DREAM

"There are anxieties from dreams that are more real
Than the ones life brings; there are sensations
Felt only by imagining them
That are more ours than our very own life.
There are countless things that exist
Without existing, that lastingly exist
And lastingly are ours, they’re us…"

Fernando Pessoa

TOLD WHAT TO DO

Classic John Locke.

It sums up what he was all about: bitterness.

His anger and disappointment at being treated unfairly with resentment were the key traits of his character.

He was abandoned by his unwed, teen mother.
He was further abandoned by his con artist father.
He was further abandoned by a series of foster parents.

Was this the foundation for a mental condition or just welded into his mind as self-esteem, self-worth and unresolved parental issues.

But bitterness can cause illness.

New research suggests constant bitterness can make a person ill.
 
In the study, Concordia University researchers examined the relationship between failure, bitterness and quality of life.

“Persistent bitterness may result in global feelings of anger and hostility that, when strong enough, could affect a person’s physical health,” said psychologist Dr. Carsten Wrosch.

In his research, Wrosch examines why some people avoid bitterness at different stages of life and why others don’t.

Over the last 15 years, Wrosch has investigated how negative emotions, such as regret or sadness, affect people. Most recently, he has focused his attention on the impact of bitterness.

Feelings of anger and accusation are often found with bitterness.

Unlike regret, which is about self-blame and a case of “woulda, coulda, shoulda,” acrimony points the finger elsewhere — laying the blame for failure on external causes.

“When harbored for a long time,” Wrosch said, “bitterness may forecast patterns of biological dysregulation (a physiological impairment that can affect metabolism, immune response or organ function) and physical disease.”

One expert has proposed that bitterness should be recognized as a mental illness. German psychiatrist Dr. Michael Linden argues that bitterness is actually a medical disorder and should be categorized as post-traumatic embitterment disorder (PTED).

He estimates that between one and two per cent of the population is embittered and by giving the condition a proper name, people with PTED will receive the therapeutic attention they deserve.

While experts continue to review this perspective, Wrosch and Renaud say bitterness can be avoided.
They hold that if people who experience failure can find other ways to fulfill their goals they can avoid being bitter.

If they cannot discover alternatives, then individuals need to disengage from futile efforts (e.g., to get promoted, to save a marriage) and reengage in something that’s equally meaningful (e.g., a new job or passion).

This process is called self-regulation. Researchers state that meaningful activities to disengage and reengage can be necessary for a person to avoid bitter emotions.

“Any effective therapeutic intervention,” said Renaud, “hinges on the affected individual finding ways to self-regulate.”

In some cases, overcoming bitterness demands more than self-regulation. When bitterness arises from blaming other people, then recovery may involve others.

“In order to deal with bitter emotions there may need to be something else required to enable a person to overcome the negative emotion — that something is forgiveness,” said Wrosch.

GEMINI SYNDRONE

There is a philosophy that each person is born with a duality.

Gemini is the ‘twins of the zodiac.’ That itself kind of captures the whole concept of duality, but on a philosophical level;  you have yin-yang, positive and negative, day and night, and left and right. These are principles that we created. We made words for those things to help us understand the world that we live in. Bringing those two sides together, everybody has good and bad days, good things and bad things, and even we have good shows and bad shows. It’s just trying to balance those two things to make your life more fulfilling and trying to make it the most positive experience you can.

Each person could be said to contain two individual characters.

There is the conscious self as opposed to the unconscious self. In the light of day we have a public self, while at night we can have a private, dark self where societal rules do not apply.

There is the good behavioral person as opposed to the evil persona. Each person has within themselves to do evil. It is how we check this bad twin is what keeps normal people from becoming criminals.

We have split personalities of the work ethic and the procrastinator, where there is a moving slide mixing the two elements to determine the course of our daily lives. Some days we are work horses, other days we are lazy bums.

