Compulsive liars Everywhere!!!!
I’ve been under the understanding from day one that the others/hostiles are basically the “evil” crowd of the island. They deceive, lie, and kill more effectively than the normal crowd of people would. Remember, even the respectable Richard was involved (most likely) with killing Juliet’s ex-husband with the bus right after she wished it, and then blew it off like he had nothing to do with it. So the others are obviously never to be trusted, especially Ben “Lie”nis.
Through recent developments however, we have learned that Jacob really WAS the one giving them orders, giving them lists, basically bossing them around. Either Jacob unluckily picked a very hostile crowd of people to have as his island protectors, or Jacob firmly believed in lying, cheating, deceiving, and killing to get his/their way.
So then if Jacob was behind all the wrong-doings of the others, what the hell is MIB up to? Is Richard lying when he tells Sawyer that MIB wishes everyone dead? If MIB’s as evil as Richard says and as most of us predict, then that means that basically everyone on this show is up to no good in one way or another.
It sure seems like MIB’s lying when he tells Sawyer that there’s truly nothing to protect the island from. The reason I say that is because, well, there’s still 12 episodes left for things to happen. If there’s no possible danger to the island, what the hell is this show all about anymore?
And about the temple…..Are we really expected to believe anything that Dogen or silly looking sidekick have to say? They ARE on the same team as the deceiving “others” right?
Basically, I’m just wanting to know who to trust. Did Jacob truly have good intentions like most of us believe? Is MIB truly after the destruction of mankind like Richard would say? Is everyone on this show crazy? Is the entire cast of characters consisting of compulsive liars?
I’m rather curious as to if I’m missing something here, because although it’s “LOST”, this is the first time I feel like I literally can’t trust a damn thing anyone in this show says anymore.
Hi Chiefof16, i sort of know where you’re coming from. i recently posted a thread saying that i didn’t really know what was going on anymore and that it was hard to raise any sort of plausible theory relating to the new events that have happened. Everything seems to be going in a new direction but we have no idea as to where it is heading.
i think that we can probably trust Jacob; he knew that he would eventually have to give his life for the greater good. this isn’t the action of someone who wants absolute power i don’t think. you cannot wield power if you are dead.
Im actually just about to post a theory regarding the candidates that Nemesis and Jacob have such a keen interest in you might like.
anyway, im just glad that this weeks episode was better than last weeks which was the worse of the entire series!!
Chief, I know this doesn’t help ease your frustration, but I have wondered something about the lying and manipulation we see everywhere.
People lie to keep someone from knowing the truth.
People manipulate to get a desired outcome.
Both of these issues have huge implications when it comes to free will.
Lets say that Jacob knows how it all will end and he just went ahead and told everyone. I think that would seriously mess things up. No one would do anything to really exercise their free will in any circumstance. People would be too afraid or they would become nutcases trying to control it or make it happen prematurely…all sorts of crazy behavior. (In a way, it’s related to what I was getting at with Kate on my post about what drives her.) Some would hate the truth and some would love it, but no matter what it would hugely influence how they lived their lives.
And I think for this show, that is pretty much correlated to breaking the rules.
It’s not to justify anything or make certain actions okay, but I can see how it fits the themes.
But I did nearly yell at the television at one point because it can be downright frustrating when they talk so cryptically or in circles and just don’t speak up when they should.
So basically yes, everyone’s crazy…characters and viewers alike.
Chief, you raise valid points with your thoughts. One cannot forget that, indeed ‘the others’ have consistently lied throughout the show. Ben stated early on that ‘the others’ are the ‘good guys’. When he did so, we all presumed he was lying. Quite likely he was, but we have tried to reserve our judgments.
In terms of Jacob, one cannot help but think what his ‘agenda’ actually is, when the lies being perpetrated all filter back directly to him. We also have to consider Jacob’s own judgments, when he is ultimately responsible for so many peoples deaths.
Is this a case of the ends justify the means, or is this indicative of something else…something more sinister. I suppose his actions could be construed as evil.
As for Nemesis, we believe that he is evil, solely based upon his actions as ‘the smoke monster’. However, Nemesis tells Sawyer that he was once a man. If this is the case, than we have to believe that Jacob was also once a man. Only ‘man’ is capable of displaying both good and evil characteristics.
I feel this is something we need to continually be mindful of, while watching this last season play out. Undoubtedly, we are going to be continuously pulled in every direction until the end trying to determine who is telling the truth, and who is right.
Excellent topic for discussion!
Chief, one more point to consider about ‘the others’. Jacob is supposed to represent ‘Free Will’, yet have we ever really seen any of ‘the others’ actually exercise their own individual ‘free will’, or even question the authority of who is leading them or the orders they receive?
I would have to say that ‘the others’ seem to ‘follow the leader’, no questions asked…..This was never demonstrated better, IMO than by Nemesis on the way to the Statue. None of them had ever seen the illustrious Jacob….all of their orders came from Richard, Ben, etc.
This behaviour seems to be very opposed to that of ‘Free Will’.
