Too Much Information 13: Revisiting The Question Jar

We're now officially halfway through the final season of Lost.

Back in November of 2009 I listed out the questions that I thought Lost "must" answer, along with a bunch of questions that I didn't mind the show's writers answering or not answering as they saw fit.

So, how's the season stacking up against that wish list so far? Let's take a look:

1) What is the importance/purpose of the Island?

From the original column: "I don't know that I need a detailed explanation of what the Island actually is/what it contains, so long as we're told more-or-less why the Island is so darned important to characters like Jacob, Ben and Widmore. Not important in the personal sense (the Island is Ben's home, so of course it's important to him), but in the larger, mythology-inclusive sense of the word."

Ab Aeterno gave us the potential answer to this question last night: The Island is a kind of metaphorical (or possibly even literal) "cork," keeping "evil" bottled up and unable to escape. Is this the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me Island-God? We don't know for sure. But with eight episodes left until the finale, I suspect that it's more truth than not. WHY the Island does this, the consequences of not doing this - these questions are far from answered. But the Island's importance/purpose? Apparently answered.

2) What is Jacob's goal?

From the original column: "Why was Jacob popping up at certain points in the lives of certain castaways? What is the practical meaning behind his half-veiled conversation with the Man In Black? What is Jacob working to accomplish, if anything? And why?"

Part of this question has been answered. We know that Jacob was popping up in the castaways' lives because they're Candidates. What we don't know is what Jacob hoped/hopes to accomplish on the Island, but it seems practically certain that we'll know soon.

3/4) Who/what is the Man in Black? What's the deal with the Island's apparitions and visions?

From the original column: "If I'm right in my rampant speculation, questions 3 and 4 are connected - the Island's strange 'ghosts' and the Man In Black are one and the same."

I was right - at least as regards 98% of the Island's spectral population. We still don't know if Christian was also an MiB "avatar," but signs point strongly to "yes." Complicating things are the off-Island apparitions and Hurley's ability to see "friendly ghosts," like the spirit of Isabella. So, most of this question has been answered: The MiB and a majority of the Island's apparitions are one and the same. I believe that my "Well of Souls" theory may help to explain the rest of the question.

5) What is the Temple?

From the original column: "The show has built the Temple up to be a place that's central to the mythology of the Island. We've seen that the Smoke Monster lives in its ancient spaces, that Ben was somehow made well inside of it, that the Others retreated to it for safety when the Island was raided by Widmore's men. What is the Temple? What does it 'do'? Why is it important? Why is it hidden?"

We got our answers - the Temple contains a spring which heals and, thanks to the existence of Dogen, is a safe haven from the Man in Black. We still don't understand just HOW Dogen's life made the Temple a safe haven, nor why the spring was muddied, nor why it was a safe place from Widmore's men (who had rocket launchers).

6) What happened to Rousseau's crew?

From the original column: "This isn't a major mystery, in and of itself, but it's one that seems to be linked to the Smoke Monster, the Temple, the Others, and potentially Room 23. Rousseau's companions changed after following Montand down the Smokey Hole - they became sinister, deadly. Were they brainwashed? Possessed? Infected? ....Enlightened?"

We've gotten answers on this as well. Rousseau's crew apparently was infected - by the same "sickness" that seems to have claimed Sayid and Claire. Symptoms include sudden violence, duplicity, and an aversion to soap.

7) What are the motivations of Widmore and Hawking?

From the original column: "Season 5 muddied the already muddy waters of motivation for both Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore, as well as their relationship. If Hawking is working 'for the good of us all,' why has she kept in contact with Widmore who, according to Ben, is not a good man? If Widmore is actually on the side of 'good,' then what's with his involvement in getting Locke to return to the Island? And why is he employing Abbadon? Why is Widmore trying to recapture the Island? Why is Hawking so concerned with returning the castaways to its shores? And why does she appear in a photo with Desmond's monk friend?"

This remains unanswered. With Widmore's arrival on Hydra Island, however, we should expect some clarification soon. As for Hawking's role/motivations? Perhaps they'll be linked to Widmore's.

8) Why did the Others take Walt?

From the original column: "We don't need the actor who played Walt to return in order to discover why he was important for a little while there. Why did the Others grab him? How and why did they know he was 'special'? Why did they subsequently let him go?"

