RATS IN A CAGE

Despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage...
Despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage...
Someone will say what is lost can never be saved...
Despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage...

Smashing Pumpkins.

This chorus could sum up LOST.

All the main characters led not "great" lives. They have had professional triumphs, but led painfully lonely personal lives. They may have had criminal pasts or mental issues which led to painfully lonely lives.

One could see the analogy of dropping broken spirited individuals onto an island to see how they interact with each other.

Daniel used a lab rat to experiment with conscious time travel.  In the end, it ruined his and his girlfriend's minds.

The analogy could go further to explain that the whole LOST experience could have been the tortured lost mind of Daniel after subjecting himself to his own experimental backlash.

The conflicting science in the show is the conflicting scientific principles colliding in Daniel's fragile mind which could not explain how his girlfriend was permanently injured. The idea of his step-father, Widmore, being an evil incarnate or his mother being a controlling soul trying to isolate him from the real world may have been phobia and paranoia of a comatose mind. For Daniel broke away from both his parents by imagining himself going back (in time) to an island to "rescue" plane crash victims.

Except, there were plane crash victims to save. Daniel's mind experiments may have unlocked a portal to an alternative universe or dimension which he could interact with the lost souls of Flight 815 as they journeyed through the after life. Daniel in essence was a hitch hiker on others cosmic journey in time and space. The afterlife has no physics or rules so it was hard for an analytical mind like Daniel's to cope with this new reality. A reality that his mind recognized but the other people he had mental contact with did not. The main characters were not aware that they were dead until the end. But instead of being upset by the news, the characters seemed surreal and content by their fate. They did not question how or why they died, or even where they were - - - - it was like a burden was lifted from each of the them with a large sigh of relief. Their experiment or journey was over. They were no longer rats in a cage for survival. They could move on to an eternal retirement.

DIRE WARNING

Literature and popular culture have always been a source of future developments, especially in the concepts of technology. Science fiction writers in 1800s dreamed about space exploration, which would occur at its zenith with the moon landing in 1969.

Technology is supposed to be good for mankind.  It makes life easier. Work more productive. More time for man to think about important things.

But even the most tuned technologists have a grave warning about the future of technology.

Steve Wozniak,  Apple co-founder and programming whiz, recently predicted that artificial intelligence's detrimental impact on the future of humanity to warnings from the likes of Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking.

"Computers are going to take over from humans, no question," he told an Australian financial publication.  Recent technological advancements have convinced him that writer Raymond Kurzweil – who believes machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence within the next few decades – is onto something.

"Like people including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have predicted, I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people," he said. "If we build these devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they'll think faster than us and they'll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently."

"Will we be the gods? Will we be the family pets? Or will we be ants that get stepped on? I don't know about that …" Wozniak said.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has been the most vocal about his concerns about AI, calling it the "biggest existential threat" to mankind. He is an investor in DeepMind and Vicarious, two AI ventures, but “it’s not from the standpoint of actually trying to make any investment return," he said.  "I like to just keep an eye on what’s going on…nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Musk said. “But you have to be careful.”

Gates said,  "I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned," he wrote. Similarly, physicist Stephen Hawking has warned  that AI could eventually "take off on its own." It's a scenario that doesn't bode well for our future as a species: "Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded," he said.

In LOST, the island housed once was "cutting edge" technology and research facilities. It was Dharma that was looking for answers to the darkest questions and mysteries in science, including end-of-the-world scenarios. 

There has been a debate on whether Dharma killed itself off, or whether it was the technology that it created that led to the mass destruction and purge.

The smoke monster may not have been invented by Dharma, but could have Dharma "programmed" this smoke monster in an attempt to give it human thoughts and memories in order to control it?  It would seem to be a reasonable scientific inquiry. But with many science experiments, unintended consequences could happen - - - such as the smoke monster learning to mimic human behavior, including violence, anger and murder. It could have used memories as a template to shape shift into human form to feed off the emotions of other life forms. For the island was kept on edge by fear, one of the strongest human emotions. Perhaps that was the source of the smoke monster's energy.

Further, Dharma could have created the smoke monster(s) and during the Incident accidently sent them back into time to the ancient Egyptian period. For some, Jacob and MIB as smoke monsters, as well as Crazy Mother, would show an advanced being trying to shed its confusing and conflicting knowledge base of humans. And the smoke monsters did not time shift back to present Dharma - - - but lingered on the island to re-live their immortal life spans, bitter about this external prison. The game itself with human pawns could have been the reaction of smoke monsters against Dharma's research  into the power of the island light.

So, Dharma failed to heed their own warning signs in creating technology which challenged time and space itself. Remember, Daniel had worked with Dharma in Michigan after his Oxford tenure. It is the time skips that give us a clue that Daniel may have set in motion all of the destructive patterns through the power to manipulate time. His return to the island was also to make amends for the horror he had created (akin to discovering the atom bomb) which was wrecking havoc on his psyche. History is littered with scientists who regretted their inventions and discoveries that were corrupted into acts of evil.

THE UNLUCKY ANSWER

As today is Friday, the 13th, a superstitious day of bad luck, we focus on the one character who could have answered all the LOST questions, Daniel Faraday.

Poor Daniel. He was doomed from the start.

His back story was as hazy as his science.

Daniel was born on the mainland (as there is a birth certificate for him) and was the son of Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore,  although he did not know the identity of his father (that was left blank on the birth certificate). This is the first unsolved mystery of this character: who was Daniel's real father?

We know that young Eloise and Widmore were co-leaders of a small Others fraction on the Island. Widmore wanted control of "his" island against any outsider, and Eloise seemed to be more focused on survival. How they both got to the island was unknown. But it seems they were both quite protective of it.

During their early adulthood, the time traveling Daniel appears on the island. Eloise shoots and kills "her son" then realizes her mistake. This sets off one of the most important background characters into action.

We know that both Eloise and Widmore left the island before the Purge. Widmore was banished by Ben because Widmore "violated the rules" by having a child (Penny) with an off-islander. Eloise's departure was not told. (She could have been part of the evacuation, or she may have left after killing her son in the time travel arc.)

It would seem that Eloise's sole goal in the series was to protect Daniel. After Eloise and Widmore's relationship soured, Eloise also changed Daniel's last name to Faraday so Charles could not find him. But we know how powerful Widmore was; he knew and found Daniel.

One could speculate that the falling out between Eloise and Widmore was about Daniel and his special abilities. Daniel had "time traveled" to the island. Widmore wanted to get back to the island and seize it as his own. What better means to do so than "time travel." Likewise, Eloise would want to save the time traveling Daniel from her own actions of killing him. As a result, Eloise may have needed to find a man who was a scientific genius. (Clue to last name: Stephen Hawking.)

Eloise needed to unlock the elements of space-time in order to correct Daniel's destiny. So she forced Daniel to give up music to study extreme theoretical science. So Daniel studied at Oxford, earning his doctorate at the youngest age on record. At that time, his girlfriend Teresa Spencer, was deemed to be a distraction. Soon after, Daniel started unauthorized experiments (funded by Widmore) involving time travel. He created a machine in 1996 that allowed a living creature's consciousness to travel through time. He tested it on a lab rat he named Eloise, which signifies an open hostility toward his mother and her constant pressure on him to succeed in this science.

During that same year, Daniel was visited by a stranger named Desmond Hume. Desmond claimed to know about the machine, Daniel initially believed that a colleague was playing a practical joke on him, but when Desmond mentioned "Eloise,"  Daniel's lab rat, he believed Desmond. In his lab, Daniel tested "the Numbers" Desmond supplied to him. He used the machine on Eloise, enabling her to unerringly complete a maze that she would not be taught how to run for another hour. Daniel's blackboard revealed his interest in the Kerr metric as part of his theory of time-transported consciousness. According to Daniel's theory, a being that undergoes time-transported consciousness must identify a "constant,"  something existing in both periods of time travel that can serve as an anchor for the being's consciousness; failure to find a constant results in instability of consciousness, and the resulting stress can lead to brain aneurysm and eventual death. 

Daniel's success led him to ramp up his experiments.  The experiment apparently resulted in Theresa becoming permanently mentally 'unstuck' in time, with her condition deteriorating to the point that she became permanently bedridden, in a coma-like state as a result of his experiments. (Widmore funded her care for her parents silence.) Soon after this accident, Daniel went to America. Daniel began to study at  DHARMA. It seemed that Daniel started to experiment on himself, which wrecked his ability to connect with his own memory. He constantly wrote notes in his leather journal to remember. 

But while in the United States, Daniel's mental state deteriorated to the point in 2004 where he is under the care of a woman (caretaker or some initially assumed a girlfriend or wife). When the news of Flight 815's crash, with film footage of the wreckage shown on the television, Daniel had a mental breakdown which he could not explain. When Widmore arrived, he told him that the wreckage was a fake. He told Daniel that the real Flight 815 had crashed on a "miraculous island," and offered him the chance to go there, promising that it would "cure" him. Several days later, Daniel was playing piano at his home, trying to remember the Chopin piece he was playing when he was ten, when he was visited by his mother. She persuaded him to accept Widmore's offer and go to the Island, assuring him that she would be proud of him if he did so. Daniel agreed to accept the offer.