Chief: Great topic! Excellent thoughts on this Kimberly and I have to completely agree with you!
I will repeat what I said recently in another post…
“The way I look at it is that one lives to fulfill their Destiny… I don’t classify Destiny and Fate as being one and the same… Both Free Will and Fate have a hand in your Destiny. We all have Free Will, and one cannot achieve their Destiny without it. But, sometimes when we lose our way from the choices that we make for ourselves, Fate will have to come along and give you the “needed push” back in the right direction. And, once touched by Fate, the choices that we think we are making for ourselves that puts us back on the right path are not really our choices at all, but rather influenced by Fate.”
This is why I believe that Jacob is the hand of Fate, but Jacob/Fate does not deny the existence of Free Will. So, I think his whole belief is that there should be a balance between the two…
Whereas Nemesis wants to kill Fate, because he believes that Fate should not interfere in the lives of man and Free Will should always be the controlling force in ones Destiny…
I also think the less Fate interferes is for the better, which is why I think Jacob would live a life of seclusion away from everyone else and not tell everyone what was going on, and this would include Richard… I also think that lies and manipulation would all be a part of the plan on the side of Fate. You never hear someone say, “I was manipulated by the hand of Free Will.”
So, I think this line of thinking would make sense as to why the scale with the white and black stones were balanced. That is until Flocke threw away the white stone and unbalanced the scale.
So, the question that remains; is what happens now when Free Will/Chaos is in complete control and there is no Fate/Order to create the required balance?
Again, great post!
Dabs, your comment (#4) is most likely the best and most simple explanation on Flocke’s “I’m very disappointed in all of you!” statement to the Others.
Chief, I hope other people read this post, even though you were seemingly ranting about the craziness of it all. 🙂
Good stuff. 🙂
Yeah… a really good topic.
In “What Kate Does” about 15 questions are posed to Dogen. And the only one he answers directly is: It’s a Basball! … great Thank You…
That got me screaming at the TV 🙂
@kimberly you said “Lets say that Jacob knows how it all will end and he just went ahead and told everyone. I think that would seriously mess things up. No one would do anything to really exercise their free will in any circumstance. People would be too afraid or they would become nutcases trying to control it or make it happen prematurely…all sorts of crazy behavior”
Crazy behaviour like Jack growing a beard, doing a lot of pills and drinking like hell???
bsed on my theory, I think you have made very important points. Jacob does know how it will end, as he is from the future. A sort of John Connor character in The Terminator.
I have been reading about the work of Dharma and the Hanso Foundation. One thing that stands out is http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Valenzetti_Equation
The world will end. Jacob is travelling in time to try and stop this. But fate, black, MIB, smokie are all trying to stop him and anyone who goes against them.
Anyway, would be one option.
The fact is if you tell everyone the world is going to end, they will freak out and it will lead to nothing, just anarchy/chaos.
So better to put together a series of events interlinking and playing amongst each other to try and come up with the desired outcome:
A course incorrection = World does not end.
Sorry if too bullshitty… but its either that or some greedy little human piglets eg charles widmore trying to dominate the powers of eternal life.
Thanks for all the input, some excellent points were made…..
Kimberly, Dabs, Elsewhere, I Am Jacob – I agree with all of you. I’m also believing that Jacob is on the side of fate. I know that’s been your thinking for a while Dabs, and I’m finally seeing why. It goes with what Kimberly said….he’s not gonna wanna mess with fate by explaining everything to people. It could screw everything up for sure, whatever “everything” turns out to be.
I Am Jacob – we share the same opinion. This was the type of episode I personally have been wanting to see out of this last season. It didn’t answer a whole lot, but I seriously don’t care about that. “The Substitute” once again gave us the feeling that the show is leading to something big. The suspense is the entertainment, and I’m glad it’s still there.
My purpose wasn’t to rant or complain at all with this post, I just have a tendency to do that a lot, so it probably comes across that way anymore :). It was definitely meant to portray the large amount of shady characters that we’re dealing with. Thankfully, some of you have helped explain the reason for their shadiness….and that’s the purpose of the comment section. Good stuff.
in the words of Fox Mulder “Trust No One”. I’ve found that when I stopped trying to figure out who was good or bad, working for fate or free will it has started to make a bit more sense. No one is acting in one way so everytime we try to pigeon hole someone they do something different which doesn’t fit. I think that at the end of the day and the end of the show we will still be having these discussions because there isn’t a simple black or white answer and I don’t think the producers will give us one. Trust none of them and at the end sit back and think about who you relate to and understand the most, until then enjoy the ride – if more episodes are like The Substitute it’ll be a good one 😉
Chief,
I see your still as cynical as ever.
So am i to some extent. It would seem that one of Jacobs core teachings is to be overly dramatic and exaggerate everything. I’m beginning to get the feeling that the threat to the losties, island and possibly the world has been greatly exaggerated.
My thinking now is that its a plot device used by the writers WAY to much, You know, if things don’t go as they’re ‘supposed to’, ‘close up shot, dramatic face, pause “then God help us all” cut to Lost ident’.
