to try to figure out what is bothering your conscious self.

If you dream about being "lost," it could mean several different things. One source states:

To dream that you are lost suggests that you have lost your direction in life or that you have lost sight of your goals. You may be feeling worried and insecure about the path you are taking in life. If you try to call for help, then it means that you are trying to reach out for support. You are looking for someone to lean on. Alternatively, being lost means that you are still adjusting to a new situation in which the rules and conditions are ever changing.  

To dream that someone else is lost represents some unresolved issues or feelings pertaining to the person that is lost. Consider what aspect of that person you may have lost within your own self. Perhaps you need to recapture and re-acknowledge those aspects.

In both instances, the main characters in LOST could have been in a dream state interpretation. Individually, they had lost their direction in their life either personally or professionally. They may have pieced together a collective imagination of strangers with similar problems in order to cope with their own issues. The main characters struggle is trying to acknowledge and accept various aspects of their life, their character and their fate.

DREAM POLICE

Throughout history, literature came in standard format elements such as metaphor, symbolism, satire, exaggeration and codes. At times, the authors used those devices to criticize their leaders so as not to lose their heads. Writers use these methods to allow a reader's imagination to fill in the gaps. One of the most successful books that have been used over and over again as examples are the parables in the Bible.

As with the vagueness of LOST's premise and main plot line, many different themes and theories have arisen to explain the totality of the series. Was it purgatory? Was it a parallel universe? Was it time travel? Was it the avatar representation of players in a video game? Was it all a dream?

The latter has been a highly investigated topic. Many theorists have focused in on Jack's character as the source of the dream theory. It was Jack's eye opening to start the show's mythology that got people to thinking it was a link to the mind's eye, or subconscious state. It seemed to hold water when Jack's last island shot was him closing his eyes in the bamboo jungle after defeating MIB.

However, after recently hearing Cheap Trick's "Dream Police," there may be another suspect.

The dream police
They live inside of my head
The dream police
They come to me in my bed
The dream police
They're coming to arrest me
Oh no

You know that talk is cheap
And rumors ain't nice
And when I fall asleep
I don't think I'll survive

The night the night

'Cause they're waiting for me
Looking for me
Every single night
(They're) driving me insane
Those men inside my brain

What if the duality state of psychic responses was not in Jack's head but in Kate's?

It may make more sense because Kate's story line features all of the main character story elements. The show was supposedly all about character development more than plot.

The lyrics of the song pen a simple premise for Kate's dream state.

What was the major focus of Kate? To run away. To not accept responsibility. Not to grow up to make adult decisions toward accountability. And where do many people run to in troubled times? Into their own heads. The factually incorrect assumption through the series was that a U.S. Marshall was chasing down Kate for an Iowa state murder. The U.S. has no jurisdiction over murder, a state offense. And when she was "tried" for that murder, it was in California, another state without any jurisdiction. Those errors were so big and stupid it cast the whole series writing in doubt. 

The only real explanation for those egregious errors is that they were not real. 

If we accept the premise that Kate's story is fantasy, then a workable theory can be made from it.

When know the basic elements of her character: she was a rural child living with her working mother and lazy stepfather. She wanted attention so she caused trouble. She learned early how to manipulate young boys. She longed to get away from the chains of her family and to have adventures. But her family had no resources to send her away, and Kate seemed to have no attributes to better herself to go to school or college to make her own path.

LOST could be considered Kate's dream flight away from her boring life. Besides, Kate is the only person in the O6 story arc to have a "happy" outcome, i.e. getting her murder charges dismissed with a wrist slap. All the other O6 characters had brutal disappointments, including Jack turning into a drug/alcoholic, Sayid seeing the love of his life killed in an accident, and Locke being murdered by Ben.

And the other characters are elements of her personality, as depicted in Disney's recent movie Inside Out.

Shannon represents a vanity, a pretty but lazy girl who wants to be showered with gifts and attention. Locke represents her adventurous side. Sawyer represents her devious wants and desires. Hurley represents her shy but crazy side. Charlie represents her hidden creative talents. Ben represents her repressed anger against her parents. Jack represents conformity, the responsible person she is trying to avoid. Sayid represents the exotic problem solver. Claire represents the little girl trapped inside her head. The smoke monster was her deepest fears; reality. Mars, the marshal, represented her parents and the societal pressure to conform, behave and be accountable for your actions.