Daniel brought several critical (we thought) elements to the LOST mythology. First, he brought with him science explanations for the island's mysteries. Second, he brought with him a window to the people pulling the strings behind the curtain (Eloise and Widmore, shadow villains). Third, he brought in intellectually naive character in the mix of amateur action heroes.

But Daniel's story is really messed up.

First, there are the paradoxes that cannot be put in their places. Young Eloise "kills" her adult yet unborn son on the island. This is a classic time travel problem that should have had radical results. Since Eloise has a son in the future, but kills him in the past, why would she "re-live" this pain by actually conceiving him in the future? Some could argue that an adult traveling back into time to meet their death is not a conventional paradox since Daniel was destined to die "someday," and this was the means of his own demise. But a secondary issue is that if Eloise knew Daniel was going to die on the island, why did she do everything in power after killing him to get him to study time travel and go on the trip to the island?

It would seem that Eloise "needed" Daniel to become a brilliant scientist in order to kill him on the island so her own fantasy sideways world dream family situation would come true. In Daniel's death on the island, Eloise could lead a normal, but rich life in the after life. It sounds insane, but that seems to be the whole motivation for the Eloise manipulation of both Daniel and Widmore.

So Daniel had a bounty on his head before he was even born. He was never going to have a real, normal, human life.

Second, if Daniel's theory of mental consciousness time travel is to be believed, was his research adopted by DHARMA to create the full transformation of physical time travel as demonstrated by the turning of the frozen donkey wheel? When Ben turned it, the island began "time skipping" but only with a few individuals. The idea of someone having a "constant" in real and skip times seems to be moot because people have connections in those worlds (i.e. parents, close friends, spouses, children, etc.). If the salvation key is consciously putting a mental image of a person in both time periods in your mind before you time jump, then that seems superficially a magic chant or spell and not science. (The ancient Egyptians Book of the Dead contained various chants and spells to help souls travel through the dangers of the underworld; perhaps Daniel's theory is like these spells.)

If Daniel was already mentally time tripping in the U.S., then why did he need to go to the island? The only explanation was that he needed to "die" on the island in order for his consciousness (some would call it his soul) to reach Eloise in the after life, so she could repress his memories and not "move on" through the next level of existence. This would presuppose that the island is actually an inter-dimensional gateway between the worlds of the living and the dead. For some unknown reason, people dying on the island have their memories repressed when their souls reach the after life. It is sort of a dream state in the sideways world where people, like in dreams, try to subconsciously work out real world problems through various fantasies. 

If the island allowed full body and mind time travel, then there should be no "mental" only time travel side effects, such as the nose bleeds and death that happened to Charlotte. Daniel was nose bleeding before he was shot, so he was going to also die even though his "constant," Desmond, was on the island and in his original time period. So, since there are two sets of rules at play in one time travel sequence, no clear conclusion could be made on what is truly happening on the island. If Daniel's theory is the control, then everyone on the island was time tripping, in a dream like state, in a forehell to the sideways world. If DHARMA and the island's FDW full time travel machine was the control, then only when you met yourself in both time frames could you be paradoxically removed from existence. But that did not happen to Charlotte or Daniel. In face, some time trippers were reincarnated. 

So it gets back to the big mystery of why, throughout all the trauma and manipulation of Daniel's life, did Eloise want, need, desire or demand Daniel to be on the freighter, come ashore, and be killed by her younger self? The only viable answer was that guilt was making Eloise dream up these actions.

For the symbolism of a young woman killing her "adult" child could represent a psychological trauma of Eloise's young life, such as an abortion. If she aborted "Daniel" or lost him during pregnancy on the island, then the series could evolve around a troubled young woman's lost mental state of delusions and fantasies of having the perfect life with her dead fetus. Eloise could have been haunted by her actions so that she could have been institutionalized as a mental patient. As creepy as that may seem, it allows for the fact that science, sci-fi and any other rational explanations for series events be immaterial and irrelevant. The sole factor was keeping her dead child from realizing that his own mother killed him.

THE POWER OF KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is a treasure but practice is the key to it. - - - Thomas Fuller

I have always said that knowledge was power on LOST. Those characters who knew things could control things.

Eloise was probably the one person who knew the most since she had actual working knowledge of both worlds (island and sideways). It seems that she was able to connect to both worlds (and their seemingly same but different lives) as if the island was a gateway or portal to two dimensions. When Eloise conversed with Desmond in the clock shop, the essence of what she told him was that time was predetermined; that Desmond's life was predetermined; that Desmond's destiny was not to marry Penny but to sail off to his own demise. It was this erasure of a possibility of romance in the real world kept Desmond from awakening other characters, such as Daniel, for whom Eloise tried to shelter (in the after life).

Knowledge that the sideways world was a purgatory time line where people could continue to live out their imaginary dream lives is a powerful tool especially when one can communicate back to the living world to manipulate people to keep the fantasy world's status quo.

As most religions teach, what one does in the world of the living has consequences in judgment in the next world. By manipulating the actions of living human beings in the island world, Eloise could construct an elaborate alternative fantasy world where the characters would not need to rejoin and "remember" their old lives which would destroy the egg shell dream family situation Eloise created in her sideways vision.

But how can Eloise be a puppet master in two worlds. She somehow mentally connected herself with Daniel, her son, in both worlds. This theme of having a "constant" may have actually meant the mental connection between the living and the dead. Eloise was a medium who could actually affect events.

She forced her son to give up music in order to study and master highly theoretical physics, including the manipulation of time. Why? Perhaps so Eloise could go back in time herself to stop her young self from killing her own time traveling son. If Daniel "remembered" that his own mother killed him, that would destroy the happy family sideways dream world Eloise had created for herself. That shattered dream would mean that her "heaven" would be gone, and she would either go to hell or worse, just fade away from all conscious existence.

So the stakes for Eloise would be extremely high. It was her manipulation of Daniel in order to control the island which led to the unintended consequences of her shooting her own son. A lifetime of guilt both in the living world and sideways realm had a mother trying to do anything to make things better. In order to protect her vision of her happy family, she would communicate to her living self - - - which led to Widmore's anger and revenge motivations to destroy everyone on the island. By doing so, those souls would not remember or awaken Daniel from his dream state.

One could say Eloise was trying to maintain a complex dream support system for a critically mentally unstable patient, Daniel.  If this was the unstated premise of the series, I think most fans would have accepted it as a reasonable explanation for Season 6 and tie back the previous five years.

THE MAZE

This was an avatar I used on some LOST community sites. It was a depiction of Eloise the Lab Rat.

Eloise was Daniel Faraday's lab rat at Oxford University's Queen's College Physics Department in 1996. Daniel explained to Desmond that the rat's consciousness was sent forward in time one hour in the future, allowing the rat to run an unseen maze perfectly. The experiment was a success, but later in the day, Eloise died. The cause was unknown, but Faraday hypothesized she had suffered a brain aneurysm. According to his theory, not having any constant, her consciousness couldn't differentiate between the future and the present.

An Oxford janitorial custodian had the job of incinerating Faraday's dead subject rats so that no one would discover the purposes and results of his experiments. One would assume that order was at the direction of Widmore, who funded Daniel's Oxford experiments.

Widmore's only purpose was finding a way back to the island. So funding Daniel's experiments had to be tied to this purpose. Was it an actual means of finding the island, or was it payment to Daniel's mother for her help in finding the island for him?

There was some connection in Daniel's mind in conscious time travel and the island. When he first arrived on the island, he observed that the light was different. He also found that time would physically skip (after the FDW was turned by Ben). It was during one of those time skips where he met his mother, who was a leader of the Others. During that encounter, Eloise killed him. There is a debate whether at that moment Eloise knew she killed her (unborn or) time traveling son. But in later events, it would seem that Eloise was doing everything in her power NOT to awaken Daniel to his island's past when he was in the sideways (dead) world.

One of the problems with the LOST story was that it had no consistent mythology on time travel. The idea of mental time travel, based upon premonition theories, was one explanation to Daniel's research. But then, the characters physically time skipped to different years on the island. And further inconsistency, only some of the characters skipped while others did not. Selective involuntary mental and physical time travel is a confusing bunch of story line rubble.

We do not know the details of Daniel's lab rat maze experiment. One could think Daniel used highly charged electric magnetic energy to induce some mental time travel in his lab rats. If so, how can he get "inside" the rat's mind to teach it a maze if the rat itself was unconscious? It would make more sense that both the rat and Daniel physically time traveled an hour in the future, Daniel taught the rat the maze, then returned to normal time to start the experiment. At one point, Daniel said that he was "out" for 75 minutes "after" the Eloise experiment.

There are several theories on why Daniel's research was important.

First, if Daniel had harnessed the power of the island (i.e. mental time travel to the future to either see or alter present events), then Widmore would not have needed to return to the island. Since Widmore still demanded to invade the island for its power, we must assume that Daniel's machine was a failure (as shown with the vegetable state of his former lab assistant.)

Second, if the secret of the island was mental time travel, then why did only Desmond have known episodes of it? He was the person who unrealistically survived the massive EM explosion of the Hatch. This allegedly triggered his premonitions (though some of them proved false, such as Claire leaving the island on a helicopter). So if Desmond could see the future, but he could not control it, who could?