This has yet to be answered. I believe I came up with a plausible answer to this question in my Rewatch Column for "Lost: Missing Pieces" (scroll down to the commentary on "Room 23").

9) Who are Illyana and the 'shadow of the statue' people?

From the original column: "They're clearly working with Jacob to some extent. Are they Others? Are they anti-Others? How do they know the answer to Illyana's riddle? And what does that riddle actually mean?"

We know who Ilana and her people are now - they're glorified bodyguards.

10) What's up with the fertility issues on the Island? And why is it a (mostly) cancer-free zone?

From the original column: "In the column for "One of Us," I pointed out that both the absence of cancer and the pregnancy difficulties involve a mysterious force preventing the growth of new life within the human body. What's the reason for this?"

If you believe the word on the virtual street, the question of Island fertility will not be directly answered in the final season. Which feels, to me, like an enormous cop-out. If it's the case that they don't plan to address it directly, I hope they've left it implicitly answered in some way. My thoughts on the similarities between pregnancy and cancer might provide a possible explanation.

11) What are the core tenets/beliefs of the Others?

From the original column: "What does the word 'good' really mean to the Others? Why do they seem to require the murder of a father figure in order to claim leadership? Why is their society structured as it is? Why are they required to learn Latin? Why do they give their dead viking-styled funerals? What is their self-percieved purpose on the Island? Their actual purpose?"

We've gotten answers to some of these things, but in subtle, quiet ways. It's been all-but-confirmed for us that the Others are Jacob's "worshippers" or "priests," and that Richard acts as the gatekeeper between the Island's God-figure and his "faithful" people. As for their beliefs, we've gotten very little.

12) What are The Whispers?

From the original column: "They seem to be connected to the sudden appearance of Others, they involve key members of the cast, and they seem to comment directly on the action when they're heard. What are they?"

Still unanswered. But I'd expect them to get around to this one as we near the show's end.

Expect another TMI column soon, as promised.

Too Much Information Is Coming

Tune in early next week for the newest edition of Too Much Information, where I'll be talking about Season 6, Science and Faith, and Mirrors. Past columns can be found right here on the main page, in the sidebar directly to your right.

TMI 12: The Second Snake in the Mailbox

Author's Note: Thanks for stopping by to check out the Second Snake Theory! I encourage you to bookmark the main site and join us each week for episode discussion, analysis, and general shenanigans. -MMorse

*****

When Season 3 of Lost came to its justifiably-lauded conclusion, after I’d processed what had just happened, I turned to my then-girlfriend and asked: “How the heck did we not see that coming??”

Among its strengths, Lost is masterful when it comes to the art of slight-of-hand misdirection. While you and I are staring in one direction (“Why is Jack all emo and Grizzly-Adams-y? When did this happen in the flashbacks?”), the show’s writers are quietly, busily working in another direction, setting up twists that seem obvious after the fact. It’s the mark of a great magician, and it’s precisely what the writers pulled off during that finale. The Season 3 reveal that Jack and Kate had somehow left the Island represented the writers’ biggest and most brazen bit of slight-of-hand to date. It was such a shocking bit of business that the show's writers gave it a nickname: "the rattlesnake in the mailbox."

Arguably, it shouldn't have worked as well as it did. Giving Jack a previously-unseen beard and showing him slumped in a room with a giant map plastered to the wall ought to have given most of us a giant clue that something was up here - but most of us were too busy watching the magician rolling up his sleeves to notice his assistant loading doves into his jacket. To torture the metaphor a little further: if it'd been a (rattle)snake it would have bit us.

The question that I found myself pondering this weekend, after a long day and a cold beer, was whether there’s a new snake and a new mailbox, so to speak.

Despite Lost’s wonderfully weird ‘mythology,’ it’s tendency to mix polar bears and inhospitable environments, it’s love of ‘ghosts’ and Whispers and apparent-gods, the show’s writers have always claimed that “character comes first.” For the most part, I agree. The show has fairly consistently emphasized the characters and their relationships over and above the Island’s mysteries. The off-Island “flashes” featured in the Season 6 premiere do just that. While there are a bunch of “coincidental” path-crossings, there’s close to zero mythology in the off-Island segments (the main exceptions being the shots of the underwater Island, and the disappearance of Christian’s coffin - which may be mythology-related, and may not be). All the Island’s weirdness is so far largely confined to the “on-Island” flashes. And I’d like to suggest, with absolutely no evidence at all to back me up, that this is both intentional and a potential clue.

