SPIRITUALISM

There are many proponents that LOST was merely about spiritualism. In a general sense, it did not matter how anything worked, it was about the exploration of human beings to their non-material selves.

The idea of spiritualism in American culture is not new. One of the longest lasting board games, Ouiji, came from American spiritualism craze of the 1800s.

The Ouija board was created out of the American 19th century obsession with spiritualism, the belief that the dead are able to communicate with the living. Spiritualism, which had been around for years in Europe, hit America hard in 1848 with the sudden prominence of the Fox sisters of upstate New York. The Fox sisters became celebrities because of their claims that they could  receive messages from spirits, who rapped on the walls in answer to questions. By recreating this feat of channeling spirits, these gatherings started in parlors across the state. Aided by the stories about the celebrity sisters and other spiritualists in the new national press, spiritualism reached millions of adherents at its peak in the second half of the 19th century. 

Spiritualism worked for Americans: it was compatible with Christian dogma, meaning one could hold a seance on Saturday night and have no qualms about going to church the next day. It was an acceptable, even wholesome activity to contact spirits at seances, through automatic writing, or table turning parties, in which participants would place their hands on a small table and watch it begin shake and rattle, while they all declared that they weren’t moving it. Spiritualism also offered solace in an era when the average lifespan was less than 50 years: young women died in childbirth; children died of disease; and men died in war. During the Civil War, spiritualism gained adherents in droves, people desperate to connect with loved ones who’d gone away to war and never come home.

People wanted to believe that they could communicate with the dead loved ones. No one considered that the process could open the gates of hell. They wanted comfort from their troubled times.

In 1886, the Associated Press reported on a new phenomenon taking over the spiritualists’ camps in Ohio, "the talking board."  it was, for all intents and purposes, a Ouija board, with letters, numbers and a planchette-like device to point to them.

 

The Kennard Novelty Company, the first mass producers of the Ouija board seized upon the spiritualism movement's frustration with how long it took to get any meaningful message out of the spirits; calling out the alphabet and waiting for a knock at the right letter, for example, was deeply boring. After all, rapid communication such as the telegraph had been around for decades—people began to wonder why shouldn’t spirits be as easy to reach?  On February 10, 1891, the U.S. Patent Office awarded a patent for the Ouija board as  new “toy or game.” The first patent offers no explanation as to how the device works, just asserts that it does.

When people want something badly, their innate common sense can be lost in the moment. When desperate people want answers, they may throw their entire being into the unknown.

Perhaps, this was the ribbon that tied LOST's characters together. The island represented a transparent spirit board that allowed the characters to try to re-connect to their pasts. We observed that Hurley and Miles had abilities to communicate with the dead. Jacob had the ability to cast ghostly apparitions of himself as a child and as an adult. The smoke monster could create dead people to confront their loved ones, like Yemi to Mr. Eko.

Except, how did the island work its spiritual code on the characters? Locke used his vision quests to try to connect to the island. Desmond, through massive dose of radiation, began to mentally time flash to apparent future events. But they were not asking the island for answers; it was more that the island was telling or guiding them down certain paths.

If spiritualism is a key to LOST, then the series was more like a game than we were led to believe.

THE RIDE

There are many fans who liked the ending to LOST. They accept the ending because they had a more generalized feel for their show. It can best be described as riding a roller coaster.

A roller coaster is a entertainment or amusement device that allows a person the thrill of danger, experience fear, the rush of adrenaline in a controlled wild ride experience.

LOST was much like a roller coaster.

These viewers merely strapped into their sofa and went along for the ride.  They did not need to understand the details or dialogue. They viewed the series as a comic action adventure, and the plot twists were like the roller coaster car turning upside down during a loop. They enjoyed being rattled by the mistrust and betrayals by the characters, or the shocking deaths of some of the passengers. They liked that they did not know what the smoke monster was because it was like the unknown next turn on the roller coaster. The choppy ups and down in story telling did not matter so long as the action was non-stop and the characters had some humanistic appeal.

And once the series ended, these fans got off the couch and said "whew, that was a great ride."