Third, if Desmond was the only one aware of this secret power of mental time travel, why did physical time travel harm Charlotte but not the others. The reason was she did not have a "constant" in both time periods. But in reality, a person has a constant in all time periods based upon family bonds alone. Unless, the time travel was before she was born then she had no one living in that time period. But if that was the case, the other time travelers should have succumbed to the time travel constant rule. Another explanation was that those time travelers had each other as constants in both time periods. But again, so did Charlotte. (Without a consistent rule, it comes down to the writers looking for red shirts to kill off for dramatic effect without realizing the story line consequences.)

Fourth, the cause of death of the lab rat and the time travelers who bled was that if a person failed to complete the events in where the conscious mind traveled to would cause death. For example, Eloise the lab rat Eloise died because the "future" event (instruction on how to complete the maze) that was to occur did not take place. (However, we were told she did complete the maze. So just the fact one mentally flashes to another time is enough to kill you?) Minkowski on the freighter died because he went to the island. The island somehow split his consciousness. But his mission was just to go see the island, which he fulfilled. Minkowski never indicated afterward in his flashes that he needed to complete some task. He was told he had no constant between his flash periods. But again, he did have family bonds in both time periods so that "ante dote" does not have a factual basis. He was merely randomizing into the state of dementia before dying of a brain aneurysm.

But then again, time travel and its alleged effects were immaterial and irrelevant to the island events conclusions. Desmond, as a weapon against MIB, was a non-factor. It was Jack who reset the island cork in the light cave. It was Jack and Kate who defeated MIB. Time travel or electromagnetic power did not destroy MIB or allow any survivor to escape the island.

Based upon the ending, was the concept of "constants" really the mental bridge between the island world and the sideways after life existence? If so, then that would assume that the person's soul (conscious and subconscious) were somehow split to be somehow "reunited" (i.e. awakened) in the sideways world. Time travel is then not time travel but spiritual realm travel.

But even that is inconsistent in the sideways world. Charlotte is in the sideways world. She hooks up with Sawyer through Miles (and Miles was the constant between the island patrol from the freighter with Daniel and Charlotte.) But Charlotte has no contact with Daniel in the sideways world. It is like Eloise is keeping Daniel's island experiences away from his conscious memory . . . that is why she berated Desmond to leave her and Daniel alone. She was willing to sacrifice Penny to move on in the after life, but not Daniel. It would seem that Eloise's guilt for killing Daniel in the island time skip flashed through to her after life fantasy life. Is the ticking time bomb for Daniel's awakening just the sight of Charlotte? If so, why did it take so long for Charlie to reconnect with Claire? Or Kate not remember Sawyer from her island trysts? Or Jack not recognizing the Locke's O6 death drove him nearly insane?

If LOST was a maze of clues, it had no logical exit point. The feature of the "constant" as being a critical requirement to understanding the physics and dynamics of the island does not hold up to any scrutiny. It was neither the cause or the effect of the events in the sideways world.

CHICKEN OR THE EGG

It is the most basic childhood paradox: which came first, the chicken or the egg?

It is self-contradictory. One needs a mature chicken to create an egg. But one needs a fertile egg to create a chicken. It is an impossible question.

Likewise, the dilemma in LOST is an apparent paradox: which came first, the island time periods or the sideways realm?

It seems simple if one looks at time in a lineal progression. The sideways world is where all the characters arrived as dead souls. So, logically, the sideways world is the end point in time. However, the last shots of the series is Jack apparently still alive, but dying, on the island after the sideways church light engulfs them.

The evidence that the sideways world was created later is Christian's statement that the sideways purgatory was created by everyone present so they could be together in the after life since they shared the most important moments of their lives together. Besides the simple unanswered question of how can mortal humans create a supernatural mirror Earth in the after life, when exactly did the characters "create" the sideways realm?

The main characters had tenuous connections before boarding Flight 815. One could argue that the only event which was the "most important' shared aspect of their collective lives was the plane crash. It has been reported by passengers in plane crashes that time seems to slow down. They claim their lives flash before their eyes. A plane that breaks up at 35,000 feet has about three minutes to fall back down to the ground. The sideways world could have been "created" by the panic, fear and anxiety during that three minute fall.

Or, the collective fear, panic, and personal retrospective (each person's own life flashbacks) could have "created" the island story line prior to everyone being killed in the crash when the plane sections hit the island.

But Christian's church explanation to Jack has a serious flaw. Members of the reunion did not share the most important elements of their lives together. For example, Penny had no island connections.
Further, those who were aware and present of the sideways realm (Eloise, Keamy, Nadia, and even Juliet) were not present when Flight 815 crashed on the island. Another problem is Ben. Why would he have created the sideways world when he was the nemesis of all the people in the church?

A further complication is that sideways people ran around in their new realm oblivious to "the most important" aspect of their lives being suppressed in their memories. How is that logically possible?  If one creates an after life way station while alive, why would you "forget it" after you died until some event in the after life triggers your repressed memory? There are too many puzzle pieces which do not fit this explanation.

Then the last issue with the sideways awakening is that Ben got to "choose" to stay in purgatory world created by the people in the church? Why would the sideways realm continue on if its sole creation was to keep lost souls occupied in a game like logic loop until they all died and wanted to move on to heaven?  The concept that other souls, some awakened like Ben and Eloise, can continue to live a fantasy life in this purgatory world means that Christian's explanation cannot be correct: other people created the sideways world in order for it to continue on after the LOST characters left the church in the finale.

As such, we can conclude that the sideways realm was created well before Christian stated that Jack's friends "made it" for their reunion. That makes sense because Eloise seemed to be aware of both realms (the island world and the sideways world) without being awakened to a difference between them.

LOST itself was edited out of order to create a sense of drama, and a cloud of confusion. It is easy to take things out of context when there is no rational context when they are compared normal human common sense.

Which brings us back to the question: which came first, the island time period or the sideways realm?

It would seem that the sideways world was created first. But then, things get murky. One would assume that the flashbacks were the characters true lives, but there were some aspects which made no sense. Example, Faraday was born in early 1978, but he was killed on the island in July, 1977. In 2004, Faraday became highly emotional when learning of the news of the Flight 815 crash except he would not have any real connection to the 815 folks for months to come. These are clues that the island and flashbacks may not be in order.

It is possible that a plausible explanation of Faraday's memory issues and mental time skips is that he was already in the sideways world - - - and that the island realm was drawing upon his past life as means of giving him a second chance to work through issues he had before his death. Or, the island realm was giving him symbolic clues to what really happened to him in his real life. In the harshest sense, if Faraday's could have imagined his entire flashback "life" as a dream because he was killed (aborted) by his mother, Eloise, six months before he would have been born. This is why Eloise is so protective of Faraday in the purgatory after life - - - and that she does not want him to remember what she did to him (killed him before he was born). Eloise's guilt is the strong force to keep Faraday in the dark in the sideways after life.

In some respects, Aaron would also fit this pattern of denial. Claire was pregnant and in a serious car accident which mortally injured her mother. Claire was also pregnant in the sideways after life. One could make the connection that Aaron and Claire never survived the auto accident. The 815 passage to America was Claire's final dream to give her baby some sort of "real" life (but in an after life fantasy world.)

The sideways world was created by the dark memories of dead people to keep the truth hidden from themselves and others for as long as possible. It is a selfish diversion. In order to protect the sideways dream world, souls were separated from their conscious and subconscious (like ancient Egyptian death rituals) to allow spirits to go back into a re-created past (which is a present fantasy world) in order create an amnesia state in the souls living in the sideways world. 

So it does not matter which came first, the chicken or the egg because the organic nature of reproduction and rebirth is trumped by the spiritual.

REBOOT: EPISODES 97-100

POSTING NOTE: Due to work changes, I may not be able to post updates on Tuesdays after Monday night marathon G4 reruns, but updates will occur later in the week.

LOST REBOOT 
Recap: Episodes 97-100 (Days ????- - ????)

Ben awakens to find Flocke sitting over him. Ben exhibits surprise that Locke is alive, but tells Locke that he expected his resurrection. He also tells Flocke that he broke the rules and has to face the consequences, which will result in being judged by the Smoke Monster. Ben then travels out to the beach, where several survivors, including Bram and Ilana, are trying to transport a crate filled with what they call necessary supplies. Ben speaks to Caesar about Locke, telling him that he doesn't believe that Locke was on the plane. Ben feigns ignorance when Caesar informs him that Locke believes that Ben killed him, saying that Locke is insane and dangerous. To atone for sins of the past, Ben must attempt to summon the Smoke Monster in order to be judged

A reluctant Miles is forced to work with Hurley when he's asked to deliver an important package to a top DHARMA official. Meanwhile, suspicions about a possible security breach intensify after young Ben is taken from the infirmary.

Kate and Sawyer return from delivering boy Ben to Alpert, and Sawyer contacts Miles to have erase the surveillance tape. Kate is worried that Sawyer could get in trouble, but he's confident he can smooth things over. Miles pops out the tape, but before he can erase it, Horace arrives with a package, asking him where is LaFleur. Miles tells him that he's tried to contact LaFleur on the radio, but he's out of contact. Horace gives Miles the package to bring to Radzinsky and asks him to get a package in return, "no questions asked". Horace tells Miles that he's letting him in the circle of trust.
Miles drives to the location Horace specified, and delivers the package, which turns out to be a body bag. Radzinsky puts a body in it, and tells him to transport it back to Horace. Miles, curious as to why a person who apparently fell in a ditch had a head wound, unzips the body bag and uses his speaking to the dead ability to find out what really happened. He learns that the dead man, Alvarez, had a filling which ripped from his mouth and exited through his brain.

