Lost

The only problem with the pergatory idea seems to be the birth of a child... Would a child be born in pergatory???

Another question is how, after 16 years, do the "Others" have fuel, etc. for the boat they used to kidnap the boy?

baptism is symbolic of both being immersed in the word of God (like you would dye a piece of cloth), dying and ressurecting , and being drawn from the waters (the people) to God (as moses).

Jesus was all of these things. He is the word we are immersed in, ressurected in, and drawn to. Just setting another example.

If you REALLY REALLY REALLY want to know what the numbers mean. Its on my other LOST thread. Im not sure but it seems to fit. If you read the spoiler though it might ruin the show for you..

Originally posted by Gazrok
The only problem with the pergatory idea seems to be the birth of a child... Would a child be born in pergatory???

The makers of the show have said that the place is definitely not purgatory.

The numbers explanation seems to be bunk....

What the hell was up with last night’s episode?
1 hour, and we’re no further along in the story than we were last time!!!
They just showed what happened between scenes!!!

Well, there was the scene of Kate crawling through the air duct…at least that was worth it!

Last night's show had one very subtle clue as to what's going on.

When the 2 guys were on the raft and the dude with hair swam over to the pontoon from the wreck a shark swam by poised for attack.

If you watched VERY carefully you will notice the shark had a Tattoo on it's tail with the SAME LOGO that the guy living in the bunker had on his shirt

I mean What's up with that?????

Maybe all the animals were seeing hearing are being "bio engineered"?

If have not the answer but all I can say is WOW!!!

[edit on 29-9-2005 by Perfect stranger]

[edit on 29-9-2005 by Perfect stranger]

I caught that actually...

On another note, that symbol is the 8 fold path of Buddhism, if I'm not mistaken... (I Ching).

Another thing...the countdown reset to 108...

4+8+15+16+23+42 = 108

[edit on 29-9-2005 by Gazrok]

images.google.com...

What I saw ( I taped it and will look again to be sure) was more like a octogon with interior rings like similar to the pentagon layout

POSSIBLE SPOILER: fair warning...








I'm not sure what you're looking for... I'm talking about the 8 fold path... I'll see if I can find what I'm talking about..., I Ching, etc.




Looks like I'm not the only one....in a search for I Ching numbers, I came upon THIS!

www.egoplex.com...

I remembered this mostly as I used to be a big Kung Fu fan, as well as Dark Shadows (original), both of which featured I Ching....

EDIT: Whoa, this should be on the spoilers thread...if even remotely possible it's true....

[edit on 29-9-2005 by Gazrok]

Its called the Buddhist wheel of life

Right, made up of I Ching symbols... I think they gave away too much in that episode though....

You mean this sign???

For anyone interested this series is being replayed right from the start now on Winamp Internet TV channel ess.tv ESS 26.

I couldn't manage to catch it on TV so am watching it here and enjoying it very much.

[edit on 17/11/05 by Mark Harris]

An intersting thing about lost is that, in the training video with the 'doomsday countdown clock' episode, they mention that the dharma initiative was started by sociologists-pyschologists who were working along the lines of 'B F Skinner [garbled]'

Skinner was a sociologist who did lots of work in what is called Behavioural Engineering, and would probably be considered a Sociobiologist and Evolutionary Psychologist today (as far as I understand). He'd actually make damned good conspiracy fodder, because a lot of what he wrote about (that I've seen so far anway) is about Control, how it works, what sets it up, etc, and how to more effectively do it. He also wrote a fictional work called Walden Two, in which he describes a Utopia run on the methods of Behavioral Engineering (ie behaviour modification and control).

I don't know how much all of that works into the show as itself, but I think that the writers of the show were aware of lots of it.

One thing I quickly realized and was happy to see was that the countdown episode is an example of a fetish. There's no way pushing some stupid button is going to save the world or prevent its destruction. There's also no way that any mythologic ritual is doing to have the same effect. The aztecs cut the hearts out of captives and willing sacrifants, to keep the world in balance and in existance. That sacrifice hasn't happened in eons and obviously the ritual isn't required to sustain the world. Even tho Jack and Lock are emminently sensible people, perhaps even hyper-rational wrt Jack, they still feel that compulsion to press that button (both are compelled at least).