There is nothing wrong with viewing a television show as a visceral experience.  This is probably similar to viewers that drives the current glut of reality shows: some viewers do not need lessons, morals, or big concepts in order to be entertained by TV.

THE BIG PICTURE

We seem to gravitate towards the bits and pieces of plot points like tiny puzzle pieces to try to grasp overall concepts and the Big Picture that was LOST.

In all storytelling, there has to be a central point to the story. It can best be summed up as what is the grand struggle that the character(s) must go through in order to reach a their climax destination.

The issues and themes of LOST need to be boiled down to the general essence. For good or ill, the final season was focused upon the vague struggle between Jacob and MIB. This detour into the island's past did not answer why the survivors were tormented in the first five seasons. But if we peel back the onion skin layers of the island participants, we find that throughout island time, there has always been two sides pitted against each other. Jacob and Smokey, a pair of immortals tied together to the island by some unspeakable bond. The Others, who may or may not have been the remains of prior shipwrecks, candidate arrivals or captive in-breeding. The Others have pushed back after some truces against any other group that have arrived on the island: the military, the Dharma science teams, and each other (with the earliest tension the leadership struggle between Eloise and Widmore).

But what were these struggles all about?  The many themes that surround the individual stories may be a clue, but the prize seems to be control of the island. But the one person who does actually control things, Jacob, does not want the job. He wants to be replaced. But he does not want MIB to leave if he leaves. (It is like he wants a clean divorce from the island and the smoke monster, so it won't follow him.) But Jacob's need to leave the island to a candidate seems to be overcomplicated: he had centuries to find someone to take over the reins: from brilliant scientists, to egomaniac cultists, to naive average folk. It would seem anyone who actually knows what the island IS, would be happy to take it as a prize. Unless, of course, the island "prize" is the curse that Jacob himself found himself trapped into forever. He was tricked by Crazy Mom, and now he needed to trick someone else to take his job. Perhaps the Smoke Monster was angry about change, or wanted to succeed Jacob as the man/thing in charge. It seems to be a moot point because in Season 6 both Jacob and MIB want nothing further to do with the island. So, in that case, there is no conflict between the two that would lead to more bloodshed of human souls.

The Jacob-MIB story has no moral attributes, centric values or even rewards for persons who want to grow, change or become a better human being. It came down to a disillusioned Jack accepting the job after all his friends stood silently as Jacob begged for help before his light was extinguished (which in itself could have been another lie).

So what was the Big Picture Jack had to finish in order for the island to be saved? Destroy MIB. But why? There was no evidence that MIB could actually "harm" the remaining candidates. There was no clear evidence that MIB was going to destroy the Earth if he got off the island (and some suspect he had already left the island to be illusions on the mainland like ghost Christian to Jack at the hospital). Was it as simple as getting rid of two bickering immoral gods from the human realm of existence? Again, Jack did nothing to accomplish the end of their reign.

And if the island was the creator, the engine for all life, death and rebirth, why would Jacob or MIB ever want to leave it, especially in the hands of less intellectual, less advanced, less experienced people like Jack or Hurley? It does not make much sense that if the struggle was for the whole of the universe, the universe wound up being handed over to a mentally challenged chicken fry cook.

THE GOOD ONES

Ben often made the statement that he was one "of the good guys."

The fuzzy line between good and evil was very gray. Everyone had issues. Everyone had secrets. But was any character truly "good?"

Most of the main characters, including Bernard and Jin, reaped violence on other people, including killing. The Others, as a group, endorsed kidnapping, murder and destruction of property. Jacob and MIB allowed all the criminal behavior to flourish on the island. Even the temple priests and followers were not persuaded not to kill someone.  Evil was everywhere.

Desmond killed Inman; Locke led Boone to his death; Walt burned the first life raft; Ben was a mass murderer; and Juliet played roles in the kidnapping of Claire. Sayid continued to torture people; Charlie did drugs and lied about it; Eko was a fraud.

So the list of good people is fairly small.

The children appear to be the innocent in the series. Emma and Zach, the tail section survivors, were kidnapped by the Others. They stayed with Cindy, the flight attendant, who was probably also an Other.