Horace, after a consultation with Chang, tells Miles to bring the body to the Orchid so it can be determined if the accident was caused by the unique electromagnetism. Miles walks back to his van to complete the assignment, but finds Hurley loading coolers filled with sandwiches for the Orchid construction team into the vehicle. After he insists they carpool, they set off, only to have Hurley notice an unpleasant odor of Miles “package.”  Miles jokes that it is probably Hurley's special garlic mayonnaise, but Hurley is concerned that his food might be contaminated. Hurley investigates and discovers the body. Confronted, Miles tells him what really happened to the body. To Miles' bewilderment, Hurley completely accepts his story, noting he also talks with the dead, and sometimes plays chess with dead people. Miles says that isn't how it works, at which point Hurley responds that Miles admitted to his ability. Miles explains that he is able to get a "feeling" about who the deceased was and whatever they knew before they died.

The time of reckoning has begun when Daniel Faraday comes clean regarding what he knows about the Island. He demands to be taken to Jack's house. Miles complies. Once at Jack's house, Daniel frantically questions him on how he returned to the Island. Jack mentions a plane, and says that Daniel's mother,  Eloise,  persuaded him to get on the plane. Daniel asks Jack if Eloise spoke about destiny, to which Jack says yes. Daniel tells Jack that his mother was wrong, and that Jack does not belong there; whether meaning on the Island at all, or in the DHARMA.

Daniel explains that it is necessary to begin evacuating the Island, as the EM energy unleashed by DHARMA construction work has caused injuries. When Chang responds skeptically and insists that the energy has been contained, they board the Orchid elevator to the surface and Daniel explains that in six hours, a catastrophic accident will occur at the Swan site. Chang demands to know why Daniel considers himself qualified to make such a prediction, and Daniel reveals that he has arrived "from the future."

Daniel later explains to Jack and Kate  that the installation they know as The Hatch will be built as a precautionary measure to contain this energy and prevent future incidents. Over the next 20 years, he explains, it will be necessary for DHARMA to keep this energy at bay by pressing a button;  ultimately, Desmond’s  failure to do so will cause Flight 815 to crash on the island. Daniel tells Jack and Kate that his studies of relativistic physics have revealed the relationship between the "constants” in this equation and the "variables." The variables, he says, are people—specifically, their choices and free will may allow them to change their destiny. Daniel then reveals his intention to set things right by detonating a hydrogen bomb in an attempt to negate the catastrophic energy release, thereby preventing the events that led to Oceanic 815's crash.

Flocke further solidifies his stance as leader of The Others, though Alpert and Ben are worried about his true intentions.

 Jack and Kate discuss their options while hiding near the Others camp. Suddenly, a gunshot is heard, and they watch  Daniel collapse to the ground. As they are about to run away, two men charge them on galloping horses. One of them knocks out Jack with his rifle's butt, and the other one aims a rifle at Kate.

In the Hostiles camp, Eloise thumbs through the pages of Daniel's journal and looks at Daniel's corpse on the ground in front of her. She reaches the first page, and is confused by the dedication in it, which she appears to recognize as her own handwriting. Widmore and a man arrive, holding Jack and Kate captive. Alpert explains the situation to Widmore. Eloise asks Jack and Kate if they've come with Daniel, to which Jack replies "Yes." She orders that they be taken to her tent. Widmore inquires why DHARMA would declare war on them, but Eloise tells him that the three intruders are not DHARMA people.

In the tent, Jack reveals to Kate that he means to reset their lives, having the plane never crash and avoiding all the misery that's happened since.

Kate adamantly states that it was not all misery, but does not tell Jack her true feelings. He responds that enough of it was. After entering the tent, Eloise assures Jack and Kate that she will believe whatever they say because she has just killed a man who claims to be her future son, the same man who told her to bury the bomb 23 years earlier before disappearing. Jack tells Ellie that by using the bomb, they can alter the future, and undo what Ellie did to her future son.

Science:

Variables. Defined:

adjective
1 not consistent or having a fixed pattern; liable to change: the quality of hospital food is highly variable | awards can be for variable amounts.
• (of a wind) tending to change direction.
• Mathematics (of a quantity) able to assume different numerical values.
• Botany & Zoology (of a species) liable to deviate from the typical color or form, or to occur in different colors or forms.

2 able to be changed or adapted: the drill has variable speed.
• (of a gear) designed to give varying ratios or speeds.
noun
an element, feature, or factor that is liable to vary or change: there are too many variables involved to make any meaningful predictions.
• Mathematics a quantity that during a calculation is assumed to vary or be capable of varying in value.
• Computing a data item that may take on more than one value during the runtime of a program.
• Astronomy short for variable star.
• (variables) the region of light, variable winds to the north of the northeast trade winds or (in the southern hemisphere) between the southeast trade winds and the westerlies.

Daniel’s equation of people’s choices changing future events.

Daniel states his studies of relativistic physics have revealed the relationship between the "constants” in this equation and the "variables." The variables, he says, are people—specifically, their choices and free will may allow them to change their destiny. However, his statements do not correspond to Einstein’s theories of relativity.

Daniel stated that time is like a string: you can go back and forth along it, but you cannot change the events. What has happened, happened. As Eloise told Desmond in the clock shop, the universe “course corrects” to make sure events (such as death) occur so the time line remains the same (automatic paradox correction).

Daniel’s time equation could be represented like this:
Space Time (Events) = Past + Present - Future

Past = People + Experiences (Memories)
Present = People + Knowledge (of the Past)
Future = People + Application (of Knowledge)

So the equation can be rewritten as:

Space Time (Events) = (People + Memories) + (People + Knowledge) - (People + Application of Knowledge).

If People are the same (constant value 1):

Space Time Events = Memories + Knowledge - Action (Application of Knowledge).

If People are not the same (variables x,y z):

Space Time Events = XMemories + YKnowledge - ZAction

If the People is actually a Person represented by Daniel himself (and his friends):

If you change X’s memories to create Y’s knowledge to re-direct Z’s future action,
that is what Daniel thinks what will happen if he counteracts the Swan drilling incident
by destroying the island with the hydrogen bomb.

Improbabilities:

Young Ellie understanding that she has killed her future son, so she will help Jack and Kate (non-scientists) to correct the future.

The death of Daniel in 1977 does not erase his existence in 2007, thus creating a paradox.

Clues:

Dead is Dead: Ben is physically accosted by Dead Alex in the Temple. Only the dead can manhandle other dead beings.

Dead is Really Dead: Ben tells Sun that “dead is dead” on the island, and he had seen the island heal, but never bring back the dead like Locke.

“Hello, Ben. Welcome back to the land of the living.” It is really a taunt from Flocke to Ben, that the island is not the land of the living, since Locke is dead.

Some Like It Hoth.  A take off on movie title, Some LIke It Hot, 1959 comedy starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. In the movie, the two main characters must disguise themselves as members of an all-girl band to avoid retribution after witnessing a mob assassination. but Hoth may be represented of the Egyptian god, Thoth. Or, in Hurley’s mind, the Rebel Alliance base on a distant uninhabited planet which would be destroyed by Darth Vader’s forces. If all of this is in Hurley’s mind, as a Star Wars fan, this would be another clue to the big premise.

Follow the Leader. A child’s game, but in that episode the game is deadly, as Flocke tells Ben the reason he is taking everyone to see Jacob - - - is to kill him.

Sawyer tells Kate when he helps her get young Ben to the Hostiles, “I did it for her (Juliet).” He states that he has “grown up a lot” in the three years in the time shift. Which parallels modern day progression: gamer children at some point need to grow up - - - stop the game worlds and go on to real life.


Discussion:

“ Memory presents to us not what we choose but what it pleases. ”
— Michel de Montaigne

“ Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past. ”
— George Orwell

We come to the intersection of conflicting explanations of the Lost mythology. We have the collision of the time travel arc and the 815 Swan incident crash causation events.