Lost’s Season 6 premiere featured two separate storylines – one in which the Jughead group was pushed ‘forward’ into the ‘present day’ on-Island, and one in which it appears that the crash never happened, that Oceanic 815 and its passengers landed safely at Los Angeles International Airport. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have both stated that the question of how these two storylines match up is a “slow burn” question that will be answered as the season progresses.

Are the castaways "split" into alternate versions of themselves, the way an atom is split to create a nuclear explosion? That’s certainly very possible, and the “quantum worlds” theory fits in well with much of what we’ve seen hinted at and explored on Lost in terms of scientific theories.

Are the castaways simultaneously experiencing "dual time-lines"? Have they created a separate "stream" in the river of time? That’s also a good, solid possibility, given everything we learned about the show’s conception of time in Season 5.

Those are the two most popular solutions to this particular question, as far as I’m able to tell. It’s likely that one of them will be proven correct over the course of the season. But there’s a third option here, and it’s one that I personally haven’t seen discussed. This is the figurative “second snake,” and if I'm right, Season 6 is the mailbox.

My nutty theory:

What if these off-Island segments are not an alternate universe, not an alternate timeline, not an alternate anything? What if, instead, these off-Island segments are actually the “second half” of Season 6, playing concurrently alongside the "first half" for the audience? What if all that we saw “off-Island” in the premiere comes about, not because of the Jughead detonation (which, as we’ve seen, has moved the castaways forward to the present on-Island), but as a result of everything we’re seeing play out now on the Island? What if Jack and Company need to see their Island destiny through before they can "go back" to the beginning and try again?

In other words: Maybe Season 6 itself a kind of giant version of the Season 3 finale. Maybe the off-Island segments in the premiere are the effective equivalent of Jack’s “flashbacks” from that finale, taking place "after" the events on-Island that we're also watching.

Why this isn't (totally) the ravings of an insane person:

At its heart, Lost has always been a show about human connection, about the value of community, of seeing things from another’s (an Others’) point of view, of the importance of reaching out to sustain each other in life.

What better way to emphasize this character-driven philosophy while still holding the audience’s interest with Smoke Monsters and kooky Temples and ash-barriers and whatnot, than to simultaneously show both the final act (on-Island) and the denouement (off-Island) at the same time? And what better way to emphasize the primacy of the human spirit and individual choice over warring pseudo-gods and mythical Islands than to give these characters the opportunity to truly heal each other, away from ooky-spooky Hatches and jungle-dwelling Others – back in the real world where that kind of healing and connection is so genuinely important?

Structurally, doing this ‘mirrors’ their past Season 3 finale and, more than that, it mirrors the season itself, with each “half” of the season mirroring the other half. In this way the show itself becomes a kind of metaphorical “spiral,” like the Orchid Station symbol, in which the Seasons reflect each other from opposing, increasingly-close sides.

While the journey of the characters is the focus of this show, this is the final season and, realistically, once you’ve told people about the nature of the Island, the identity of the Monster, and answered many of their burning questions, are people going to want to sit around and watch a few episodes worth of off-Island interactions which end up emphasizing the show’s themes? Would those stories really “matter” as much to the audience once the thrill-ride portion of the season was finished?

I suspect that the answer, realistically, is no. And that’s pretty reasonable, really. Think of Stephen King’s “The Stand” – a novel that Lost’s writers have cited as inspiration. I can only speak for myself but, as enjoyable as those final wrap-up chapters were, they felt like an inevitable let-down after the showdown in Vegas. Structuring the final season so that the audience watches both the “exciting conclusion to the mystery” at the same time that they’re watching character-based resolutions to individual story arcs solves this problem, and it adds potential “value” to the season. If I’m right (and again, that’s a HUGE if – this whole theory might end up disproved by tonight’s episode), then structuring the season this way encourages people to immediately go back and rewatch it once it’s concluded, so that they can experience the “ending”again.

What do you think? Should I be locked up? And are you as amped for tonight's episode as I am?

Too Much Information 11: The Letter of Truce

Thanks to the extremely generous gesture of a fellow fan, the "Letter of Truce" between Richard Alpert and Horace Goodspeed (included in the special edition Season 5 Dharma box set) has come into my possession.