Throughout LOST, Kate was seemingly in the middle of every major event. She went on all the missions. Out of nowhere, she was an "expert" tracker. When she needed to be an expert marksman, she was. She got in and out of danger with barely a scratch. She always got what she wanted: escape and freedom. All the main story threads had Kate as a major factor: the plane crash, the O6 story arc, and the sideways world. In fact, Kate's story is exactly the same in both the island world and the sideways existence while the other characters had major differences. That is because Kate's mind was in control of both story worlds, bouncing back and forth like a pleasant dream to a nightmare. 

But as Kate got deeper and deeper into her fantasy dreams, the more dark they became. Add in "the Others," people who don't know her but want to control her. Jacob and MIB, tyrants who are trying to hurt her, kidnap her and enslave her mind - - - take away her freedom. 

Her Dream Police, her imagination,  were authority figures who were making demands on her. All the characters did indeed live inside her head. And when she was asleep, they tried to "arrest" her - - - take away the fantasy of adventurous freedom by putting her (and her character elements) in danger. There were times she felt she would not survive: as the plane was crashing, as she was chased into the mangrove roots by the smoke monster, when Ben held her captive, when MIB attacked the temple, when Claire lashed out at her, etc. 

So we may never really know who Kate really was. She could have been a transference of Libby, the mental patient in Hurley's group day room. As the song said, the dream police were driving her insane.

HAPPINESS TRADE-OFFS

One of the main themes of life is finding and securing happiness.

But in the quest for happiness, something usually has to give.

In LOST, various main characters were searching for happiness, but most never found it.

For example, Rose and Bernard met late in life. It was a godsend for Bernard. Rose was his world. Until she got cancer. He panicked and tried to find any cure. That led to a strain in their relationship. Rose was a realist. Bernard was an optimistic dreamer. But for Bernard to secure his happiness with Rose, they both had to "die" in a plane crash. That was the only "cure" for Rose's cancer was that she became a spiritual being on the island.

For example, Jack's sole mission in his life was to get the acknowledgement of his skills from his father. As a result, Jack was never happy. He had no friends. He was obsessed with pleasing his father, and getting out of his father's shadow, that it caused him to be paranoid and obsessive in his relationships. His first marriage failed because of an alleged jealousy between his wife and his father. And his relationship in O6 arc with Kate fell a part as well. In order for Jack to be happy, he had to do the opposite. He had to control things. He had to have the final say. He had to be right.

And then there were characters like Locke who spent their entire lives trying to find happiness, but stumbled through it as a fool. His bitterness of being abandoned as a child clouded all of his life choices. It ruined his relationship with the one woman who cared about him and his disabilities. The only way Locke found any sliver of contentment was when he "died" and was reunited with his island friends.

Sociologists have studied this apparent personal paradox. Happiness is something we assume we want, but in reality, we sometimes give it up in exchange for comfort. Unfortunately, we’re often comfortable with not getting what we want, so resign ourselves to that fate. As researchers stated:

Though happiness is of course what we all fundamentally want, for many of us, it isn’t really what we know...it isn’t what we’ve come to expect. It doesn’t feel like home...Getting what we want can make us feel unbearably risky...Self sabotage may leave us sad, but at least safely, blessedly, in control. It can be useful to keep the concept of self sabotage in mind when interpreting our and others’ odder behavior.

Beyond that, next time you’re weighing a decision and thinking about the risk involved, it might help to consider the role of comfort and control.

The concept of self-sabotage fits Locke to a tee. It also fits in Jack's grinding personality flaws of being an unloved, control freak. It also connects Kate's selfishness with her self-destructive behavior when she constantly tries to escape responsibility for her life's decisions. 

Was Jack really happy in the end? I don't think so. Being a martyr and dying in the bamboo field was unnecessary. And when he went to the sideways church reunion, he was more in his own catatonic state than being in a state of happiness. 

