Why We Are All Stuck on This Island - ABC's LOST: Free Will Versus Determinism

G.K. Chesterton wrote, "Tie in a living tether, the prince and priest and thrall. Bind all our lives together, smite us and save us all." In LOST, many of the characters are named after philosophers who debated about Free Will versus Determinism. Author James Allen wrote, "They themselves are makers of themselves [but] as long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions" then the living soul is dashed upon the craggy shore, hopelessly shipwrecked.

The dramatic series LOST in season five finale shows Jacob influencing Kate, Sawyer, Jack, Hurley, Sayid, and Locke before their first arrival onto the mysterious island by physically touching them. Jacob has never touched Ben and told Ben that he had a choice. This enrages Ben who screams back at Jacob about how he felt he never had any choice but to only blindly obey and then repeatedly stabs Jacob until dead.

Although there are opposing opinions of the question of free will versus determinism, it can also be thought of that, "Limited free will is the assumption that free will and determinism coexist". - LOST Final Season. The LOST television series theme revolves around the ideas and beliefs about prophecy or nothing ever just happens without a reason versus total chaos.

Many of the character names in LOST are of well-known philosophers who contemplated free will versus determinism. To search for a meaning of Ben's choice, one must begin to know about the debate of free will versus determinism. On page 37, in the book, "Lost: A Search for Meaning", Christian Piatt writes; "Augustine defines for us his understanding of the limits of human will, which are confined by the choices that we can and cannot make, depending on our state of relationship with God." Burrhus Frederic Skinner believed that there was no free will at all and is mentioned in the DHARMA's Swan orientation film. Isaac Bashevis Singer famous quote on this debate is, "We have to believe in free will. We've got no choice."

The following is a short synopsis of the last two hour finale of season five in regards to Jacob, Ben and the False Locke. Jacob lives in the pedestal base of the Eqyptian statue that looks like Sobek, the crocodile god but ABC has stated that the statue is Taweret, the Egyptian demoness of fertility.

The Black Rock vessel is off shore from the mysterious island while Jacob catches a fish in a trap. Jacob's nemesis, the 'Man in Black' talks to Jacob about how it always ends in violent death each and every time. Jacob answers that it doesn't matter because there is only one ending and that anything that comes before that is "progress." The MIB asks Jacob, "Do you know how badly I want to kill you?" and that one day he will find a loophole to do so. Jacob answers, "I'll be here when you do."

It has been theorized that the MIB and the false Locke are the Smoke Monster incarnate that used Ben to kill Jacob. Is Ben the loophole? "Just like Ben cannot kill Widmore, Jacob's nemesis cannot kill Jacob" -The_Rules. The answer to the pass phrase of "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" answered in Latin is, "Ille qui nos omnes servabit", meaning, "He who will protect us all." Jacob lived underneath the pedestal of the statue until Ben stabbed him to death. Does Jacob's death 'save' everybody?

More on LOST from ptosis:
Analyzing Popular Lost Theories
Unlocking the Meaning of Lost
Getting Lost
Lost in Time
LOST S4.5 'The Constant'
ABC's LOST Final Season 6

Literary Resources

Finding Lost: The Unofficial Guide Nikki Stafford 2006

Living Lost: Why We're All Stuck on the Island J. Wood 2006

Lost: A Search for Meaning Christian Piatt 2006

Laws of the Game, How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance Manfred Eigen & Ruthild Winkler 1993

Freedom and fate in American thought: from Edwards to Dewey Paul F. Boller 1978
Excerpts from this book are as follows;

Page x "Hard detereminists acknowledge that universal causal determinism makes freedom an illusion."

Page 5 "The Armenians rejected 'Quinquarticulars' because there was no place for human initiative in any of them." note: quinquarticular means the five points of controversy between Armenians and Calvinists.

Page 31 Quoting Paine, "Each individual possesses a natural right ... to all the freedom necessary to preserve and protect himself."

Page 54 Quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, "How shall he reconcile his freedom with that eternal necessary chain of cause and consequence which binds him and Nature down to an irreversible decree? How shall he reconcile his freedom with that prophetic omniscience which beheld his end long before the infant entered on the world?"

Page 135 Quoting Edward Bellamy, "Ghosts of the future are the only sort worth heeding ...apparitions of things past are a very unpractical sort of demonology, in my opinion, compared with apparitions of things to come. "

Page 136 Quoting Edward Bellamy from the story entitled "Lost", "The life of an individual consists of a succession of separate and distinct personalties."

Page 161 Quoting Ralph Barton Perry, "Not a wiggle of our will happens save as the result of physical laws."

Page 37 "Augustine defines for us his understanding of the limits of human will, which are confined by the choices that we can and cannot make, depending on our state of relationship with God."

Online resources:

A Hymn: O God of Earth and Altar
As a man thinketh
Blindman's world
lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Free_will
lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Philosophy
lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Nemesis
lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Statue_of_Taweret
lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Statue_of_Taweret/Theories/Destruction
lost-tv.tribe.net/thread
denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Story
www.lost.com/forum/jacob