MAN'S BEST FRIEND

How canines became man's best friend is one of evolution's great mysteries. Dogs are essentially domesticated wild animals. But at some point, mankind and dogs connected at a family level.

There had to be a mutual benefit. For a small family unit of hunter-gatherers, a dog with its keen senses, could help with safety and security of the camp against other wild animals or attacks from other clans. A dog could also be useful in the hunt to gather food. A dog could also be a comforting companion in the camp when the men were aware foraging for food or shelter materials. Dogs could also give the children a sense of love and play that we often see in nature specials with various canine pups.

From a dog's perspective, becoming part of a human family had its benefits as well. Humans were the top predator and dogs have an innate sense of hierarchy structure. Canines also have the instinct to bond with other members of their pack in a family structure of mutual support and protection. Those values are similar to those in the human family unit. That is why dogs and humans get along so well.

They may be different but at some core level they are the same.

In today's modern society, dogs continue to play an important role in people's lives. Dogs do provide a sense of security against strange noises in the middle of the night (especially if you are a single woman). Dogs do provide owners with unconditional loyalty and affection. Dogs also provide their owners with a sense of balance in their daily lives; a diversion against the normal grind. People need to impart themselves in a tangible way in order to feel good about themselves. Dog owners are kind, giving, generous and supportive of their pet's needs. A dog gives in return a non-judgmental, pure and unconditional love that feeds a personal's emotional state (heart and soul).

Dog owners tend to live healthier lives. According to WebMD, households who have pets have less frequency of allergies or breathing ailments.  Pet owners tend to have more opportunity for social engagements as they walk their dogs in parks. From a physical standpoint, pets require their owners to exercise more (through walks and household play).

Pet owners are far less likely to suffer from depression than those without pets. The benefit is especially pronounced when people are strongly attached to their pets, according to several studies.

People in high stress positions or had high blood pressure who had pets had less stress and lower blood pressure than did people without pets. People in stress mode get a burst of harmful chemicals like cortisol and norepinephrine can negatively affect the immune system. Some of these chemicals are linked to plaque buildup in arteries which is a precondition for heart disease.

Like any enjoyable activity, playing with a dog can elevate levels of serotonin and dopamine -- nerve transmitters that are known to have pleasurable and calming properties. Therefore, dogs have a natural healing element with the relationship with their owners. Dogs allow owners to have a sense of balance, purpose and a better quality of life than those without pets.

Human beings are social animals. Men and women need relationships in order be complete and fulfilled in their lives. Dogs and pets are not a full substitute for a lasting pair bond, but dogs do elevate the happiness factor in a person's life.

In LOST, Vincent was Walt's dog but in reality he was everyone's dog. He was a wandering presence throughout the island who would attach himself to anyone who really needed an unspoken friend. He was there when Walt lost his mother. He was there when Shannon lost her brother. He was there to silently comfort Jack in the end when Jack closed his eyes in the bamboo field for the final time.

A dog is a valued member of a family. When we lose a pet, we lose a family member. There is sadness. There is grief. Perhaps that is another basic reason man brought dogs into their family was to teach their children the cycle of life and death since pets lived shorter lives than men and women. The takeaway is that pets enrich and fulfill people's lives in an uncompromising way. And when they are gone, they are never forgotten. Their inner strength, affection and friendship is what remains forever in a dog owner's heart.

TRUST

Trust was a major theme of the series. Characters constantly asked each other whether they trusted them in a decision.

But what is trust? National Geographic Channel decided to investigate the human mechanics of trust.

Trust is part of your brain’s default setting, but the feeling may not be as noble as your teachers made it out to be. Neuroscience has an explanation that relies on a lot of fascinating biochemistry.

In one study, scientists asked 49 participants to play a two-person game of trust. One participant had to act as a broker while the other worked as a trustee. Working together, the two built up a pot of money by investing in each other. But to amp up the risk—and the trust—there was one major caveat: One of the participants could steal all of the money at any moment.

Before playing the game, some of the participants snorted a nasal spray laced with oxytocin. Best known for being the “love hormone,” the scientists suspected that oxytocin also had a hand in making us trustworthy. It seems they were right. Participants who sniffed the oxytocin spray ended up investing more money than those who had inhaled a placebo. It seems the burst of oxytocin had increased their trust.

But the takeaway isn’t so warm and fuzzy. As participants trusted each other more and more, a brain area called the caudate nucleus—one of the brain’s pleasure centers—lit up. As their trust solidified, the caudate became active earlier and earlier. That is, they started taking the benefits for each investment for granted. The researchers concluded that we don’t trust people because it’s some universal moral force. We trust people because it rewards one of the brain’s pleasure-seeking centers. Our brain simply likes getting that oxytocin-laced caudate kick.  