It's good stuff, and I'd like to talk about it here. If you shelled out to buy the set you should get something for your money - so I won't reproduce the letter in its entirety here. What I will do is discuss what I think are the most important/interesting portions.


Dated as of August 15, 1973, the Letter of Truce outlines the terms of the truce between the Dharma Initiative and the "indigenous island inhabitants." Much of the letter is devoted to agreeing that both Dharma and the Others will respect one another and cease and desist from violent action against one another. It implies that Dharma's initial arrival sparked hostilities, and that these hostilities were problematic for both parties. The letter is type-written, contains hand-written comments from Richard Alpert, and is to be signed by both Alpert and Horace Goodspeed, leader of Dharma.


Some of the most interesting portions of the letter include:


1) Richard's insistence that the Dharma Initiative's presence on the Island be limited to a fifteen-year period, at which point they are expected to remove all personnel and "facilities" (presumably including the still-present Hatches). There is no explanation for this limitation, but I presume that in part it's to ensure a permanent society isn't established.


2) It's implied that Goodspeed is the one who drafted the letter. The letter makes a point of emphasizing the "right" of both parties to "live freely" and not "fear attack." Richard's comment ("REDUNDANT - WE GET IT") seems to emphasize his impatience with this.


3) Richard declares that he will act as "mediator" for the Others, and that Goodspeed will act as "mediator" for Dharma, a dynamic we see dramatized in Season 5.


4) Richard comments on the Others' "willingness to allow your presence" which is intensely tantalizing to me, as I'm fairly positive that all of the words in this document were chosen very carefully. Why would the Others be "willing" to allow Dharma on the Island? I've theorized that the Initiative may have been brought by/funded by Widmore, in an attempt to exploit the Island. But I'd like to suggest in the alternate that this may have been Jacob's doing. Dharma may have been the 70's equivalent of the Oceanic castaways or the Black Rock crew.


All of the above is pretty intriguing stuff for a fan. But most interesting is the following:

5) A mutual insistence that both parties "take every possible precaution for the protection of the island, including all shrines and sanctuaries used for whatever purpose by those who have an established right to visit them." The letter itself is chock full of legalese like this - to the point where Richard has hand-written a note in the margins asking "Goodspeed, is the 'Legal' language necessary?"

It's interesting that the 'ruins' on the island have been declared 'protected.' It's even more interesting that Richard opts to revise this section, writing "If the Dharma Initiative enters or violates any preexisting ruins on the island, the truce is violated." The word "preexisting" is then crossed out, as though Richard had reconsidered the use of that word. That's fascinating, and potentially meaningful on a time-hopping island. Does this imply that some of the Island's "ruins" have yet to be built? That the Others may be constructing them? That the ruins we see are actually from a future time? That they're not nearly as old as they seem? Does it imply that, on a time-hopping island, ruins might suddenly "appear"? It's not clear. But it is seemingly-significant.


6) Richard mandates that if Dharma digs or drills "more than ten meters into the ground, even in their designated territory," the truce will be broken.


This brings up a whole passel of questions. We know that the Island has underground passages, but we don't know the extent of them - whether they run all over the Island or are concentrated around the Temple area. Is Richard attempting to protect the Temple by trying to prevent the discovery of passages that would lead underneath it? We also know that the 'unique electromagnetism' of the Island is contained under the earth, and that Dharma specifically and willfully violates the truce when it digs the Swan Station. Is Richard attempting to protect the energy from discovery/release? Is he protecting Dharma from that energy? We suspect that the Island is not simply what it appears to be, and that over-zealous digging might reveal something telling about its underlying nature. Is he protecting the nature of the Island? Finally, we know that ol' Smokey dwells under the earth. Is Richard attempting to protect Dharma from Smokey/the MiB? I'll have some brief thoughts on the Island's "underworld" in the Rewatch Column for "The Beginning of the End."

7) Richard similarly mandates that the Dharma population cannot exceed 216 people "at any one time on the Island."