Now we get to see more of the results of sociological studies. Look at the front section survivors. There're a very large group. We still don't know everyone that is in the group. They have a rather intricate society with at times, a large division of labour. Everyone needs something to do, and there's allways something to be done with a group that large, and someone is allways doing something. So everyone is reinforced to make themselves useful and do something, 'don't want to be a useless shannon'. So there's allways one group moving luggage this way or that and another stripping stems of leaves or doing whatever. They perform social tasks like a regular community, they have a structure, they moved off the beach and into a large settlement making use of the natural protection of caves and their water resources, they organized hunting parties, they even got lists of who was on the plane, organized a census, set up a friggin golf course, and even had a giant group ritual wherein they burned the remians of those who died in the crash in the remnants of the plane. Their landscape is also rather varied. True, its all a little island with a jungle or a beach, but they are so intimately involved with it and we can see so many different aspects of it that we recognize some things as being different. Sometimes they're in a open grassy hillock, other times in those cool and protected caves, sometimes at a waterfall or by a riverside or sometimes in a special clearing in the jungle. Plus they have boar hunts, go out to gather food, and even unusal clearings where they are planting and domesticating crops.

Now look at the tail section survivors. There were very few of them in the first place. The crash in the water. They have no ritual. They have no division of labour, any one individual has to be able to do everything. Even tho they have a stewardess, they don't even know who else was on the plane. They are forced from the beach and live in the jungle (certianly thats how they are presented, we don't see them sitting in that place much in their mini-episode like we often do with the front section survirors in their cave). Also their land is less varied, even tho its the exact same island. They're on the beach, and then in the jungle, and thats about it. They're less familiar with their environemnet because they are less invovled with it, its as complex as they need it to be, which isn't much.

The biggest difference tho is how they relate to other people. The front section survivors are threatened by nature, and have to learn to survive in the wild, but thats about it, certainly early on. They're a large group and don't need to be constantly worried, as individuals, of being snatched away in the night by boogeymen. Compare that to the tail section survivors. Its exactly what they do have to worry about. From the very begining they are threatened with death and destruction from that strange outside force, and as such their needs are completely different. No time to go out and pick seeds to plant in a little garden for them. And look at how the two groups refer to the force of destruction. To the front section survirors, they are 'others', tho that is picked up from the French Lady, who is mythic and unreal in herself. To the tail section survirors its 'them', a classical reference in the 'paranoid style' that everyone at ATS should be familiar with. They are out to get us. They took one of us today. They want to kill us.
And even tho, as far as I recall, the front section survivors don't really know anything about the others (at least in the begining), they remain mute on just what they are. Whereas the tail section survivors have had intimate contact with 'them'. Yet they still refer to them as 'not human, animals', when clearly they are humans, from the beginging, one of them manages to kill some of them, and mortality is definitive of man.
So in the two groups we see two tribes, each with a different social structure and society, and from that a different level of technology, mostly dependant upon some rather basic things, like group size and survival.
Interestingly, you can't claim that there is something intrinsic about the two groups that makes them different, because we know that there is at least one couple that was split into the two groups, which is a decent way of dealing with the 'upbringing' question. A twin would've been a good addition, to split between the two, also, but that might've been too obvious.


I would also say that in the front section survivors we see some intersting motifs replicated. Sawyer is a rapscallion, heck, even a shape shifter, thats not his name, his 'form', so to speak. I think many viewers of the show would agree that he's not unlike the 'Trickster' in myth, sometimes helpful, sometimes hurtful, sometimes necessary, and serious and a bufoon at the same time (sort of like the norse god loki, who is a trickster god infact).
Jack and Lock are also important characters. Both are sensible individuals. I am tempted to look at the two as something of a dichotomy tho, in the old Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy. Jack clearly fits the apollonian ideal, he's super rational, he's the source of law/justice, he has control over disease, heck, he was even able to threaten that trickster Sawyer to get what he wanted once by threatening him with..plague, by not treating a wound that would go sceptic. Jack and Lock are clearly also the leader figures fo the group, infact I had thought that it was just Jack at first but after seeing more episodes (still haven't even see all of the first season), I can see that Lock is actually the one that they look too as a source of strenght. And of course he is the boar hunter, so he must be solid right? Connecting Lock to dionysus is difficult tho. His sensibility is alright, but dionysus is still, in the end, seriously wild and orgiastic, his devotees climb mountains in the dead of winter to have wildly violent rites and are called 'maneads', literally, manic women. On the other hand Lock is a wild-man, in the sense that he is of the wild, he knows how to survive in the jungle.