Rose seems to be the only beach camp survivor who did not sin on the island. She was never engaged in the mission plans. She kept to herself. She hated the leadership politics of the group. She was the lone adult on the beach. She gave advice only to people who asked for it.

In the entire whirlwind of conflict, drama and danger, Rose was the eye inside that hurricane. Interesting analogy. The one person who found peace of mind after the crash was Rose. She did not need to involve herself in the emotional issues of her fellow passengers. The island could not manipulate her because she probably knew that if her terminal cancer was gone, she was dead. And with that realization, she knew she would be alright. She was not worried that Bernard was lost on the island. She knew he would be joining her. Perhaps the island's control over the characters was solely based on the illusion that the characters had that they were still alive.

And perhaps this explains the simultaneous creation of the sideways purgatory world. Everyone created it subconsciously until their conscious would awaken with the realization that they had died.

ISLAND VISIONS

Boone had a vivid, "real" vision of his sister Shannon being killed by the smoke monster. It was so real that Boone blamed Locke by attacking him with a knife. Locke explained that he drugged Boone in order for him to have his vision, so he could understand the island better.

Locke was apparently one of the first survivors to make a "connection" with the island. But he was not alone in the island creating visions.

The series is littered with hallucination episodes.

In Season 1:
Jack repeatedly sees his dead father, Christian, in the jungle.
Claire has a dream about looking for her lost baby, encountering Locke, and finding the crib filled with blood.
Boone has an illicit dream with Shannon, later to find her killed by the smoke monster.
Locke dreams of a Nigerian drug plane crash on the island. He also becomes wheelchair bound again. He also sees a blood covered Boone blankly repeating "Theresa goes up the stairs, Theresa goes down the stairs."

In Season 2:
Shannon has three visions of Walt: a) while searching for Vincent, she sees Walt speak in gibberish to her (backwards: "Don't push the button. Button bad."), b) in her tent, Walt speaks backwards again "They're coming, and they're close," and c) while searching for Walt with Sayid, both glimpse a vision of Walt in the jungle.
Hurley dreams of gorging on food, speaking Korean to Jin and sees the mascot for Mr. Cluck's.
Kate and Sawyer sees Kate's horse in the jungle.
Mr. Eko sees flashes of his life when the smoke monster confronts him.
Charlie has two dreams about needing to save Claire's child, which include images from his childhood and a painting by Verrocchio.
Hurley has visions and conversations with his imaginary friend, Dave.
Mr. Eko has a dream featuring Anna Lucia and Yemi in which they tell him to help Locke, and instructions from Yemi to look for a question mark.
Locke has a dream from Eko's point of view, where he climbs a cliff and meets Yemi.

In Season 3:
Locke goes on a "vision quest" in which is is guided by Boone and instructed to save
Eko.
Desmond has a series of mental flashes in which he sees future events: a) Locke giving a speech about going after kidnapped Jack, Kate and Sawyer; b) Lightning striking Claire's hut, killing Charlie; c) Charlie drowning trying to save Claire; d) Charlie dying in the ocean while trying to catch a seagull for Claire; e) Charlie is killed by an arrow trap on a mission to find a parachutist; and f) Charlie drowning while flipping a switch in a hatch; Claire and Aaron then leaving the island in a helicopter.
Mr. Eko has a confrontation conversation with Yemi.
Young Ben sees his dead mother on the island.
Locke, after being shot by Ben in the purge mass grave, has a vision of grown Walt telling him to get up because he has "work to do."

In Season 4:
Hurley has several visions of Charlie: a) in a convenience store; b) in the LAPD interrogation room; and c) outdoors at the mental institution (where Charlie physically slaps him into conversation).
Hurley sees Jacob's cabin on the island, which follows him until he wills it to disappear.
Michael has two visions of Libby, once in the hospital and once before he tries to set off the bomb on the freighter.
Jack sees a vision of his father in the hospital lobby after hearing a smoke detector go off.
Claire talks to her dead father, Christian, on the island. Christian can pick up Aaron.
Locke dreams of Horace building a cabin for his wife. Horace tells Locke to find Jacob he must find Horace who has been dead for 12 years. (In this vision, the image of Horace skips and repeats like a broken record for a short time.)
Kate has a dream that Claire tells her she cannot take Aaron back to the island.
On the freighter, Michael sees Christian who tells him that "he can go now."