ISLAND AS MACHINE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DISTRUST

 “ Self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures. In the assurance of strength, there is strength, and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their own powers. ”
— Christian Bovée

Distrust was a common theme in LOST. Throughout the series, it was a common refrain, "Trust me," especially when one character was trying to get another character to agree to their position, mission or action.

Self-distrust is an interesting sidebar to this discussion. If one cannot trust herself or himself, then how can that person trust another person? In real life, the biggest trust factor is in a committed relationship like marriage. If one cannot trust one's spouse to be loyal, then the bonds between them are weak. But if one cannot trust one's self to be loyal in that relationship, there is added anxiety and stress - - - even if the other spouse is not at fault.

There were a few characters who had no faith in themselves. They could not call any inner reserve to change the course of their life. Desmond was a person who could not trust his decision making process or even his instincts, especially with his relationships with women. He calls off his engagement to join the military as a means of avoiding a commitment. But when Penny rejects him, instead of trusting himself to win her back, Desmond goes off on a crazy mission to impress her father, Widmore, instead of working on his personal relationship with Penny. He ran away instead of trusting his own feelings and strengths in order to win back Penny.

Hurley was another character who could not trust himself. He could not trust himself in relationships with women. His shyness and abandonment issues led him to cower in asking a girl out on a date. When his best friend wound up with his first crush, then put Hurley into a distrustful hermit mode.  His continued depression which started with his father's abandonment led him to body imagine issues. Like Desmond, he ran away from his problems, but instead of a suicidal boat race, Hurley took to food. On the island, he could not trust himself to be the pantry keeper. He could not fathom rationing food when he craved the the very thing he was meant to protect.

Sawyer had a distrust of everyone. Growing up as a loner, he made sure he could only count on himself. He did not trust even his partners in crime. When he let down his guard, his partners took advantage of him with disastrous results. But Sawyer distrusted himself in regard to his own personal relationships. He saw people he met as "marks" and not friends or potential lovers (until he time traveled and became close with Juliet.) Sawyer somehow distrusted the "normalcy" that a normal relationship would have on his psyche, which was solely devoted to revenge for his parents death.

In Sawyer's case, when he began to "care" (in his own way) for his fellow castaways (when Jack, Kate and Locke were gone), this opened the door to care about other people . . . to open up to become involved in a real, adult, committed relationship.

In Hurley's case, he had to be literally dragged off the edge of insanity by Libby in order to learn that non-family could love him for himself and not for his money.

In Desmond's case, he never proved to himself that he trusted himself to be with Penny. It was blind luck that it was Penny's boat that rescued him when the island disappeared (and the O6 was created to deceive the world).  Penny's will had more to do with Desmond returning to her than anything Dez did. Further, Desmond did not trust his own inner strength because he kept himself and Penny away from them - - - hiding from the ridicule that Widmore would heap upon him for being a coward. Desmond's weakness that he would not be accepted by powerful people kept him in a state of confusion and on the run for his entire life.

ACTIONS

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy. — Dale Carnegie

 There are two general types of people: leaders and followers.

Leaders are those who take charge of a situation or group. They want to be in control. They have analytical skills to motivate people around them towards a common goal.

Followers are those who don't want to be in charge. They do not want the responsibility to oversee or control the collective work group. They would rather be told what to do rather than be proactive and seize the moment.

Leaders: Jack, Ben, Widmore, Eloise, Keamy, Sawyer (only by default), Horace.

Followers: Hurley, Charlie, Claire, Kate, Sayid, Sun, Jin, Boone, Charlotte, Daniel, Dogen, the Others, Dharma workers.

Then there are few characters who were independent and did not want to lead or follow: Rose, Bernard, Juliet, Michael, Shannon.

All these characters had continuous fears and doubts about themselves:

Hurley: being liked, respected, useful.
Charlie: being alone, addicted, useful.
Claire: being a mother.
Kate: having a commitment, being responsible or accountable to anyone.
Sayid: being evil, inability to change, to find happiness.
Sun: being dependent, weak, controlled.
Jin: being poor, ashamed of his family past, respected. 
Boone: being acknowledged, respected, trusted, useful.
Charlotte: finding a purpose, a talent
Daniel: being acknowledged, respected, and worthy of affection.
Dogen: being punished, martyred.
The Others: belonging to something
Dharma workers: belonging to something.