This also brings up some interesting questions. Why must the population stay below that number? On an obvious level, it could simply be concern about overpopulation on the Island - an attempt to maintain balance between people and nature. On another level, it could be a hint toward the meaning of/origin of the fertility problems on the Island. We know that Horace's wife gives birth to Ethan without the pregnancy complications that have plagued the Island in the 'present day.' We also know that Dharma established a school and that, presumably, the school was partially filled with children born on the Island. Was Dharma's violation of Richard's mandate the reason for the seeming 'fertility ban' on the Island?

No answers here - only more questions. Such is the way of Lost. My sincere thanks to Jacob (yes, really) for providing this tasty nugget of mythology to me for eager digestion.

*******************

Catch up on Too Much Information!

Too Much Information 10: Bad Dads

Too Much Information 9: How To Be Good

Too Much Information 8: The Question Jar

Too Much Information 7: Sartre-Speak

Too Much Information 6: Gnarly Gnosticism & Mondo Manichaeism

Too Much Information 5: Mirrors & Delays

Too Much Information 4: Gods and Musicians - How The Mythologizing of The Beatles Helps Us Understand the Reality of the Dharma Initiative

Too Much Information 3: Loopholes and Prison-feet

Too Much Information 2: Who is the MiB?

Too Much Information: Stimulus/Response and Control Theory, or How I Learned To Start Behaving And Love Course Correction

Too Much Information 6: Gnarly Gnosticism and Mondo Manichaeism

"I remembered that I was a son of kings,
and my free soul longed for its natural state.
I remembered the pearl,
on account of which I was sent to Egypt.
Then I began charming it,
the formidable and hissing serpent.
I caused it to slumber and to fall asleep,
for my father's name I named over it,
and the name of our second in command (our double),
and of my mother, the queen of the East.
Then I snatched away the pearl,
and I turned to go back to my father's house.
And their filthy and unclean clothing,
I stripped off and left it in their country."

- "The Hymn of the Pearl," excerpted from The Acts of Thomas

If you're an obsessive Lost fan like yours truly then you'll recognize the name of Thomas the Apostle from the Season 5 episode "316" in which Ben discusses Caravaggio's painting "The Incredulity of Saint Thomas" with the show's resident physician/skeptic, Jack Shepard.

BEN: Thomas the Apostle. When Jesus wanted to return to Judea, knowing that he would probably be murdered there, Thomas said to the others, "Let us also go, that we might die with him." But Thomas was not remembered for this bravery. His claim to fame came later... when he refused to acknowledge the resurrection. He just couldn't wrap his mind around it. The story goes... that he needed to touch Jesus' wounds to be convinced.
JACK: So was he?
BEN: Of course he was. We're all convinced sooner or later, Jack.

Ben draws a nifty parallel between Thomas and both himself and Jack in that scene. Thomas had other claims to fame though - ones that Lost doesn't discuss as explicitly, but which may be pertinent to the show's larger themes/preoccupations/interests.

Thomas the Apostle was also known by two other names: Doubting Thomas and Didymus. Both Thomas and Didymus mean can be translated to mean 'twin,' and instances of twinning and/or mirroring are littered all over this show. The Acts of Thomas and The Gospel of Thomas, both apocryphal texts, are named after Senor Didymus, and are considered to be 'gnostic' gospels. In order to explain to my latest Wildly Nutty Theory I'm going to talk a bit about Gnostic and Manichaen beliefs. This might seem a little dry to some of you, but I'll ask you to bite the bullet, take your medicine, grin and bear it, or pick another applicable cliche while I take your hand and walk you through what I believe are some of the keys to discerning the nature of Jacob, the MiB, and the Island Itself.

"Let none read the gospel according to Thomas, for it is the work, not of one of the twelve apostles, but of one of Mani's three wicked disciples."
—Cyril of Jerusalem, Cathechesis V (4th century)

Gnosticism and Manichaeism (Manichaeism being, depending on who you consult, either an 'offshoot' of Gnosticism or a similar system of belief that developed parallel to the Gnostic tradition, named after its apparent founder, Mani) were considered to be heretical by other Christians. Despite many similarities between, say, The Gospel of John and The Gospel of Thomas, neither The Gospel of Thomas nor The Acts of Thomas are included in what we consider today to be 'The Bible.' In fact, the Bible that you and I might refer to today looks very little like the sort of Bible that would have existed during Thomas' time. In that era, any Holy Books were not kept bound and ordered in a specific, chronological order, but rather stored as scrolls without the order imposed upon it by those who later assembled the Bible that we know today.