The Miles Time Travel Explanation:

MILES: What the hell are you doing, Tubby?
HURLEY: Checking to see if I'm disappearing.
MILES: What?
HURLEY: "Back to the Future", man. We came back in time to the island and changed stuff. So if little Ben dies, he'll never grow up to be big Ben, who's the one who made us come back here in the first place. Which means we can't be here. And therefore, dude? We don't exist.
MILES: You're an idiot. [Takes a seat at the table]
HURLEY: Am I?
MILES: Yeah. It doesn't work like that. You can't change anything. Your maniac Iraqi buddy shot Linus. That is what always happened. It's just...we never experienced how it all turns out.
[Hurley looks at Jack, confused.]
HURLEY: This is really confusing.
MILES: Yeah, well, get used to it. But the good news is that Linus didn't die, so that means the kid can't either. He'll be fine.
KATE: Didn't look like he was gonna be fine. What if you're wrong?
MILES: Well, if I'm wrong, then I guess we all stop existing, and none of it matters anyway then, does it? ****

KATE: He's just a boy, Jack. You can't just let him die.
JACK: You heard Miles. We can't change what's already happened. This has nothing to do with me.
KATE: Unless you're the one who's supposed to save him.
JACK: 30 years from now, that boy's gonna be a man...that locks me in a cage because he needs surgery. And then you're gonna come in and you're gonna beg me to operate on him because he's threatening to murder Sawyer. I've already done this once. [scoffs] I've already saved Benjamin Linus, and I did it for you, Kate. I don't need to do it again. [Goes back to the food.]
KATE: This is our fault. We brought Sayid back. We caused this.
JACK: You know, when we were here before, I spent all of my time trying to fix things. But...did you ever think that maybe the island just wants to fix things itself? And maybe I was just...getting' in the way? ***

HURLEY: Let me get this straight.
[Miles is pacing.]
HURLEY: All this already happened.
MILES: Yes.
HURLEY: So this conversation we're having right now...we already had it.
MILES: [Claps his hands] Yes!
HURLEY: Then what am I gonna say next?
MILES: I don't know. [Shakes his head.]
HURLEY: Ha! Then your theory is wrong!
MILES: For the thousandth time, you dingbat, the conversation already happened, but not for you and me. For you and me, it's happening right now.
HURLEY: Okay, answer me this. If all this already happened to me, then...why don't I remember any of it?
MILES: Because once Ben turned that wheel, time isn't a straight line for us anymore. Our experiences in the past and the future occurred before these experiences right now.
[Hurley's face tightens in confusion as he thinks, Miles stares at him.]
HURLEY: Say that again.
MILES: [Pauses in exasperation and pulls out his gun and holds it out for Hurley to take.] Shoot me. Please. Please!
HURLEY: Aha! I can't shoot you. Because if you die in 1977, then you'll never come back to the island on the freighter 30 years from now.
MILES: I can die because I've already come to the island on the freighter. Any of us can die because this is our present.
HURLEY: But you said Ben couldn't die because he still has to grow up and become the leader of the Others.
MILES: Because this is his past.
HURLEY: But when we first captured Ben, and Sayid, like, tortured him, then why wouldn't he remember getting shot by that same guy when he was a kid?
[Miles blinks and looks around. Hurley raises his eyebrow.]
MILES: Huh. I hadn't thought of that.
HURLEY: Huh. [Crossing his arms.]

Faraday’s Time Travel Explanation:

FARADAY: How did you get back to the Island?
JACK: Where have you been?
FARADAY: I was--I was just at DHARMA headquarters in Ann Arbor. I was doing some research. What's more important right now... how did you get back here to 1977?
JACK: [Sighs] What's going on?
MILES: Don't look at me. I just carried his luggage.
FARADAY: Jack, how?
JACK: Uh... we were on a plane, and then--
FARADAY: Who told you to get on a plane?
JACK: As a matter of fact, Dan, it was your mother.
FARADAY: [Sighs] And how did she convince you, Jack? Did she tell you it was your destiny?
JACK: Yeah. That's exactly what she said.
FARADAY: Well, I got some bad news for you, Jack. You don't belong here at all. She was wrong. *****

FARADAY: It's contained down here. But in about six hours, the same thing is gonna happen at the site for the Swan station, only the energy there is about 30,000 times more powerful, sir. And the accident... it's gonna be catastrophic.
DR. CHANG: That is utterly absurd. What could possibly qualify you to make that kind of prediction? Hmm?
FARADAY: I'm from the future. ****

FARADAY: It's this plane crash. I don't know why it's bothering me so much. [Whispers] it's just so sad. They're dead.
WIDMORE: Daniel, what if I told you... they're not dead? What if I told you the plane was a fake? An elaborate... [scoffs] expensive fake.
FARADAY: [Sighs] How would you know that?
WIDMORE: Because I put it there.
FARADAY: Well... why would you tell me that?
WIDMORE: Because come tomorrow, you won't remember I did. Daniel, the real Oceanic Flight 815 crashed on an island--a special island with unique scientific properties. I want to send you to the Island. It will further your research, show you things you'd never dream of. But more importantly, it will heal you, Daniel--your mind, your memory.
FARADAY: H--heal me? W--why are you doing all this for me?
WIDMORE: Because you're a man of tremendous gifts, and it would be a shame to see them go to waste.
FARADAY: [Chuckles] You sound like my mother.
WIDMORE: [Chuckles] That's because we're old friends. ****

JACK: You need a gun to go talk to your mother, Dan?
FARADAY: You don't know my mother, Jack.
[Drops bag.]
JACK: You ready to tell me why she was wrong? Why we don't belong here?
[Kate moves closer.]
FARADAY: In about four hours, the DHARMA folks at the swan work site--they're gonna--gonna drill into the ground and accidentally tap into a massive pocket of energy. The result of the release of this energy would be catastrophic. So in order to contain it, they're gonna have to cement the entire area in, like Chernobyl. And this containment--the place they built over it--I believe you called it "the Hatch." The Swan hatch? Because of this one accident, these people are gonna spend the next 20 years keeping that energy at bay... by pressing a button... a button that your friend Desmond will one day fail to push, and that will cause your plane--Oceanic 815--to crash on this Island. And because your plane crashed, a freighter will be sent to this Island--a freighter I was on and Charlotte was on and so forth. This entire chain of events--it's gonna start happening this afternoon. But... we can change that. I studied relativistic physics my entire life. One thing emerged over and over--can't change the past. Can't do it. Whatever happened, happened. All right? But then I finally realized... I had been spending so much time focused on the constants, I forgot about the variables. Do you know what the variables in these equations are, Jack?
JACK: [Chuckles] No.
FARADAY: Us. We're the variables. People. We think. We reason. We make choices. We have free will. We can change our destiny. I think I can negate that energy under the Swan. I think I can destroy it. If I can, then that hatch will never be built, and your plane... your plane will land, just like it's supposed to, in Los Angeles.
KATE: And just how exactly do you plan on destroying this energy?
FARADAY: I'm gonna detonate a hydrogen bomb.

Eloise’s Time Travel Solution:

MS. HAWKING: Your daughter's in there. Why don't you go in and say hello?
WIDMORE: Unfortunately, Eloise, my relationship with Penelope is one of the things I had to sacrifice.
MS. HAWKING: Sacrifice? Don't you talk to me about sacrifice, Charles. I had to send my son back to the Island, knowing full well that--
WIDMORE: He was my son, too, Eloise.
[Eloise slaps Widmore. She gets in the taxi and it leaves.]

FARADAY: It doesn't matter. I need you to take me to Eloise.
RICHARD: I--I already told you she's not here. Let's just take it easy.
FARADAY: Where's the bomb, Richard? The hydrogen bomb that I told you people to bury--where is it?
RICHARD: Listen to me. Lower your gun, and we'll talk. Okay? Nobody has to get hurt here. Just put the gun down.
FARADAY: I'm gonna give you three seconds. One...
RICHARD: Don't do this.
FARADAY: Two...
[A rifle reports. Daniel looks down to see blood oozing from his midsection. He grunts faintly and then slumps to the ground with a thud. Behind him, a blonde woman holds a smoking rifle aimed at him.]
RICHARD: Why did you do that?
ELOISE: He had a gun on you.
RICHARD: He wasn't gonna shoot me, Eloise.
FARADAY: Eloise. [Gasping] You knew. You always knew. [Panting] You knew this was gonna happen. You sent me here anyway.
ELOISE: Who are you?
FARADAY: I... I'm your son. [Gasps]
[Eloise stares at him with shock. Daniel's eyes go still.]

We have the full revelation that Eloise Hawking is the woman behind the curtain.

She is the mastermind behind getting the 815ers “back” to the Island. She is the person who pushed her son, Daniel, into the complex physics of time travel. She convinced Widmore, her ex-husband, to fund the research and expedition back to the Island. She cajoled people to get back to the island to “save the world” or to complete their destiny. Was Jack’s destiny to replace her insane son’s plan to blow up the Swan station before the Incident (which, in theory would have killed Eloise before giving birth to him) in order to re-boot the time line of events where Daniel does not die by Eloise’s hand in 1977? It seems quite convoluted and complex.

Daniel’s Rube Goldberg trap explanation of how is is going to change the future by blowing up the past with members of the future at the event in the past fails to consider Ben’s terse statement “dead is dead” on the island. Daniel believes he can “fix things” and save Charlotte by stopping the Swan incident (massive EM release which would later be contained by the Hatch) by blowing up the pocket of energy with a hydrogen bomb. A bomb that would destroy the island and kill everyone on it - - - including himself, his mother and all the people who should have been on Flight 815. If the characters were truly “time traveling” in space time, they would only have one “life.”  If they are killed in 1977, would they be erased from the future itself? Or is this plan really the ultimate “course correction” of the paradox of time travelers meeting their parents and changing events that had already happened?

The real method to stop the release of energy that downed Flight 815 is found in the fact that Eloise pushed Desmond to the Island, “to save (her) world” meaning that she found a patsy in Desmond to push the button. If he had done his job, Flight 815 would have never crashed; the freighter would have never been launched to the Island; Daniel would have never been time shifted by the FDW, and she would have never killed him in 1977.

So which came first? Eloise’s plan or Daniel’s plan?

And that is the incompatible issue of the series shock twist ending to Season 5.

There is another main story engine that begins.

In this series arc, we start to get the full immersion into Egyptian mythology.

The underground Temple wall where Smokey, Cerebrus, the Monster lives under the mural to Anubis, the Egyptian god of the underworld.