Their LOST experiences did involve those characters coming face to face with their fears and doubts. Most fell back to the comfort of their habitual inaction. Their fate was held by the people around them. They could not trust themselves to change to become fully confident and courageous in their own abilities. Hurley wept in fear when Jack passed on the guardian role to him. Claire never reconciled her fear of motherhood when she left the island as a zombie shell of herself.

The characters who were followers were the most "lost" in the LOST bunch. They would defer decisions to other people around them who had stronger opinions, even though they knew that it was the wrong course of action. Kate was especially keen on doing this mental gymnastics as she attempted to follow many opposing leaders at the same time (Jack and Sawyer dynamic.) As a result, she never grew as a person. It solidified her personality of being a runner, someone who avoided responsibility or accountability (the hallmarks of leadership).

But in the end, curiously, both leaders and followers who took two different paths in their island adventures and decisions, wound up at the same place.

STOP TRYING

There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no insurmountable barrier except our own inherent weakness of purpose. — Elbert Hubbard

Despite all of his hope and desire, O6 John Locke gave up. In the hotel room in LA, he decided to end his existence because he could not convince any of his fellow survivors to return to the island. He was a failure. There was nothing left for him to do.

Ghost Christian a/k/a MIB/Smokey told John when he was about to turn the FDW that he had to bring all the people back in order to save the island. The island was more precious to Locke than his friends. He felt a connection with it. He knew of its magic. He wanted to protect it. When he asked how he could do it, MIB replied that Locke would have to die.

The island put into Locke's head the solution: death. Death would solve Locke's problems. 

When Locke was at his wit's end in the hotel room, he had lost everything. Helen, his former girlfriend was dead. Abaddon, his driver-advisor, was gunned down in the street. Locke was once again a wheelchair bound loser. He had no purpose going forward if he could not complete his mission.

The irony is that Ben saved his life. Ben interrupted John's suicide. He comforted John and told him that he would help him. Everything would be alright. Locke believed him. And when discussing the next step, Locke told Ben he should go see Eloise because she would know what to do next. At that moment, jealous rage boiled up in Ben. Ben strangled Locke because the name of Eloise was his trigger flash point.

It makes sense that Ben was jealous of Locke if Eloise now trusted him. If Ben and Locke wanted to get back to the island to be its true leader, Ben would not want to be a second banana. No, suddenly pathetic Locke became a major obstacle in Ben's path back to the top. 

As another ironic plot twist, Ben's killing of Locke actually made Locke's mission a success. Locke's death suddenly moved Jack to drastically change his behavior. He took Locke's mission to bring everyone back. It drove him mad. And just as Jack was nearing the end of his rope, Ben intervened to manipulate everyone at the marina into just hearing out Eloise at the church. As a result, most of the O6 people met Eloise for the first time. But Ben was still brooding, because now Jack had taken Locke's place as a potential rival.

On the island, Ben only found some peace when he stop trying to be a leader. Even after he was found to be Jacob's killer, he was forgiven by one of Jacob's followers, Ilana.

Ilana, being the only remaining member of Jacob's followers, then led a new group composed of  Sun, Ben and Frank.  The newly-formed group decided that they should trek to the Temple but before they left they decided to bury the body of Locke. Later, they rescused Miles from the massacre. Ben was separated and attacked by the Smoke Monster. They rejoined at the beach with Jack, Richard and Hurley.  When Ilana found out that it was Ben who killed Jacob, she ordered him to dig his own grave. While he was doing so, MIB appeared to Ben and tried to get him to join his group. Ben ran into the jungle to escape Ilana, resulting in a standoff in which Ben apologized for killing Jacob, stating that he will go with "Locke" because no one else will have him. Ilana then accepted Ben into the group, thereby letting him leave. At this point, Ben became a follower. The burdens of leadership faded away.



That night, the group discussed their next move around a beach campfire. Ilana told them that Jacob had told her that Richard would know what to do. Richard denied this, and angrily walked into the jungle. After following him, Hurley helped him communicate with the ghost of his dead wife telling him that if the Man in Black leaves the Island, they will all go to hell.

If this was true, then Locke's purpose in dying was correct. They key for any island group to get to heaven, i.e. avoid hell, was to keep MIB on the island. It was a test. A test of wills. A test of friendship. A test of trust. A test of team work. A test of spirit. In Locke's own death, he gave others  the will power to carry on his mission to save the island (defeating MIB). It sounds like a simplistic video game final level conquest, but if dead souls true mission was to defeat the devil to release their sins (and the chains of being themselves trapped in the sideways purgatory) to move on to heaven.

Death was the solution for Jack as well. When he closed his eyes after defeating MIB, he had them opening in the sideways world.  His destiny of moving on in the after life was the same destiny of John Locke, except they did not know it until the very end.