| [Note: This version was posted at 5:48pm, CST, on 2/26/09.] BEND IT LIKE BENTHAM: SAINTLY STRUGGLES, LOST LOVES, TACHYONIC TRANSPORTATION & THE HIVE MENTALITY Good Vs. Evil: War Without End?  "....because there's a war coming, John...!" Last night's episode was another doozy from the Lost creative combine. Thank goodness they are keeping us guessing regarding who's on first.... And yes, this continued back and forth regarding our surmises about who is on what side in the paradisical garden of good and evil is not altogether an unintentional 'record skipping' by Darlton and crew.... In addition to mirroring our own inherent dualistic natures-- and stimulating the growth and maintenance of entertaining and educational learning collectives, electronically-mediated via the internet, throughout the world-- the fundamental tensions are a proven and time-tested approach for sustained, engaged storytelling....  So, who's on first? Is Widmore evil incarnate, playing Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker to John Locke's Luke? And how does Ben fit into all of this? How interesting to see the quest for the return of the Oceanic 6 follow a fateline/path marked by heavenly waypoints, with Locke on a mission to gather the saints/angels and return them to the island: Santo Domingo Santa Rosa Santa Clara Santa Monica Los Angeles.... Saint Rose and Saint Claire? The island of lost angels/saints, duking it out with satan's finest? Is the island not a purgatorial paradise wherein Locke and the others are trapped in recursive karmic learning loops, but instead a more daunting and fateful field on which the battle between good and evil has been raging for eternity? Is the war to which Widmore is referring not merely the culminating event in a penultimate power struggle, but rather is one more installment in an ongoing dualistic struggle between good and evil, a war without end for the lost souls of an entire planet? Per my prior postings, the myriad powers of the island would serve to make the war all the more interesting (with each side channeling the energy to produce amazing material applications) and important (with the 'winner' possessing sole and unobstructed access to the island's powers, including the ability to alter the  fateline of the Earth.) And, given the Lost braintrust's predilection for mind-swirling plot twists and turns, perhaps we will learn that Ben and Widmore are actually on the same side! And what side might that be.... the island's side, of course.... While the reveal that Ben killed Locke was not surprising to Lost aficionados recalling Ben's prior attempt on the Locke, at the DHARMA death pit, and while I would not be surprised to see some jump back on the 'Ben is bad' bandwagon, I strongly suspect that this 'who's on first' type of good vs. evil debate is missing the more telling and fundamental point regarding the force and  importance of the island's survival instinct in all of this (please see my "Fate Accomplices" posting of 2/6/09 in this regard.) More to the point, I suspect that Ben and others are acting in ways which on the surface seem ambiguous from the standpoint of good and evil, but when we consider these acts in the broader and deeper context of the island's survival instinct, this fundamental imperative helps make sense of seemingly puzzling acts. From this vantage point, Ben's act to kill Locke makes all the sense in the world (for the island), insofar as it helps promote the island's needs/interests.  Am I suggesting here that the island itself may be using Ben, Widmore, the Oceanic 6, the castaways, etc. for its own purposes? Yes! One of the big reveals in Season 6 may be that all of our debate and discussion to date regarding who is good and evil, and who is using whom, may take on far different shadings of meaning if/when it is revealed to us that the island has been using everyone for its own interests, all along. This is not limited simply to the island's drive to survive....  When Kate asks Locke if he has ever been in love, she may be foreshadowing a reveal that-- per my prior postings this year positing a symbiotic relationship between the island and its human inhabitants-- the island has the ability to become attached to some of the inhabitants and to grow to love them. Exhibit A in this scenario would, of course, be John Locke.... So one version of the upcoming war is that this may not turn out to be another installment in an ongoing, recursive, and dualistic struggle between the forces of good and evil, but instead it may turn out to be a battle with John Locke as the  symbiotic 'lover/boyfriend' of the island, helping to protect his 'love' from threats by others (Widmore? Ben? Or?) to take control of the island's powers for their own nefarious ends, thereby subjecting the island to an abusive relationship.... If, as the Lost creative combine has previously acknowledged, one of the signature innovative aspects of the show is treating the island itself as an integral character, is it not so far-fetched to consider that out of a unique melange of electromagnetic, casimiric, and negatively-charged exotic matter, a form of sentience has developed over the eons, and absorbed some of our own (human) traits, needs, and desires, including the love of a long-lost Locke? Yes, the island giveth and taketh away, not unlike we humans do, throughout the course of our everyday lives.... Hmmmm.... Ben has been acting a bit like the jilted lover, hasn't he....? Tachyonic Transportation: Send In The Clones?  