RUTHLESS

There were many ruthless characters on LOST. Ben was the hard driving, psychopath leader of the Others. In some ways, Sawyer was ruthless in his life mission of revenge. Also, Kate was ruthless in how she used other people to maintain her criminal freedom.

But what do ruthless people have in common? What drives them?  A recent article on BBC.com explores that issue.

When we think of success, we often picture rather brutal characters who will happily trample over others’ feelings in the pursuit of fame and fortune. Psychologists have recently identified three traits that might describe the most ruthless people. They are:

-        Machiavellianism: characterised by cynical manipulation
-        Narcissism: how self-centred you are
-        Psychopathy: a combination of risky impulsivity and callousness

Occasionally, all three corners of this “dark triad” converge in a single person, who is vain, scheming, and unfeeling, but sometimes you can score highly in one characteristic but not the other.

Previous evidence had suggested that psychopathy is slightly more common among high-flying CEOs than the general population. The idea was that ruthless and risky behavior was demanded in the top office. But it was unclear how the other kinds of dark personalities fare in the workplace.

The 'dark triad' of personalities: Machiavellian, psychopathic and narcissistic (Credit: Thinkstock)

Daniel Spurk at the University of Bern in Switzerland has now attempted to answer these questions with a comprehensive study that compares all three of the traits of 800 German employees from all kinds of industries. Using an online survey, he asked them to rate statements such as “I lack remorse” or “I like others to pay attention to me” and also quizzed them about their careers to date.

Dr. Spurk's published results were surprising.Spurk found that the psychopaths in his sample actually performed worse on his measures of success: they earned less than their peers and tended to have lowlier positions on the career hierarchy. As you might expect, given these findings, they were also less satisfied with their lot.

Spurk thinks it could be down to their aggression and risk-taking. “Psychopaths are really impulsive – they have real problems with controlling behavior.” Although their willingness to take risks could be a boon in some industries, their impulsiveness may mean that they are less productive in the long run, skiving off work as the mood takes them. The determining factor, Spurk thinks, may be intelligence: a smarter psychopath might be able to temper some of those excesses, allowing them to win out in the long game.

People with manipulative tendencies did tend to rise to leadership positions, but they weren’t the highest earners

Machiavellianism was more strongly associated with success – people with these manipulative tendencies did tend to rise to leadership positions; you don’t have to be Don Draper to realise that pragmatically pulling other’s levers will put you in a position of power. But it was the narcissists who earned the most money, overall. This may be because their sense of self-worth makes them better negotiators, helping them to swing more benefits.

“Individuals high in narcissism have good impression management, so they can convince their colleagues or supervisors that they are worth special advantages,” Spurk says. Or as Gordon Gekko put it, there’s the belief that “What's worth doing is worth doing for money.”

Narcissists may seem charismatic to begin with, but they can become wearing with their constant need for attention

But before you consider cultivating a darker streak to further your career, Spurk points out that these people may lose out in other ways. Narcissists may seem charismatic to begin with, but they can become wearing with their constant need for attention. “Although people who don’t know them very well think they are charismatic, in the mid-to-long term there might be situations where people are no longer fascinated by their behavior.” So even though they may be earning more money, they might suffer socially. And Machiavellian manipulators may come undone if their particularly ruthless or dishonest machinations are exposed.

If that’s not enough to persuade you, there is now an abundance of evidence showing that kindness may not make you money but it pays in other ways: more generous and honest individuals tend to have happier lives and better physical health.So steely ambition will help get you so far in life, but it alone can’t take the place real talent. 

As in LOST, the ruthless characters came across the most lonely. You may be driven to succeed at the highest levels, but it can be lonely at the top. Besides, there will be others lurking in the shadows, without a job – or a friend.

TEST OF PSYCHOPATHS

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

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

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

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

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

Psychopathy Checklist-Revised: Factors, Facets, and Items

Factor 1
Facet 1: Interpersonal

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

Facet 2: Affective

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

Factor 2
Facet 3: Lifestyle

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

Facet 4: Antisocial

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

Other items

• Many short-term marital relationships
• Promiscuous sexual behavior

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

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

 Do you do any of these professions?

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

Then there is a higher chance you are psychopathic.

Do you do any of these professions?

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

Then there is a lower chance that are psychopathic.