So why is that Thomas was deemed 'apocryphal,' while John was admitted into the rarified company of the King James version? Some claim that it's because of Thomas' cosmological worldview - a gnostic and/or Manichaen, dualistic worldview that more 'conservative' Christians found heretical:

For Thomas there are only two realms of existence: the material realm and the spiritual realm. The spiritual realm is a blissful reality of goodness, life, and light; it is the "Kingdom of the Father". The material realm is a reality of evil, death, and darkness...

While most people in this material world, according to this ancient belief, are lifeless, soulless beings (little more than animated corpses) created to serve the Lion and his rulers; a few people are actually spiritual beings in disguise. These chosen few — though clothed in a mortal body — are actually immortal pre-existent beings of light and "Children of the Living Father" who have become intoxicated and fallen asleep under the weight of the material world and its vices. These solitary elect, upon hearing the words of the Living Jesus, will then shake off their slumber and — upon the death of the material body — will return to the Kingdom of the Father.

Some of these themes seem relevant to Lost. Certainly the two realms of the Island and the 'real world' echo the notion of the material world and the spiritual world. The Gnostic/Manichaen notion of the material world (the world of 'the body') being somehow 'corrupt' or imperfect finds a home in the way the castaways are depicted as having been brought low by the world around them, pre-Island. The idea of a 'slumbering elect' being awoken by the "Living Jesus" to return to the 'Kingdom of the Father' echoes in the wake of Jacob's appearances to the castaways, the ways in which he's shown to interact with each of them and the ways in which they've subsequently 'awoken' to the reality of their suffering and the longing to do something about it.

But there's more if we delve a little deeper in the Manichaen end of the pool:

In the beginning...the two "natures" or "substances", light and obscurity, good and evil, God and matter, coexisted, separated by a frontier. In the North reigned the Father of Greatness...in the South, the Prince of Darkness...

As we've seen, Jacob and his Others reside to the North on the Island. By contrast, the MiB/Smoke Monster makes his home in the South.

...the "disorderly motion" of matter drove the Prince of Darkness toward the upper frontier of his kingdom. Seeing the splendor of light, he is fired by the desire to conquer it. It is then that the Father decides that he will himself repulse the adversary.

The Adversary, of course, brings to mind God's companion in The Book of Job, a book of the Bible that Lost references near-explicitly in the opening scene of Season 5's finale, 'The Incident.' But the description above also neatly encapsulates the little we've seen of the conflict between Jacob and the MiB.

[The Father]...projects from himself, the Mother of Life, who...projects a new hypostasis, the Primordial Man...With his five sons, who are...his "soul" and "armor" made from five lights, the Primordial Man descends to the frontier. He challenges the darkness, but he is conquered, and his sons are devoured by the demons...

Here's where I stretch things a little, in order to make a larger connection: (1) The Mother of Life calls to mind the idea of fertility, the statue on the Island, the baby-making troubles therein. (2) This talk about the 'Father' projecting a Primordial Man to challenge the darkness, and that Man's conquering, echoes the journey of one John Locke, who was touched by Jacob, who was rumored to be some kind of Savior, and who was 'conquered' by the MiB. Locke's form has been assumed by the still-mysterious Island Adversary and his identity used to bring about the death of the 'Father.' Locke's 'sons,' the other castaways left alive at the end of Season 5, have been devoured by figurative demons, by ghosts of the past and an aching desire to wipe the slate completely clean.

This defeat marks the beginning of the cosmic "mixture", but at the same time it insures the final triumph of God. For obscurity (matter) now possesses a portion of light...and the Father, preparing its deliverance, at the same time arranges for his definitive victory against darkness.

In terms of Gnostic belief, it would seem as though the defeat of the 'Father' at the hand of the Prince of Darkness results in a mixing of black and white, of material and spiritual - a reunification of sorts. That kind of coexistence is echoed in the various Dharma sigils we've seen scattered throughout the show and specifically in the eyes of Locke during Claire's freaky-ass dream sequence from Season 1. It's worth noting that Mani's belief system was apparently influenced by Buddhism.