We also have various emotional states that are constantly in flux. Love-hate relationships. Kindness versus cruelty. Extroverted energy to introverted paralysis. There are various shades of the emotional self that has many variables based upon cultural and environmental cues.

LOST had various themes which included a duality principle.

The mirror is a reflection of one's self. It also could be considered to represent the other side of your personality (usually a darker one).

Duality is a central principle in Egyptian burial mythology, where a person's soul is divided into parts which are reunited if the person passes final judgment.

Several main characters went through drastic phases in their lives. For example, Ben was a shy, introverted school boy who deep inside hated his father to the point of being an evil mass murderer and dark tyrant. But even then, the story twists unbelievably to Ben as a sympathetic nice guy waiting to cure his sins in the sideways purgatory. Fans were drawn quickly to the evil Ben more so than the redeemed Ben.

And the fact that LOST was set in two different dimensions is still a cause of great concern. Was the sideways world purgatory, heaven, dream state or alternative universe? Likewise, was the island time line real, imagined, science fiction worm hole or psychotic?

The series raised duality concepts but failed to clearly address them in a coherent fashion.

PERSONALITY CHART

I created the above diagram to try to chart the main character's emotional path through the series.

On the left side, positive attributes which begin with basic hope, then move up to dreams, love, trust and leadership. On the right side, negative attributes with basic regret, then fears, hate, naivety, to being a follower. A stronger will comes with each level toward the bottom line of being either a leader or a follower (a theme of the series).

I started the chart by simple word association. I began with hope, then quickly worked up the emotional ladder. I then started on the right side with the opposite of hope which I thought would be regret, and then by quick word association got through the series to the opposite of leader.

On the light side, there is a fairly clear progression a person would take in a path to leadership. One would have to have some hope (which is tied to a goal). From that point, one would dream about that goal. One must love what they are after. Then they must trust themselves enough to succeed. And once that trust has been obtained, it can be projected upon others to form leadership.

Likewise, regrets can easily morph into fears. Fears can compound themselves into hate. Hate can cloud judgment to make a person outwardly naive. Being naive means people can take advantage of you. You become a follower.

In the light example, we can take Jack. Jack had hope as a young boy that he would someday impress his father. He dreamed that he would become as successful as this father. He loved medicine and his ability to help other people. His love of his craft led to other people, including patients, trusting his judgment. Such trust can him leadership skills in his OR teams. People looked to him to make the right clinical decisions. Those qualities made him a natural candidate to lead the survivors.

On the flip side, Locke had regrets from an early age. He regretted not having a normal family life as a child. Her feared that he would be unwanted as he was raised by successive foster homes. He began to hate how people perceived him. He hated that he was being directed to the uncool sciences when he wanted to be a popular athlete. His hate made him distrustful of other people. As a result, he bounced from meaningless job to meaningless job. He became withdrawn. He was then quite naive when his father reappeared in his life. So much so, that his kidney was stolen. Because he was so naive about the people around him, he could only be a follower throughout his life. And that realization is something that Locke attempted to rebel against, until he realized that no one would follow him. That dissolved any hope (and all those light side emotional states) of change. He died a bitter and broken man.

But both sides can stumble down a different path. Hope can turn into fears, which could become so strong as to consume one's psyche to love the paranoia and pain. That misguided love of pain can lead to naive isolation, which was the safety net Hurley had at Santa Rosa.

Likewise, regrets can turn into one's dreams. Unfulfilled dreams can quickly turn into hate. Hate can be marshaled into developing a trust with other people who do not factor in your dreams. That trust turns one into a follower, just as Sayid had become during his youth to Iraqi soldier days.

This chart also shows that change can make a difference. False hope can turn into hate, but that strong emotion can be channeled into great leadership qualities, as was the case with Ben and his ascension to leader of the Others.

Likewise, regrets can turn to love and that love can make you follow a special person instead of running away, which is an explanation for Kate becoming Jack's partner in the after life church at the end.

SCALE OF NICENESS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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