How rewarding to read in Doc Jensen's "Lost: The State of Season 5" interview that Darlton acknowledged that sci-fi is "in the DNA of the show." HEMA Theory fans will note with great interest the discussion by Damon of Locke regaining the use of his legs on the island as distinctly not a psychosomatic phenomenon.... And Carlton's point that the nature of the island and the smoke monster are "probably not completely rooted in natural science." 1 This confirms my suspicion all along, that the focus and purpose of these postings-- bridging science and magic/mystery-- have a place in the lore of the show, helping to stimulate discussion within a global community engaged in a collective learning process, enabled by and sustained through the internet....  So, how did Locke get back to the island, alive? Per the prior postings on this site, and discussions and debates now surely raging throughout the internet, one easy answer is that what previously happened to Christian Shephard has now happened to John Locke. I suspect we'll learn that Locke's body in the coffin was placed in the Ajira plane's hold for transport back to the island. While it is interesting to note the appearance and discovery of the risen Locke in water, more intriguing to me is the fact that as with Christian's body, we did not actually see what happened to Locke's body, after the crash and before his appearance alive, standing in an overly formal wetsuit, in the water....  How did Locke get back on the island, alive? For an answer to this central question I would defer to clues planted by the Lost writers, themselves.... Recall Caesar telling Locke about 'that big guy with the curly hair', disappearing after the flash of light, along with others on the plane.... And recall Locke telling Caesar that he would learn about how he got back, once he had a chance to find and talk with the others (Oceanic 6).  Given what we've learned in the Bentham episode, here is my latest HEMAtic take on what happened to Christian and Locke.... Caesar has told us that the Oceanic 6 did indeed disappear after the flash of light, and this does make eminent sense when the plane is construed as intersecting with the island's moving spacetime location and penetrating the 'outer shell' of negatively-charged (and casimirically-generated) exotic matter comprising the spacetime event horizon surrounding the island. As it had previously done to Christian Shephard's body on the Oceanic Flight 815 plane, when the Ajira plane transitioned through the event horizon/exotic matter  shell, into island airspace, the island intentionally/sentiently 'flashed' or transported the Oceanic 6 (but not Ben) out of the about-to-crash plane, to other locations on the island. Jack landed back in the jungle, Kate face-down on the shore of the lagoon, and Hurley made quite a cannon-ball spash with a superstrung guitar, into the lagoon proper. Why there? For reasons the island itself knows.... As the teaser for the upcoming "LaFleur" episode intimates, it appears that one nontrivial effect of this selective tachyonic transportation is the setup of a recurring theme of ingroup/outgroup us vs. them.... Perhaps the island is still learning from observing us humans.... desiring to secure additional insights into our traits, needs, and desires, including social dynamics.... Back to the bodies.... I was very pleased that as with Christian Shephard's body,  we did not see what happened to John Locke's body in the coffin in the plane hold, at the fateful moment of tachyonic transportation. My strong suspicion is that at the very moment the Oceanic 6 disappeared right in front of Caesar's eyes, Locke's body disappeared out of the coffin and was transported elsewhere, on the island. So where did the dead bodies go? While I would not firmly rule out the possibility that the island's profound rejuvenative powers might enable Locke to pull a zombie-like return of the living dead, there are other embedded clues in the episode, pointing us in another interesting direction.... First, recall the difficulty Locke had remembering things, both in his post-FDW mainland 2007 stint, and in his return to the island....  