The reference to “Hoth” in a title could be a wink toward the Egyptian underworld figure, Thoth. Thoth’s roles in Egyptian mythology were many. Thoth served as a mediating power, especially between good and evil making sure neither had a decisive victory over the other. This seems to be Jacob’s role on the island, as the various factions claim the “good” label against their opponents.  He also served as scribe of the gods, credited with the invention of writing and alphabets (i.e. hieroglyphs) themselves. These symbols will be found throughout the island over the various ages including modern Dharma equipment.  In the Egyptian underworld,  he is the the god of equilibrium, who reported when the scales weighing the deceased's heart against the feather, representing the principle of Ma'at, was exactly even, so a soul could progress in the after life to be reborn.

The ancient Egyptians regarded Thoth as One, self-begotten, and self-produced. He was the master of both physical and  moral law.   He is credited with making the calculations for the establishment of the heavens, stars, Earth, and everything in them. This begins to sound also like Daniel’s role in trying to explain the island. Thoth was the male figure, while  his feminine counterpart, Ma'at was the force which maintained the Universe. This may refer to Eloise, as she tries to maintain a balance to avoid the end of the world.  Thoth is said to direct the motions of the heavenly bodies. Without his words, the Egyptians believed, the gods would not exist. His power was unlimited in the Underworld and rivaled that of Ra and Osiris.

The Egyptians credited Thoth as the author of all works of science, religion, philosophy, and magic, in essence, he was the true author of every work of every branch of knowledge, human and divine. If Thoth is the master of both physical and moral law, is that not a good explanation for Jacob?


The biggest reveal in this arc was The Mural. During Ben's "judgment" with the smoke monster, we find out where Smokey lives: under the Temple, under a metal grate, under a mural of depicting the smoke monster and Anubis.

Anubis is the Greek name for the ancient jackal-headed god of the dead in Egyptian mythology whose hieroglyphic version is more accurately spelled Anpu (also Anupu, Anbu, Wip, Ienpw, Inepu, Yinepu, Inpu, or Inpw). He is also known as Sekhem Em Pet. Prayers to Anubis have been found carved on the most ancient tombs in Egypt; indeed, the Unas text (line 70) associates him with the Eye of Horus. He serves as both a guide to the recently departed and as the patron of embalmers and mummification, though his primary role is as the guardian and judge of the dead.


In Ben's judgment scenes, we do confirm certain aspects of the smoke monster legend. First, we hear a flush of water when Ben summons the creature from his barrack secret room. However, the monster does not appear so Flocke says he will take Ben to it. Second, at the Temple wall, Ben remembers the place where he was taken as a boy to heal (however, Alpert said to Kate that Ben would not remember the healing, that he would become one of them (living dead?). Third, Flocke conveniently does not follow Ben into the lower chamber. Fourth, we hear a mechanical clicking noise as the smoke monster appears from the ground. Fourth, we see a swirl of images and electric flashes surrounding Ben (his life flashes before his eyes). Fifth, when the smoke monster retreats, it is only then that Dead Alex takes her form and physically confronts Ben, slamming him up to a hieroglyph pillar. She tells him that he is to follow all the directions of Flocke without question. The she disappears. Then Flocke appears above Ben with a rope for his rescue. Ben said "it let me live." But in reality, it was Flocke who let him live - - - for he is the manifestation of the smoke monster. Flocke and the smoke monster never appear in the same room at the same time or in split forms.


For if Jacob represents Thoth, the master of both physical and moral law, could he not have created his dead brother in any form he chose, including Smokey?  And if that is the case, is the Island, as its own intellectual character, really symbolic representation of Anubis?

Magical/Supernatural/Elements:

Dead Locke taking control of the Others, including Ben.

Ben knows Locke is dead, so why would he follow Flocke? Mind control?

Recognition by some characters that the Island is not “right:”

SUN: What you're saying, it's... impossible.
LOCKE: But here I am. I don't know how, I don't know why, but I'm sure there's a very good reason for it.
LAPIDUS: As long as the dead guy says there's a reason, well, then I guess everything's gonna be just peachy. And forget about the fact that the rest of your people are supposedly 30 years ago... now the only ones who are here to help us are a murderer and a guy who can't seem to remember how the hell he got out of a coffin. Sun, please, let's just go back to the plane, see if I can fix the radio, and maybe we can get some help.

Last lines in episodes:

EP 97:
BEN: It let me live.

EP 98:

FARADAY: Hey, Miles. Long time no see.

EP 99:
FARADAY: I... I'm your son. [Gasps]
[Eloise stares at him with shock. Daniel's eyes go still.]

EP 100:

LOCKE: So I can kill him.
[Ben, stunned, stops in his tracks and falls behind as the rest of the column passes him by.]

New Ideas/Tests of Theories:

Once upon a time in America (it was just after World War II), mainstream psychology came in two and only two forms. There was behaviorism and there was psychoanalysis, and no one with any other intellectual orientation need apply. The theorists on campuses were behaviorists; the therapists in offices were psychoanalysts.

Then came the revolution led by the humanistic psychologists, beginning in the 1950s and rapidly gaining strength through the 1960s and early '70s. It brought encounter groups, regional "growth centers" like Northern California's notorious "clothing optional" Esalen Institute, experimentation with LSD and other psychedelic drugs, and "client-centered therapy." Nothing was ever the same again.

Cultural historian Jessica Grogan writes in Encountering America: Humanistic Psychology, Sixties Culture, and the Shaping of the Modern Self that humanistic psychology tried to connect to the civil rights movement.  A few humanistic psychologists tried to adapt the encounter group and make it a tool to promote greater racial harmony, but nothing came of their efforts.

Grogan writes, there were "fissures built into the movement," for its members held "many disparate views of health, human nature, motivation, and behavior." Humanistic psychology, she writes, was more "a broadly encompassing orientation" than "any one specific theory." She notes that "within psychology and psychotherapy," the rebellious spirit of the '60s "didn't manifest as a [new] consensus in which all scholars and practitioners agreed they had found a universal theory or methodological approach that would reign supreme. Instead, it manifested as a dissolution of consensus," so that "a plethora of diverse psychological theories, services, and techniques were now emerging."

The diverse theories were all devoted to the proposition that human beings were individuals, not interchangeable machines whose behavior could be predicted experimentally and whose "mental woes," as Vladimir Nabokov famously put it, could "be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts." They all believed that the human individual came "hard wired," as it were, for personal growth, and that the purpose of therapy was to create and sustain an environment in which the obstacles so commonly thrown up by social institutions to personal growth, self-actualization, and realization of one's potential were deactivated, so that the client could, in effect "cure" him- or herself. They all believed that psychological health meant something more than merely being free from mental illness, that it comprised a set of specifiable (and to some extent measurable) personal qualities such as self-esteem, self-confidence, and openness to experience.

Grogan deplores the "often destructive permissiveness" that she says became virtually "the rule" at "growth centers" during the late 1960s. She complains bitterly about the way in which the counterculture of the period "distrust[ed] all authority" and "expressed a blind allegiance to absolute freedom that rested on the assumption that human nature was fundamentally good." She complains that "the leaders of humanistic psychology seemed incapable of adequately considering anything beyond the distinct individual" and seemed to envision an American society remade one individual at a time.

Worse yet, the encounter groups these psychologists led "seemed to unwittingly encourage the development of negative characteristics like self-focus [and] hedonism." It wasn't long, according to Grogan, before the humanistic psychology movement as a whole developed "a reputation for being overly individualistic and encouraging of narcissism."

One result of that, needless to say, was that individuals began to act in ways intended to benefit themselves—for example, by starting businesses and attempting to make a profit. Grogan doesn't really approve of profit. She writes of "the potential for businesses to misuse humanistic principles in the ruthless pursuit of profit" and notes that the humanistic psychology movement "did little, if anything, to eradicate the baser profit motives of corporate leaders" during the 1960s and '70s, though it did come to exercise considerable influence on management theory at that time.

Grogan believes “the ideas and practices of humanistic psychology have dispersed so widely and thoroughly they've become virtually undetectable—they're the air we breathe." “If we measure the extent to which the leading concepts of humanistic psychology have pervaded our culture...we might deem the movement a whopping success. The language of humanistic psychology is everywhere: humanistic ideas of self, growth, health, individual potential, and relation are now woven into the very fabric of our thoughts and perceptions. The fundamentals of 'humanistic' communication, encounter, and expression populate our interactions with our spouses, our employees and bosses, our friends and children. They ring from the lips of our talk show hosts, and they populate our self-help shelves."

Whatever we would call it today (“pop psychology”), the characters in the LOST universe are clearly narcissistic individuals whose outlook and cultural morality is fused from the events of the late 1960s and 1970s. The most focused characters are hell bent on increasing their self-importance (which feeds their inadequate feelings on their own self-worth) to a destructive level of psychosis behaviors. By putting the characters under a “humanistic” approach puts their motivations in synch with their eventual actions. LOST appears to be one large experiment in humanistic psychology.

REBOOT EPISODES 77-80

POSTING NOTE: Due to work changes, I may not be able to post updates on Tuesdays after Monday night marathon G4 reruns, but updates will occur later in the week.