In Season 5:
Hurley has a vision of Ana Lucia, who stops him to tell him he has "work to do."
Locke is told by Walt that Walt had a dream about Locke on the island, in a suit, surrounded by people who wanted to kill him.

In Season 6:
Hurley sees dead Jacob, who instructs him to go to the Temple and the Lighthouse.
Sawyer and Flocke see a vision of young Jacob in the jungle. Flocke is surprised that Sawyer can see him.
Alpert sees his dead wife Isabella in the the Black Rock.
Isabella appears before both Hurley and Alpert on the island near where Alpert buried her locket.
Hurley sees dead Michael twice, first to warns him not to blow up the Ajira plane and second, to tell him to destroy the Black Rock. (In this encounter, Michael claims he is a whisper, a trapped soul on the island.)

Many of these visions or dreams involve interaction with dead characters. The acceptance of speaking directly to dead people freaks out only Hurley (momentarily).

What do many of these occurrences have in common? The smoke monster. The monster could shape shift and create human forms. It admitted that it was Christian on the island. As a result, it could be argued that the hallucinations and visions character had during the series were projections created by the smoke monster. The motivation of these visions is clear: to manipulate, confuse and create anxiety in the characters. It is like a person dangling a feather above house cats; a form of play. Many characters used their visions to guide them in their decision making process, usually with bad results.

There have been theories that the series was just a series of character dreams, individual or collective. But it is also possible that the dreams were actual programs or commands imputed by the smoke monster(s) to move the human characters around their game board (the island). Supernatural beings playing a supernatural game of backgammon.

This supernatural trick and manipulation also follows in the ancient Egyptian burial rites where the king must take a dangerous journey through the underworld. He may be tricked by the underworld gods, go through trials, and be judged by the decisions he makes during the course of finding a way to paradise. The Book of the Dead was a manual on how to traverse the underworld. It allowed the king to bring with him his servants, consorts, food, weapons, and magic spells to help in his journey. The underworld gods also had a childlike cruelty in their game play with lost souls.

Locke's "connection" with the island may have seemed real to him, but it was clearly a manipulation by higher forces. Locke believed in the island, but the island used him like a pawn.

But this raises an interesting question: if these "waking" visions of dead people were the smoke monster, could it also have controlled the characters dreams while they were asleep? Anything is possible, and based on the number of incidents, it is probable. Since Christian's body was not in the coffin, Smokey had to create his image from Jack's memories. In fact, the entire island may have been built upon the memories of those unfortunate souls who were shipwrecked on the island. Crazy Mother was a smoke monster when she destroyed the Roman village. Flocke turned into the smoke monster and attacked the temple. The smoke monster was not just a security system, but the entire island system. It created everything from the memories of human beings, including their feelings, emotional strings, their fears, their experiences and their goals. It "replays" those events to see how human beings react or change. It is not a moral, religious or redemptive series of tests. No, perhaps the smoke monster(s) are using human beings the same way our scientists use lab rats to run through mazes and tests. The whole series was data acquisition by the smoke monsters to understand the human condition.

But, then again, the ending seems to fall outside the realm of island experimentation. Unless, one believes that the smoke monster master(s) became "attached" to their pets in such a fashion to use their collective memories to give them a final illusion of happiness upon their mortal demise.

PICKED ON LOCKE

No character had it as bad as John Locke.

Locke was the "walking" definition of pessimism, a tendency to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen; a lack of hope or confidence in the future.

In philosophy, it is  a belief that this world is as bad as it could be or that evil will ultimately prevail over good.