When you write a show where potentially epic things are always on the verge of happening, but rarely do, the only way to keep the viewers interested is to keep reassuring them that the stakes are very high.
This ‘war’ they’ve been building up to, i can no longer see it being the epic battle i once thought it would be, i fear Losts conclusion will be alot more downbeat than the writers have hyped it up to be.
On this note, i’ve kinda given up on theorizing on whats currently going on, but still finding stuff that ‘clicks’ from past episodes with new stuff we have learnt. I’m not going to try and predict whats going to happen anymore, because i feel its very easy to imagine this epic final chapter, only for it to be not so epic, i don’t want to be disappointed, so i’m just going to enjoy it for what it is.
I went a little off topic there, but i relate to alot of what you say at times, as i loved the first half of the show and bought into the mysteries and the brilliant character development, but have felt a little cheated as the mysteries have been revealed to not be as impressive. I get the same feeling with horror/mystery movies sometimes, i enjoy the first half where its all ambiguos and i try to piece it together, only to find out in the conclusion that the killer is a ‘giant bird man’ or ‘Bruce Willis was a ghost all along’. My main worry is that once the shows done and all the mysteries are revealed, will i bother watching the show again? I dunno, i really hope so though.
Anyway, sorry for the rant there, on the others, i’m getting the feeling that there aren’t really any good or bad guys so to speak, just factions with different and opposing ideals and goals. I think that in the end, the only good guys will be the losties. I don’t trust anyone other than them.
And i’m gonna throw this out there now, THE ISLAND IS EVIL AND MUST BE DESTROYED!
Tas – I’m sure you’re probably right. Just because Jacob represents the white rock (we can strongly assume), it doesn’t mean he’s “pure good” or anything to that effect. Good to keep an open mind about everyone during these times, and not trust a soul/pillar of smoke (LOL).
shephard’s_flocke – I wonder the same things. Is this show going to end in an epic fashion? I still believe it will. If ya sit back and realize what we have in front of us, a man that can change your entire life’s outcome by touching you decades ago, and a person “trapped” as a pillar of black smoke, something big is going on here. We’d like to think the entire world is at stake. If not, then BOOO!!!
Here’s another cynical rant I could go on for hours…… It’s appearing as if this MIB/Jacob conflict is the most important aspect of this entire show, as we’re now learning that it’s been affecting everyone we know. So why the hell did it take 5 full seasons (5/6 of the entire show mind you) to start learning this?
If LOST wasn’t ending this season, I’d understand it completely. But when we just spent 5 years of our lives learning about what Kate does, how awesome of a guy Hurley is, Jack’s need to fix things….it all seems a bit unrelated when you get down to what this show/island might be all about.
Hopefully (and I have faith in the writers) however this show ends, it gives us a feeling that the first five seasons had major importance as well as this last one.
It’s just that this season seems so disconnected with everything else we’ve learned up to this point. We spent an entire fourth season on a freighter that probably wont have a significant role in the show’s outcome. The entire second season involved the Swan hatch, which, as fun as it was at the time, might be forgotten and unimportant when the show concludes. Guess it’s just something we’ll have to deal with as fans of an extremely complicated show.
Whatever the case is, I hope, like all of you, that I’m motivated to watch this show again someday from beginning to end.
Hey guys, just catching up here. Here’s what i’m wondering:
Why do we think that Jacob represents ‘Free will”? I havent’ realy investigated my thoughts much on this one, but it sure seems like we haven’t seen him excersize free will on anyone. We’ve seen him to the exact opposite this entire time.
and from what we’ve seen from MiB, he’s given choices (free will?) to people. When he was talking to Sawyer in the cave, he gave him options, let him decide the what he wanted to do. To me thats a crap load closer to free will…no?
I don’t know…i beleive that Jacob is “Fate” and MiB is “Free Will”.
The only reason I thought MIB was “fate” was because of his attitude with Jacob on the beach last season. You’re right though, he’s definitely not like that anymore as Flocke.
maybe what we saw at the end of season 5 was a MiB who had lost faith in the “free will” side, he’d given up hope…
i don’t know, i have to think about this some more. There’s a good chance i’m dead wrong here. ok, so there a good chance we’re all dead wrong but whatever…
See, now in my opinion there is no good or evil side. I think Jacob and MIB just wanted different things and a feud started when other people wanted the same thing as either of them and started fighting for their own want.
The war in my opinion is just people trying to get what they want and having to cross paths in order to do that. And the winner will be the team who wants their ‘thing’ the most.
So they all have good intentions, but its the lengths they will go through to get what they want that corrupts them.
A boring thought, i know, but its better than believing they’re fighting because MIB wants to set off in his spaceship to get to his home planet.. MY GOD the more i think about it, the more likely it seems to be! Ok im going to go have a good cry!
Sadly, it’s true.
Have to completely agree SawyersGirl. We are going to be left to decide who’s ends justified what means, and hopefully without a spaceship 😉