Unlocking the secrets of Lost
This post seeks to uncover the Plan: the overall plot and the subsequent payoff of the television series Lost.
I suppose the best place to start would be an interview with the creators and actors, found here. The article opens with Sawyer reading "Watership Down":
On its surface, the novel is about several rabbits that escape the destruction of their warren and traverse the English countryside to seek a new home. But the tale quickly becomes one of heroism, survival and friendship, and ultimately, the challenge of building a free society versus yielding to a totalitarian one.
Another point made in the article is that the island "isn't normal" -- obvious to anybody who has watched a couple of episodes but a good premise to start our analysis with. Another clue from the article: John Locke is the "Enlightenment-era British philosopher who originated the term 'tabula rasa,' or 'blank slate,' to describe the unformed state of the mind at birth."
Here are the other clues (from Wikipedia):
1. Locke believed that the original state of nature was happy and characterized by reason and tolerance. In that state all people were equal and independent, and none had a right to harm another’s “life, health, liberty, or possessions.” The state was formed by social contract because in the state of nature each was his own judge, and there was no protection against those who lived outside the law of nature. The state should be guided by natural law.
2. Rousseau contended that man was good by nature, a "noble savage" when in the state of nature (the state of all the "other animals", and the condition humankind was in before the creation of civilization and society), but is corrupted by society. He viewed society as artificial and held that the development of society, especially the growth of social interdependence, has been inimical to the well-being of human beings.
Society's negative influence on otherwise virtuous men centers, in Rousseau's philosophy, on its transformation of amour de soi, a positive self-love, into amour-propre, or pride. Amour de soi represents the instinctive human desire for self preservation, combined with the human power of reason. In contrast, amour-propre is not natural but artificial and forces man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others.
Rousseau claimed that the state of nature eventually degenerates into a brutish condition without law or morality, at which point the human race must adopt institutions of law or perish. In the degenerate phase of the state of nature, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men while at the same time becoming increasingly dependent on them.
And this from Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum":
"The Plan" slowly evolves and many of its details change as the story progresses, but basically the final version involves the Knights Templar discovering secret energy flows named telluric currents during the Crusades. The telluric currents affect the geophysical movement of plate tectonics. The currents' mother lode is the so-called umbilicus mundi, or "navel of the world". By placing a special valve in the umbillicus mundi, they would be able to control the currents. This would give them the power to disturb and interfere with life anywhere on Earth, with vast blackmailing possibilities against entire nations. However, they cannot utilize the currents due to insufficient technology.
There are other clues, but this gives us a pretty good starting point. The battle lines on the island are between barbarism and society, freedom and tyranny, tolerance and hatred. The battle will be over this power -- who controls it, who guards against it. My own opinion is that this tracks with the battle on earth between the forces of freedom and tolerance and the forces of tyranny and subjugation. The battle in the real world is who controls the power of technology, nuclear and everything else. One "tribe" wants to keep this power in its cage. The other wants unleash it on the world.
That, I think, is the outline of Lost.
I suppose the best place to start would be an interview with the creators and actors, found here. The article opens with Sawyer reading "Watership Down":
On its surface, the novel is about several rabbits that escape the destruction of their warren and traverse the English countryside to seek a new home. But the tale quickly becomes one of heroism, survival and friendship, and ultimately, the challenge of building a free society versus yielding to a totalitarian one.
Another point made in the article is that the island "isn't normal" -- obvious to anybody who has watched a couple of episodes but a good premise to start our analysis with. Another clue from the article: John Locke is the "Enlightenment-era British philosopher who originated the term 'tabula rasa,' or 'blank slate,' to describe the unformed state of the mind at birth."
Here are the other clues (from Wikipedia):
1. Locke believed that the original state of nature was happy and characterized by reason and tolerance. In that state all people were equal and independent, and none had a right to harm another’s “life, health, liberty, or possessions.” The state was formed by social contract because in the state of nature each was his own judge, and there was no protection against those who lived outside the law of nature. The state should be guided by natural law.
2. Rousseau contended that man was good by nature, a "noble savage" when in the state of nature (the state of all the "other animals", and the condition humankind was in before the creation of civilization and society), but is corrupted by society. He viewed society as artificial and held that the development of society, especially the growth of social interdependence, has been inimical to the well-being of human beings.
Society's negative influence on otherwise virtuous men centers, in Rousseau's philosophy, on its transformation of amour de soi, a positive self-love, into amour-propre, or pride. Amour de soi represents the instinctive human desire for self preservation, combined with the human power of reason. In contrast, amour-propre is not natural but artificial and forces man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others.
Rousseau claimed that the state of nature eventually degenerates into a brutish condition without law or morality, at which point the human race must adopt institutions of law or perish. In the degenerate phase of the state of nature, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men while at the same time becoming increasingly dependent on them.
And this from Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum":
"The Plan" slowly evolves and many of its details change as the story progresses, but basically the final version involves the Knights Templar discovering secret energy flows named telluric currents during the Crusades. The telluric currents affect the geophysical movement of plate tectonics. The currents' mother lode is the so-called umbilicus mundi, or "navel of the world". By placing a special valve in the umbillicus mundi, they would be able to control the currents. This would give them the power to disturb and interfere with life anywhere on Earth, with vast blackmailing possibilities against entire nations. However, they cannot utilize the currents due to insufficient technology.
There are other clues, but this gives us a pretty good starting point. The battle lines on the island are between barbarism and society, freedom and tyranny, tolerance and hatred. The battle will be over this power -- who controls it, who guards against it. My own opinion is that this tracks with the battle on earth between the forces of freedom and tolerance and the forces of tyranny and subjugation. The battle in the real world is who controls the power of technology, nuclear and everything else. One "tribe" wants to keep this power in its cage. The other wants unleash it on the world.
That, I think, is the outline of Lost.
posted by John Aristides at 3/29/2006 02:35:00 PM
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