His life went from bad, to worst, to crippling bad, to really bad to sadly dead. Whether Locke was intentionally written as a punching bag character, we saw him get beat up over and over again. His life started as being abandoned by his parents. His mother was crazy, and his missing father was a rogue con man. He grew up bouncing from foster home to foster home. He had no family. He built up bitterness. He wanted to be something he was not (like a jock when he was a good student). He turned away from science, something he may have been good at, to the self-imposed exile of dead end jobs. Misery was his only companion for most of his early adulthood. He tried to find a purpose and new family like the time he joined a commune. But as often happened, Locke was played for the fool. The family was a band of drug dealers; and his position in the group was to turn to snitch. Locke was often confused by his naive take on people; he trusted others too much that he constantly got burned. Nothing more tragic than reconnecting with his father. But that turned Locke into just another sucker - - - costing him first his kidney, and then his ability to walk when he was shoved out of a skyscraper window. Now, both a physical and emotional cripple, Locke's last hope for personal success and achievement was to go on his Outback journey. But that was halted before it began. He looked stupid and weak.


And what happens to stupid and weak people? They get played for fools.

Locke had his chance to re-invent himself after the plane crash. The miracle that he could now walk meant that his dream of being an outback hunter could come true. He relished the opportunity to be the big boar hunter. He thought people would have to respect his skills and his leadership. But in reality, the rest of the survivors were taken back by his aggressiveness to the point of fear. Only Walt wanted to hang around Locke (even though Michael told Walt not to do so.) In short order, Locke's real personality began to surface and he started to retreat from the group because they had chosen Jack as their leader.


Just as before, Locke went off on a personal quest just like with the commune. He was manipulated by the island's wild charms, the mystery of the Hatch, the manipulation by Ben and Jacob, and then seized by the smoke monster. Locke came out on the wrong end of each encounter. His stubborn position led to the Hatch explosion when the Numbers were not entered in time. His stupidity in playing a computer game led to the communications station to explode.


He was shot, beat up, time skipped,  ripped away from the island by the FDW turn, re-crippled, and dismissed by all the O6 members in his quest to have everyone return to the island to "meet their destiny."  Locke could never explain what that destiny meant, to the others or even to himself. Even when he was at his lowest moment, in a seedy LA hotel room ready to end his life, Ben extracted the last bit of information from him - - - then murdered him in a staged suicide. The world would then view Locke's life as meaningless, sad end.


Why Locke's body had to return to the island was not explained. It just added to the humiliation. For the smoke monster already had the skills to shape shift so it did not need Locke's dead body to become Flocke. Smokey used Locke's appearance to manipulate the candidates in order to turn into evil minions. The only impression Locke's death made was on Jack, who finally realized that Locke may have been right about the island. But, like a virus, this notion infected Jack and turned the rest of his life into one like Locke's: meaningless with a sad ending.


But there was nothing worse to kick a down Locke more than the actual finale. He shows up at the after life church, alone. He sits alone in the front pew across from Jack. Why is Locke alone? There was no one in his life that he could share the moment? What about Helen, who predeceased him after their break-up fight? She was his companion in the sideways world so why was she not at the church? Was she a figment of Locke's fantasy mind? What about his mother? Was her abandonment of him as a child so great that he had no bonds with her? So it was very odd that  Locke was the only person in the church without a family relation or partner.

So why was Locke then even present at the church? None of the main characters such as Jack, Sawyer, Sayid, Kate, Rose or Bernard, felt any close connection with Locke. In fact, most of them turned their back on him. Many of Locke's decisions and actions caused them great pain, grief and sorrow. Locke looked out of place in the church because he was out of place. Everyone else in the sideways world had found happiness, but not Locke. It seems that the show dumped on Locke one last time in the final episode.

DEAD ENDS

The problem with time travel science fiction is that you have to get it right or it is a mess.

Time travel was a recurring theme of the series, and referenced in different ways such as the Island "moving" and teleportation of the user of the ancient frozen donkey wheel under the Orchid station.  It was said that the electromagnetic power on the Island allows the inhabitants to travel through time. However, the narrative changed when characters began to consciously time travel (not physically)  which often end with death, due to the inability to find a "constant."

Here were the writer's various explanations for time travel during the series:

1.  Faraday says the island is like a spinning record on a turntable, but now the record is skipping after Ben's turn of the FDW. He said it may have "dislodged" us from Time.

2.  In the Orchid orientation film, it was stated that Dharma was "to conduct unique experiments of both space and time." Candle placed rabbit number 15 inside a device he called the "vault", which was constructed adjacent to "negatively charged exotic matter." He explained how the rabbit would travel 100ms ahead of four dimensional spacetime - three consisting of space and one of time.