Second, consider the intriguing connections between the flashing disappearances on the plane, and the nature and powers of devices like the transporter in the Star Trek television and movie franchise (looking forward to the new movie, J.J.!) Recall that in addition to using the transporter to move through space, this device was later used to 'filter' out unwanted effects of biological existence, including illness, disease, and aging. And all of this was enabled by the fact that in some very real ways, what the transporter was doing was actually creating new copies of people as a by-product of the very means through which the transportation was achieved....  Hmmmm..... Now those casimirically-derived 'double-bunnies' are starting to look all the more interesting and relevant.... What I'm proposing here is that, from a HEMAtic perspective, one alternative to the zombie or reanimation hypothesis is that the spacetime 'flashing' effect observed when the Oceanic 6 disappeared from the Ajira plane (and whenever the castaways 'record skipped back and forth in island spacetime) is not unlike the Star Trek transporters in form and function.  So one distinct possibility is that the dead bodies of both Christian Shephard and John Locke were tachyonically transported by the island, out of their respective coffins, to a yet-to-be-disclosed location on the island.... And here it is.... Where were these bodies transported....? To the damp and dank catacombs at the bottom of the Orchid/well, catacombs stretching for who knows how long/far, outward from the FDW, away from the drillbit-heating tunnel overseen by Candleinthewindwick.... No Love. Locke? Bend It (Spacetime) Like Bentham- Here it is.... What may have happened is that the dead bodies of Christian Shephard and John Locke were tachyonically transported to the catacombs/  underbelly of the island, to the very location of its inner workings/sentience. These dead bodies were wired into the Jacobite sentience device comprising the island's mind. For self-serving reasons, including survival and more, the island can project virtual images of those with whom it is joined/wired (for example, Christian Shephard's myriad appearances.) Moreover, just as with the double bunnies, through casimirically-enabled tachyonic transportation, the island can create tangible, corporeal copies of people achieved through the operation of recursive spacetime loops.... The island, in other words, can leverage the power of spacetime travel not only to move people through spacetime, but also to generate new copies of people through generating recursive spacetime loops. My proposal here is that like the Star Trek transporters, the island may be able to selectively (intentionally) choose whether or not it wants to filter out such  things as illness, disease, injury, and aging, during the tachyonic spacetime 'flashes'.... So when Locke placed the FDW back on its axis and he 'exited' years later in Tunisia, he still had his leg injury, as the island is working on improving its 'lover's' character through hardship (my how those Nietzschean relationships can be difficult to endure!) And, per my 'Fate Accomplices' posting earlier this year, when Charlotte and others caught in the 'record skipping' effects experienced deleterious and increasingly exacerbated physical effects, it may have been due in part to the island's desire to let those effects operate through the course of the tachyonic spacetime 'record skipping' events.... And the island protected (filtered) out those effects for Locke and Faraday, for its own selfish ends....  Is it in the island's best interests for Locke's dead body to return to the island, and for a new, live copy of this body to be created through use of a recursive spacetime loop, generated via a casimirically-enabled, 'flashy' tachyonic transportation? Yes, for multiple reasons. First and foremost, the island's continued survival depends on Locke returning to the island to lead the others and do the work that he needs to do, to prepare for the coming war. What better way to generate power and reverence through creating a tangible, corporeal manifestation of the island's ability to conquer death, expressed and instantiated in a living, breathing, risen... Locke. (I would not be surprised to learn that Ben was aware of this, or even made aware of this by the island, at that very moment which Locke uttered the name 'Eloise Hawking'....)  