Lock is also interesting in a different way. He is very much like a shaman/tribal leader. He knows things about the jungle that the rest of the group doesn't know. He is able to go out into it for long periods of time, without fear, and come back, magically, with great rewards. And, importantly, he sends boon on a vision quest / initiation, very much like a shaman.

Perhaps we simply haven't met Dionysus yet tho, or perhaps we won't realize dionysus until the two groups meet, because dionysus and apollo are most characterised when they are in contrast to one another, so perhaps the groups have to meet and then we will see a dionysus to the apollo of jack. Indeed, Dionysus if often presented as womanly, foppish, long and wildly haired. The woman leader of the tail section survivors could meet some of the characeristics of dionysus then, and certainly she seems more like a manead than lock.

So I am suggesting that we can see something about what will happen. Everything thinks its an experiment, but it might be somethign more in keeping with Walden Two, tho I am only vaguely familiar with it.

I also think that we will see that there are problems integratting the two groups, serious problems, even tho those have already started. A small warring group of hunters cannot properly fit into a large peaceful group of agriculturalists. Especially interesting will be to see what the non-crash victims on the island are refered to as and by whom. Does the idea of them being the sinister 'Them' win out and gain converts, or does the more neutral and passive idea of them being 'Others' win out? How does it all get integrated, if at all?

Anyway, I think that sociological studies play a very large role in this show, and that we will see more motiffs represented in it from lots of different myths.

Of course, we have ot keep in mind, there is somethign deeply irrational and unnatural going on on the island. No sociological theory or abstraction will permit a paralysed man to walk.

We have just finished the first Season here in Hong Kong and looking forward to Season 2 i like Saeed and Sawyer Nygdan as you said we cant make out Sawyer really and to me thats the same with Lock cant wait to see when they actually go down the hatch.

Lost is the saviour of TV in my opinion. TV sucks, Lost is the only thing I watch. My mum is addicted to it.

A while ago (few months), we were looking into some of the clues etc.. and we came to the conclusion that >>>POSSIBLE SPOILER

WTF?! What the heck is up with the horse???

Ok, I'm still trying to wrap my brain around everything that just happened. The last 10 minutes of that were mind blowing.

[edit on 12/1/2005 by Zaphod58]

They deffinately aren't dead. I thought that for a while, but now I doubt it. There must be something that no one thinks, which will be really good.

Maybe it's symbolic of the New Testament or something? The idea about sacrifice, betrayal, re-birth etc....

Locke's a pretty cool guy, he must be the main character (due to the one on this Wednesday, I won't spoil it) and then there's the little boy. I forget his name, but he's weird, which makes the show amazing.

The only person who's story is a bit boring is Charlie. I don't quite understand what that has to do with the island's mystery.

I think Charlie's character is good and it has plenty to do with the island's mystery. Alot of the characters provide obvious mystery, for example, Walter (the boy you were referring to) has amazing psychic abilities (the polar bear in the comic and then appearing on the island) but Charlie's character pulls the show back to reality... drugs, etc., which makes it even weirder in my opinion.

One really annoying thing though is the random extras they have in the background, who don't have anything to do with the story line (yet).

Another thing, is the theme of black and white. Each character couple has an opposite:
Locke and Walt- Old, white, and young and black.
Shannon and Sayed- young, white, and older and middle eastern.
The guys making the boat.
Hurly and Charlie- seen together quite a few times, big and small, although the French woman may have a bond with Hurly.

Black and white occursc alot, Sawyers glasses, the backgammon set, and they're a lot of other small things which I can't quite remember.

And each main character has a dad who was either wreckless or had some sort of devasting impact on their child. Very strange.


It must be quite difficult to come with a storyline as deep as whatever it means, and to be able to keep it going is amazing.