Man of Science:Evil Incarnate

Is it just me or does it now, in retrospect, seem like Lost was one big bash session on The Man of Science?  Let’s start at the beginning….like, the real beginning….Adam and Eve. We all know the story.  Eve gets tempted by the Serpent and eats the fruit from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge.  She then recruits her man, Adam, to have a bite as well and the rest is, well, biblical history.  The 2 get banished from the garden and get introduced to pain and suffering.  Their pursuit of knowledge was their downfall.

Let’s see how this story parallels the story of Lost, shall we?  OK!  So we have a mysterious island with a mysterious light at the “heart” of it.  We are told through others in-the-know that the light is “life, death, rebirth”….let’s call the Light the island’s Tree of Knowlegde for the sake of argument.  Going into the Light would result in a fate “worse than death” according to Mother.  What’s worse than death, you ask?  Maybe an eternity of suffering, much like the fate of man once Adam and Eve dropped the proverbial ball by eating from our sacred Tree.  Maybe an existence condemned to never “moving on”, to quote one Christian Shepherd.

Whatever the punishment for gaining that knowledge, it remains clear that Lost looks poorly on those Men of Science who are on constant pursuit of whatever it is they need to satisfy their morbid curiosities.  Our 1st known Man of Science, Adam, AKA Man in Black, didn’t appear to be much of an evil soul.  He seemed…curious…unsatisfied…but not evil.  He wanted to leave the island and decided to leave his Mother and brother in a quest for answers and joined another group of people on the island; smart people who were looking for answers and trying to use the island’s properties for the advancement of man.  The MIB himself referred to these people, his people, as greedy, untrustworthy, manipulative & selfish.  Strange terms to use to describe the very people you would allign yourself, don’t you think?

Flash to a different time on the island….the 1970’s and the arrival of the Dhama Initiative.  Surprise, surprise, another group of scientists looking to tap into the island’s incredible properties.  Again, much of what we learned about the Dharma people doesn’t lead us to believe they were all evil, especially early on (1974).