LOST REBOOT 
Recap: Episodes 77-80 (Days 94-97)

Sayid and Desmond meet the crew members on freighter, while the latter experiences some unexpected side effects from the trip, when his mind bounces back and forth from 1996. The helicopter hits turbulence on its way to the freighter, and Desmond experiences unexpected side effects; as his consciousness travels in time he and a key character discover their “constants.” The episode follows Desmond's consciousness in a continuous narrative.

Juliet receives an unwelcome visit from someone from her past, Harper,  and is given orders to track down Charlotte and Daniel  in order to stop them from completing their mission of getting Ben.  Meanwhile, Ben offers Locke an enticing deal. Juliet is walking through the jungle and suddenly hears the whispers. She looks around and finds Harper standing behind her, who says that Ben has a message for her: Daniel and Charlotte are heading towards the Tempest station, and Juliet has to stop them, using deadly force if necessary. If Daniel and Charlotte figure out how to deploy the gas, everyone is going to die. Juliet asks why Harper doesn't stop them herself, and Harper answers that it is Ben's wish that Juliet does it, and says that although Ben is a prisoner,  he is "exactly where he wants to be." Harper says that Juliet must kill Daniel and Charlotte. The conversation is interrupted by Jack, who points his gun at Harper and demands to know who she is. She says she is an old friend of Juliet’s and she was telling her where the people they are looking for are headed and that Jack with his gun should go there too. The whispers are heard again, and Harper suddenly disappears.

Juliet is forced to reveal some startling news to Jin when Sun threatens to move to Locke’s camp.  Juliet warns Jin that Sun is very ill and will die within three weeks if she doesn’t leave the Island, but Jin doesn't appear to understand what Juliet is saying, and Sun refuses to translate. Sun is not swayed and Jin supports her, saying: “Where Sun go, I go.”  Meanwhile, Sayid and Desmond begin to get an idea of the freighter crew’s mission when they meet the ship’s  captain, who has a militaristic tone.

Sayid confronts Michael, Ben’s spy on the freighter while  Ben urges Alex to flee Locke’s camp to go the temple in order to survive an impending attack from the freighter crew. Sayid insists on learning why Michael was on the boat. Michael answers, “I’m here to die.”

Later, Sayid and Desmond find Michael in the engine room and confront him about why he is on the boat. Michael tells his story about being Ben's tool. When he is finished, Sayid asks him if he is truly working for Ben. Michael confirms this. Sayid grabs Michael and drags him into Captain Gault's room, revealing Michael's true identity as the saboteur, a spy, a traitor, and a survivor of Flight 815.


Science:

“Minkowski” as a crew name as a clue to the freighter situation. Hermann Minkowski was a scientist and peer of Albert Einstein. Minkowski’s work dealt with the concept of space-time. By 1907 Minkowski realized that Einstein’s special theory of relativity could be best understood in a four dimensional space,  in which time and space are not separated entities but intermingled in a four dimensional space-time. Minkowski said "The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality."

“Faraday” as a scientist as a clue to the island electromagnetic properties. Michael Faraday was a 19th century English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include those of electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism, and electrolysis. It was by his research on the magnetic field  around a conductor carrying a direct current that Faraday established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics. Faraday also established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became practical for use in technology.

The island as a large machine, which creates it own electromagnetic field, as referenced in the snow globe effect. And if this island electromagnetic field interfaces with Minkowski’s four dimensional space time to alter an individual’s reality in time.

Improbabilities:

When Capt. Gault shows Sayid the black box flight recorder from Flight 815, alleged “acquired” by Widmore, is unbelievable. Any plane crash debris, especially the flight recorder, would be impounded as critical investigative evidence by the NTSB. Further, Gault claims that the Flight 815 wreckage was “staged” by a man with great resources and serial killer motives to “find” 324 bodies for the wreck site: Ben. If one can film the wreck, and recover the flight recorder, the recover of other plane parts and bodies would be possible. With airliners having serial numbers on all parts and detailed records, it is impossible to “duplicate” a plane in a matter of weeks.

The concept of “mind jumps” from 1996 to 2004 caused by exposure to oscillating radiation frequencies. Further, the need for an “anchor” in both time periods would not cause Minkowski and other crew members to die because everyone has a parent, sibling, friend or co-worker in both time frames. The conscious imbalance and alleged brain trauma caused by severed “memories” from two time periods cannot cause physical harm - - - at best, it seems to cue schizophrenic behavior.

Frank being able to hold the helicopter on a bearing while flying through a thunderstorm.

Clues:

On the helicopter ride, Desmond “flashes” or mind jumps. One remarks whether he is “day dreaming.”

The Numbers may be Hurley’s curse, but they are also Desmond’s numbers. Penny’s apartment number in his latest mind jump and the setting for Daniel’s Eloise experiment are part of the Numbers.

Frank travels to the lower level of the ship, where he meets Regina, who seems somewhat distant and a little confused. He tells her that the captain wants him to bring the paper bag (to Sayid and Desmond), and that the book she is reading, The Survivors of the Chancellor, is upside down.

The book written by Jules Verne is about the final voyage of a British sailing ship, the Chancellor, told from the perspective of one of its passengers from his diary. In the story, one of the crew members commits suicide Later, Regina in chains, jumps overboard to her death while the crew watches. It seems people think of their fate, it happens to them.

Juliet explains that all pregnant women on the island do not come to term; in the second trimester there is nausea, followed by pain, unconsciousness then COMA, then death. However, her explanation that the body’s immune system attacks the mother by “white blood cells decreasing” is the opposite of an immune response (another gross medical error).

When Michael attempts suicide in a car crash, he awakes in a hospital room next to a comatose patient. A vision of ghost Libby appears to him. Then, Michael tries to commit suicide with a loaded gun, but it jams. He is told that the island won’t let him die. But when he is on the freighter, he tells Sayid that he is on the boat “to die.”

When Ben plays his “last card” of a secret video tape of Widmore, Ben says the blindfolded man “was one of his men” who gets severely beaten. That man appears to be Desmond in 1996.

The whispers in the jungle when Juliet is heading for the Tempest:

"Sarah is having another..."
"Is that the other woman?"

Right when Juliet runs into Harper in the jungle:

"Look out"
"Sarah is having another..."

"Did you hear that?"

"If she won't save us then who is?"

"Sarah, somebody's coming"

"There is somebody coming"

"Hold on one second"

"There is somebody coming"

After Jack runs into Juliet and Harper:

"Look out"
 
“Sarah, it's someone we know. Sarah, it's someone we know"

"I'm not answering"

"Answer them"

"We have our answer"

"Can we trust her?"

The “Sarah” we know is Jack’s ex-wife, the woman he “miraculously” cured after her auto accident.  The consensus is that when people die around the Island but cannot "move on" to the next stage, they remain as whispers, watching or trying to communicate with the living on the Island.  Characters often hear them when in peril, or when the Others or the Smoke Monster are near. The deceased whisperers can appear in their physical form only to a select few. If so, why is Sarah’s soul trapped on the island? Or are these whispers the echoes of people in Jack’s life, trapped in his mind?
Sarah should not be on the island; she moved on without Jack. It was Jack who could not let go of her. And now, a mental conflict inside of Jack about "moving on" from Sarah with another woman (Juliet?)

Daniel’s concept of a “constant” in both “worlds” is a clue that Desmond’s freighter flashes were not flashbacks, but connections in the sideways world, a parallel reality that once breached (known) can cause death if not controlled by a strong singularity in both worlds.

Discussion:

“ A word too much always defeats its purpose. ”
— Arthur Schopenhauer

Locke said there are no reason for rules if there is no punishment for breaking them. In the series, we have numerous “unwritten” rules, especially those island rules of Jacob, and the rules between Ben and Widmore in their feud.

Rules are defined as: a) one of a set of explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct within a particular activity or sphere: the rules of the game were understood, b) a law or principle that operates within a particular sphere of knowledge, describing or prescribing what is possible or allowable: the rules of grammar. c)  a code of practice and discipline for a religious order or community, or d) control of or dominion over an area or people.The word is from Latin, regula, meaning “straight stick.”

Somehow, the rules have been broken. And now there is the word, “war,” on the lips of Ben and the Others. Who is at war?

Jack thinks the survivors are at war with the Others. Locke had thought that too, until he became a splinter cell leader.

The Others think they are at war with the survivors for killing their people.

Ben thinks he is at war with Widmore’s men on the freighter.

But the twists on the freighter (more for shock value than plot movement) call into play a larger "con" being conducted on the characters. It is an emotional roller coaster when Michael's bomb does not explode, when Desmond incredibly "calls" Penny on Christmas eve, when Regina commits suicide and no one cares, and when the captain tells them the elaborate hoax of the Flight 815 wreckage (since there is no need to tell people where the false wreckage is when no one can find the island to begin with - - - it took the Black Rock journal purchased by Widmore to find the island). Who is running the con on the characters? Apparently, the all-powerful being called "the island" is calling the the life and death shots of the characters.

In the final season, we will learn that Jacob is at odds with his brother, MIB, but you cannot call their dispute a war. It is more a difference of opinion. A wager on the outcome of humans brought to the island for some unknown purpose. All we know is that MIB has continually won this wager and has grown tired of the characters brought to the island because in the end, they all wind up corrupting themselves.