More specifically, as it might relate to Lost, the end of 'The Incident' suggested that Jacob's death was all part of the plan, so to speak. As the Darkness has devoured the light, it has ingested the light and made the light a part of it. A communion between the two dualistic halves would appear to be the answer for the conflict. And this is another echo of Lost's preoccupations - communication with 'The Other,' understanding between differing sides, reunification first through conflict and then eventual recognition that 'The Other' is simply a part of the Self. This brings us from Manichaeism to Gnosticism.

Where Manichaeism and Gnosticism can be said to split definitively is over this concept of clear-cut dualism. Manichaeism posits two co-equal forces, dark and light. We'll call this 'radical dualism'. Gnosticism, on the other hand, typically posits that all things are emanations from an Ultimate God, a kind of platonic ideal of divinity. We'll call this 'mitigated' dualism.

As one travels further away from the Ultimate God, the fabric of being begins to degrade and break down. Think of this in terms of making photocopies. The original is clear, distinct. Any subsequent copy will be less clear and distinct. And copies of copies will degrade further and further, but each of those copies captures the essence of the original, no matter how degraded.

So, under a pure 'Gnostic' system of belief, there are no 'sides.' All things, even a 'false' god (or 'demiurge') comes from the original Source. In this system of belief, the 'Prince of Darkness' is a degraded copy of the 'True God," and has been viewed as an 'evil' god:

The demiurge as a tyrannical God having caused the imperfect material world and all of its suffering, is...not real but a construct or illusion of the human mind since no secondary creator God is necessary or of high importance as everything is eternal or emanated and can not be created or destroyed. The demiurge typically creates a group of co-actors named 'Archons', who preside over the material realm and, in some cases, present obstacles to the soul seeking ascent from it.

This again brings to mind the MiB/Smoke Monster, and more specifically the various 'ghostly' forms which the MiB has taken. His 'Archon' appearances in the forms of Yemi, Alex, Dave, etc. have emphasized to the castaways that they are not free, that their personal anchors of guilt and fear and shame will never leave them. The notion that 'the demiurge' is a construct of the human mind fits nicely in with the last episode we've rewatched, 'Dave,' where the title character was an apparent creation of Hurley's mind set on influencing Hurley with a solipsistic, selfish, 'evil' worldview. Under the view of 'mitigated dualism' the demiurge is not evil, simply flawed and unable to see or comprehend the full picture any more than you or I.

I'm going to suggest that this is the path Lost is taking. Rather than set up a fight between 'good' and 'evil,' the show is instead illustrating the struggle between 'free will'/progress and determinism/entropy. The MiB isn't a 'bad guy,' instead, the MiB is limited by the very flaws it's so good at perceiving and exploiting in others. It can't see past humankinds failings, or its own, and this is not a choice to be 'evil,' but rather the essential character of the entity. Jacob, by contrast, takes the longer view. He sees the potential in the freedom to choose, and while he recognizes the flaws in man and in the world, he doesn't see those flaws as permanent or insurmountable. Thus the line: "It only ends once. Everything that happens before that is just progress."

In the Rewatch column for “Dave” I suggested the idea that the Island is a kind of ‘dark god’ – a force that may not be entirely benevolent. Having plowed through all of this I'm inclined to change my mind. The more I consider all of this, the more I've begun to think that the MiB and Jacob are meant (metaphorically, in part) to represent two sides emanating from the Ultimate God described by the Gnostics.

In “Just Spitballin’” I suggested that the Island is analogous to Solaris, the incomprehensible, powerful planet imagined by Stanislaw Lem in his novel of the same name. I still believe this analogy is apt, and now I'm even more inclined to push it on all of you. If Jacob and the MiB represent emanations from an Ultimate Source, then that ultimate source is the Island.

In other words, metaphorically-speaking, the Island IS God. The God. The Ultimate, incomprehensible Deity. The Island is the Source. It is the well-spring of Creation. It is good and evil, black and white, 'right' and 'wrong,' progress and entropy. Like Solaris, like the Gnostic conception of God, it cannot be understood, it can only be encountered.

Catch up on Too Much Information!

Too Much Information 5: Mirrors & Delays
Too Much Information 4: Gods and Musicians - How The Mythologizing of The Beatles Helps Us Understand the Reality of the Dharma Initiative
Too Much Information 3: Loopholes and Prison-feet
Too Much Information 2: Who is the MiB?
Too Much Information: Stimulus/Response and Control Theory, or How I Learned To Start Behaving And Love Course Correction