3.  When Desmond had time skipped into the past, he went to Oxford to find Faraday. Faraday demonstrated to Desmond that he could transport a lab rat's consciousness forward in time. He did that by using a machine he designed which emitted an unknown radiation, set to 2.342 and oscillating at eleven hertz. Once exposed, the rat was able to move directly from one end of a maze to another.  Faraday explained that he was not going teach the rat to run the maze for another hour. Later, however, the rat died of what Faraday said was likely a brain aneurysm.

4.  Desmond's  consciousness randomly traveled through time between December 24, 2004 and an unknown date in 1996. Faraday stressed that for a mind to survive the continued transitions of temporal displacement, and to make it stop, it needs to find a "constant," or anchor, to focus on. This constant must be something that means a great deal to the person, and it has to be present in both time periods. For his constant, Desmond chose Penny.

5.  When Desmond first encountered Eloise Hawking, she explained there are rules for time travel: that "the universe has a way of course correcting or fate may intervene to any changes. If a man was supposed to die in an accident but survived, fate would create another event in which the man would die.

6.  The effects of time travel on the traveler seem to be similar whether the travel is physical, or where just the consciousness travels. In both cases, temporal displacement causes nose bleeds, headaches, forgetfulness, and in the worst cases, death by apparent brain aneurysm. However, the severity of the effects appears to differ from person to person. However, people right next to a time skipping person, such as Danielle with Jin, were unaffected by the time displacement.

So which explanation of LOST's time travel is correct?

One would have to conclude that none are the correct answer. The conclusion is based upon the fact that each alleged time travel rule was inconsistently applied through the story line. If one person is affected by physical or mental time travel, but the person standing right next to him (under the same conditions) does not have any time travel affects, the explanation is a nullity.

If the island was Faraday's conscious time machine but in a scaled up version, then everyone on the island would have been affected with mental time skips. But that did not happen. The same is true with the physical time travel: only a few of the 815 survivors were teleported back to the Dharma 1970s while the others were stuck in the present.

But the most egregious violations of time travel rules occurs during the physical skips. When Locke skips in front of Alpert, it makes little sense considering that Alpert had been on the island longer than Locke. Common sense would state that Alpert should have skipped along with Locke. In addition, when Faraday is killed by his mother in 1977, how could he have been born later? The same is true for Charlotte, who claimed to have returned to the island but died during time travel. Lastly, when Juliet is trapped in the hole with the atomic bomb, she is in the 1970s Dharma era. When there is the final time flash, she blurts out "it worked," but we still don't know what she is talking about. She dies in the rebooted present. Is that course correction at work? And did this change Juliet's past life, i.e. in the sideways world ending she had no contact with her sister, her closest friend, who would have been her "constant."

In fact, the whole notion of needing a constant was ridiculous. Under the definition of a constant ("something that means a great deal to the person"), everyone has multiple constants in their lives to focus upon, including parents, spouses, children, family, friends and even favorite sports teams. Minkowski had a family; Charlotte had her "work." Therefore, neither should have died as a result of failing to have a constant in their lives.

The physical time travel story arc led to a dead end, since the alleged explosion of the atomic bomb did not change anything. Desmond's mental time skipping to the past or future did not change anything - - - people still died. In fact, all these time story lines led to dead ends.

In show biz that is called "filler." The principle is to throw new tangents in order to keep the audience engaged. But adding filler tied to science concepts without a reasonable explanation of how things are applied to all the characters is poor execution. You could cut out all the time travel story plot lines from the series and viewers would not miss anything.

We cannot even say the time skipping created any alternative universe. TPTB continue to claim that all the island events were "real," but one can question in what "reality?"  The notion that the numerous time skips did not cause massive changes in the course of non-island events is also hard to believe if the island was the source for life, death and rebirth (in essence the creator of time and space itself). But the writers never tackled that concept or the unintended consequences of throwing in time travel into an adventure-survival story.

Some fans still believe the time travel arcs in LOST were the most disappointing feature of the series. It is even more so when the character "experts" in the show itself, were wrong in their explanation of events. Time travel in the series was like white noise, TV static or a blank box.