Second, but by no means secondary, is the fact that the island loves Locke, and Locke loves the island, a relationship that has moved from mere HEMAtic Heuristic--> Energy--> Material Applications (a symbiotic/physical/ energetic biological-mind-based relationship) to an enduring desire by one sentient entity (the island) to be with another (Locke). Let It Be: A Hive Mentality- Per my Babylon 5-inspired posting from last week, we have yet to see the inner workings of the island at the deeper level of the catacombs emanating from the FDW chamber, and I still suspect that this future 'reveal' will portray a mind-blowing combination of ancient tech device with one or more biological minds hard- and wet-wired into the island, helping generate and sustain a soulful sentience, known as.... Jacob.... Or, rather, JAC'B.... J- John, Jack, James, Juliet, Jin A- Alvar, Alpert, Ana Lucia, Alex, Aaron C- Christian, Charlotte, Claire, Charlie, Charles, Catherine (Kate) B- Benjamin, Bernard, Boone, Bea  How intriguing it would, indeed, be, to see the bodies of some or all of the above wired into an ancient tech device, producing and maintaining JAC'B, the mind's eye of island. Yes, this does call to mind some possible connections to the BORG collective, in the Star Trek franchise.... Perhaps within this collective/hive mentality, there is an enduring struggle among constituent biological minds, for control/leadership of the island's mind.... And when one (Ben) loses the leadership position in the hive mind, one ceases to 'hear' the collective.... How enraging that would be... almost enough to make you want to kill someone....  And how recent are the mind/body melds with the island? Per my surmises above, will Locke comprise a relatively recent incorporealization into the island's JAC'B sentience? Have others been linked to the island for literal eons, with their mummy-like withered-yet-functioning remains testifying to their status as the island's original inhabitants (Richard Alpert, Atlantean?) And is this how the island has been operating for years.... Making corporeal copies of persons, or projecting virtual spokespersons/ interfaces, to suit its needs? Learning about us through tapping our biological minds, generating and extending its own sentience, along the way acquiring no small semblances of our needs, desires, traits, and motives? A Gaming Proposition-  Hmmm.... A 'hive mind' approach to the island/JAC'B got me to thinking about the speculation by some that the show is a game/simulation. (Please check out the excellent 'Lostisagame' site in this regard.) I've heard from others that I'm not alone in hoping that the ultimate 'reveal' at the end of Season 6 is not one in which Hurley is talking to Leonard Sims, who reveals to Hurley that the entire series has been a vast, active hallucination. Certainly we fans are not looking forward to a 'St. Elsewhere' type of finale.... But the notion of Lost being a game certainly has proven merits and yields some intriguing HEMAtically-oriented possibilities.... In that vein, consider the following:  1. Lost is a tech-enabled virtual reality-based game including not one but several of the characters on the show, at a minimum, the Oceanic 6. Will the final 'reveal' at the end of Season 6 involve a camera panning back to reveal.... six or more people, held aloft by cables ala J. Lo in The Cell, strapped in and ready to go for some good 'ol VR fun! Is the show a collectively-generated, and hive-mind sustained, VR RPG (Role Playing game?)  2. An interesting variation on #1 is that Lost may be a form of collective VR 'vacation' for those who want an engaging, interactive get-away, all without the hassle of passports and inoculations.... 3. Another variation is that our cherished Lostees are all patients receiving some form of psychotherapy, and they are the 'test subjects' or the 'guinea pigs' who have volunteered for the latest and greatest tech-enabled approach to group therapy.... 4. Or, in nods to Steven Spielberg's Minority Report and Robin Cook's Coma, will we learn that the reality is even weirder than the above possibilities, as the camera pulls back and we see a room filled with prisoners (or organ donors, respectively), kept alive through breathing and feeding tubes, with brainwave activity stimulated through computer interface, inadvertently enabling the epiphenomenal development of a collective hallucination? Or is this a shared dream produced by and sustained through a program aimed at ensuring a minimal level of brain activity....?  5. And finally, a more nefarious form of the above riffs off of the plotline of The Game, a 1997 David Fincher thriller starring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn. Unbeknownst to Douglas, his brother Penn has bought him a very intriguing and certainly memorable birthday gift, in the form of a series of unfortunate events challenging his very character and stamina. Will we learn that Jack, Kate, and others have had the distinct pleasure of a friend or a relative buying them into a Game-like experience, and that the DHARMA corporation is analogous to the CRS (Consumer Recreation Services) company, in The Game, i.e., DHARMA is not a scientific/research enterprise, but is instead an adventure/entertainment corporation?2 Time will tell.... Dr. Todd J. Hostager ------------------------------------------------------------ ENDNOTES: 1. For more on this telling interview of Darlton by Doc Jensen, please see: 2. For more information on this exciting thriller, please see: | |