We also still here that some people are “special.”  But in island terms, what does that mean? Ben infers that he is special because he “was born on the island.”  This is a false statement in physical reality; he was prematurely born on the mainland, in the forest, with his parents. Locke has also been called “special,” and he was also a “miracle” baby as he was born prematurely in a rural town after his mother was hit by a car driven by his biological father. Jacob and his brother are also “special,” because they have immortal and magical powers. Is it because they were truly “born” on the island, after a shipwreck? Or are all these persons “special” because they were “born” in a different dimension, in the island after life realm?

One last person was called “special.” Walt showed that he had telekinetic powers, so much so that his adoptive father was so spooked by his special talents that he pushed Walt off onto Michael to raise after Walt’s mother’s death. We do not have any information on Walt’s actual birth to put him in the same classification as Ben or Locke. But Walt shows one aspect of Jacob and MIB as he materializes as ghost Walt to Locke to tell the bleeding man to get up because he still has “work” to do.

Which leads us to another nebulous word from the series, “work.”  What is the “work” that drives people forward in the series. The Others, including Richard Alpert, have been worried about Ben’s sidetracking to other issues like the fertility question over the Other’s primary mission. But we have no idea what the Others “goal in life” is on the island, except to fear outsiders.

What is Locke’s “work” that he needs to accomplish? He has nothing to go back to off the island. In fact, his life was pretty much a miserable wreck. Is the work to be completed the coup of Ben’s leadership? Is it to become the island’s new guardian?

The 815ers have no clear mission either. First, it was survival. Second, it was living together or dying alone. Third, it was battling the Others. Fourth, it was rescue. Then, rescue concept tore the group in half. And then, when some of the survivors actually leave the island, they are compelled to return to the island.

The Tempest scene was badly conceived and poorly executed. First, the concept of Dan knowing the computer codes to change a chemical plant system is not credible. Second, the warning of the activation of the plant makes no sense. The plant was inactive when Charlotte and Dan arrived. There was no need to “de-activate it.” Third, when Juliet arrives to stop them, she passes the main power switch. She could have simply “turned” off the station’s power! Fourth, Daniel claims that he is there is make the chemical gas “inert.” However, an inert gas or noble gas, any of the elements in Group 18 of the periodic table. In order of increasing atomic number they are: helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and radon. They are colorless, odorless, tasteless gases and were once believed to be entirely inert, i.e., forming no chemical compounds. So that is not what Daniel could do at a computer console. In order to neutralize a poisonous gas, something has to react to it. In 2005, Czech scientists believe they found the first known neutralizer for mustard gas:

An enzyme [employed through their method] reacts within minutes, is able to split several molecules of mustard gas per second, and its decontaminating effect is expected to last for hours at an average temperature of 30 degrees Celsius.

The problem is that Daniel is not neutralizing the gas: the computer screen ends with notation that a valve has been secured. It appears that the whole drama was for naught; a double, double cross. Are the freighters friend or foe? If a friend, why are they lying to the survivors? If they are a foe, why not use the gas and kill everyone? No wonder no trusts anyone anymore.


Is this why the whispers of Sarah talk about "trust?" The whole basis of the island story could be summed up as the mental instability of Jack. He is the one who could never get over Sarah. She was the one he fixed, but he could not fix their relationship. When he tries to commit suicide, it is Sarah who appears before him - - - and he wants to be with her, but she refuses and leaves. Sarah is one of the elements in Jack's life that he cannot get over. Likewise, it is Christian's berating that Jack cannot make the hard decisions, the life and more importantly, the death decisions. As such, he can never be a leader. He can never be a good doctor. So in a way, the island and its plots could center around the mental issues (or character flaws) of Jack not being able to "get over" Sarah and "move on" with another woman and the fact that he cannot "save" every life; and at times he needs to "take" lives in order for others to live. It would be an agonizing dynamic in a tortured soul's mind to try to reconcile those deep rooted beliefs; but that is what Jack does at the End.

The characters now appear to be rats in a complex maze. When Michael attempts to set off the bomb on the freighter, it surprises Ben that he actually attempted it. So the bomb was rigged NOT to explode. Instead, Ben ordered Michael to get a “list” of crew, then disable the radio room and engines. Why? If the whole purpose is to “stop” the crew from getting to the island, why not stop them dead in the water by exploding the bomb? The only reason is that Ben “wants” the crew to arrive at the island; that he wants “them” to do the dirty work of killing everyone but his “chosen” people (meaning all the 815ers). But Ben will stumble over his own arrogance, because when he sets Alex off to safety, Karl and Rousseau are both killed, and Alex is captured by Keamy’s ship crew. In one respect, this incident fulfills a wish of Ben’s: to get rid of Alex’s boyfriend and her mother. But the consequences for that decision will be grave.

Magical/Supernatural/Elements:

The concept of “constants” and mental “time travel.”

The “whispers” are trapped souls left on the island.

The island “not allowing” Michael to commit suicide on at least two occasions, because Tom has Michael “has work to do” to save his friends still on the Island.

Last lines in episodes:

EP 77:
DESMOND: Aye. I'm perfect.

[Daniel is on the beach flipping through his journal. On a page, he sees: "If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be MY constant."]

EP 78:

BEN: [cheerfully] See you guys at dinner.
[Ben marches into a house and shuts the door behind him, leaving Sawyer and Hurley dumbfounded.]

EP 79:

[Hurley and Sun are at a cemetery, Sun holding the baby. They approach Jin's tombstone. Sun kneels down, crying.]

SUN: [Subtitle: Jin... You were right. It's a girl. The delivery was hard on me... The doctor said I was calling out for you... I wish you could've been there. Jin... she's beautiful. Ji Yeon. I named her just like you wanted. I miss you so much. I miss you so much.]

EP 80:

ALEX: Wait! Wait! Don't! I'm Ben's daughter! I'm his daughter!


New Ideas/Tests of Theories:

In the last Reboot, we fully developed two “Unified Theories” to the Lost mythology to explain all of the factual and legal impossibilities in the actual Lost scripts. The Dream State theory postulates that the characters are alive in reality, but in a deep coma state where their minds have split in the dream world of the island and the fantasy world of the sideways realm.  In the Egyptian After Life theory, the characters are already dead before the plane crash, and that their souls have been split between the underworld (island world) and the spirit world (sideways).

Using the science concepts of Minkowski and Faraday, one could extract a science-fiction basis for the island itself. It has been debated whether the Island is a character, a person or a place. If one combines Faraday’s electromagnetic physics with Minkowski’s theories of space-time, the Island can be seen as a unique “machine,” creating its own electromagnetic field a part from the Earth, which creates an opening portal, nexus or intersection into the four dimensions of space-time. This portal connection to space-time would allow an individual to go back into the past (to change events) or go forward into the future (to see the future events). The island’s power is one of a living time machine. Any person of wealth or stature would want to “control” the ability to control a time machine. One could make a fortune knowing the future, or changing the past. This may be the motivation for Widmore’s attempt to reclaim the Island from Ben and the Others. At the same time, this may be the motivation for Ben to keep people from coming and going from the island. It’s power must remain a captive secret so the island is not over-run by “miracle seekers.”

So what is the Island?

We know various story “facts” about the island. First, it appears to be a Pacific tropic island, believed to be located somewhere near Fiji. Second, based on the freighter rocket experiment, it is moving away at a fairly rapid speed. Third, based on the helicopter flights, it is difficult to get because there is only one “door way” inside the mask or cloaked atmosphere that surrounds the island itself. Fourth, the island contains “unique” electromagnetic properties. It appears that the Hatch was constructed after an “incident” to control the “discharge” of any electromagnetic build-up. Fifth, Faraday remarks that the island “scatters light” differently than normal. Sixth, we will learn later that the island contains a cave containing a “life force.” Seventh, there is speculation whether the smoke monster is mechanical, nanotech, spiritual or an organic beast.

So what is the Island?

Various theories have been postulated over the years.

One, is that the island is the bridge between earth and hell, a place of limbo where the dead or near-dead act out their last days before the after life journey begins.

Two, is that the island is actually hell, and souls incorporated into human form must journey through various dangerous but familiar “tests” to determine whether they are worthy of redemption and a fantasy life in heaven.

Three, is that the island is a fantasy game show, like the movie  West World, but abandoned and taken over by evil spirits.

Four, is that the island is an alien space ship that has trapped people in its snow globe field to view humanity at its basic level.

Fifth, is that the island is merely a collective, networked dream of various characters who are in a state of coma or deep dreaming.

Sixth, is that the island is an alien time machine that has crash landed on earth, and the forces of good and evil are trying to control it.

Seventh, is that the island is ancient Atlantis, a highly advanced civilization that had mastered the elements and dimensions of time travel.

Eighth, is that the island is an ancient Egyptian portal to the underworld, created to help their pharaohs in the after life achieve great power and immortality.

Ninth, is that the island represents the subconscious of a troubled person, trapped in his or her own personal fantasy land.

Tenth, is that the island is a living being of supernatural powers, who uses human beings as pawns for his amusement.

Eleventh, is that the island is a prison for Satan, who is trapped by the electromagnetic fields created by messengers (angels) in order to “save the (human) world” from destruction.

Twelfth, is that the island is a quantum portal, a black hole in the fabric of the universe, that allows parallel universes (the multiverse theory) to come into contact with each other, either physically or mentally in time jumps.

Thirteen, is that the island is a metaphor for god, in how he gives people choices but allows their individual’s free will to guide their decision making to make their own choices; but with consequences for their actions, good or bad.