Romulus, Remus & So Much More…

Ok, so I was doing some reading in Lostpedia to brush up, and I stumbled into something quite interesting… I started digging and digging, pulling the string, and I kept running into more and more… well, “coincidences”… and I was thinking to myself: “this is too much, there’s too many links here for this to be purely arbitrary”… So let me know what you think, but I’m having a hard time thinking this is pure chance. This may not be what the writers end up using as explanations for what’s going on, but I certainly think that they are using a lot of this stuff to build on the LOST world, and give it some solid background…

I’m quoting here a lot of stuff researched on the web, mostly Lostpedia and Wikipedia, but also other places. I’ve tried to acknowledge quotes everywhere, but apologies if I missed something. I’m merely “connecting the dots here”, and trying to relate well-established historical facts to our “Lost Universe” in an attempt to make some sense of this all, and perhaps shed some light on what might be behind this whole mystery….

Some days ago I was investigating the “latin” element in Lost (I seem to be obsessed with this lately), and started by doing that simple search in Lostpedia: “latin”. First hit: Tabula Rasa…

Ludi Incipiant (let the games begin)…

Tabula Rasa and John Locke

(Tabula Rasa is the title of the 3rd episode in Season 1, right after the two Pilots).
Wikipedia tells us that the term tabula rasa literally means “blank slate”, and is a philosophical thesis that states that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception. In the 12th century, the Andalusian-Islamic philosopher and novelist Ibn Tufail demonstrated the theory of
tabula rasa as a thought experiment through his novel Hayy ibn Yaqzan, in which he depicted the development of the mind of a “feral child” (I’ll get to this in a minute) from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society on a desert island (really?? an island??!!), through experience alone. The Latin translation of his philosophical novel, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus, published by Edward Pococke the Younger in 1671, had an influence on John Locke’s (hmmm, I’m sure I’ve heard that name before…) formulation of tabula rasa” in his work “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”. As understood by Locke, tabula rasa meant that the mind of the individual was born “blank”, and it also emphasized the individual’s freedom to author his or her own soul (I can’t help thinking, after reading this, of Lost-character-Locke’s famous phrase: “don’t tell me what I can’t do!”).

Some further research on this Ibn Tufail in Wikipedia shows that his works and ideas influenced people like…. John Locke (as im you-know-who), David Hume (as in Desmond), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (as in Danielle)…

So, as a starting point, interesting to see what the writers titled this first episode after the pilot, hinting that everything that may have happened before the crash did not matter: it was a new beginning for all the survivors. A clean slate. A tabula rasa. Literally for convict-Kate in her first “centric” episode, or for Locke with his new set of legs… but implicitly for all the other survivors. What they did from then on would define their future. It was up to them… I am convinced this was intentional and a direct wink to the school of empiricism…

But if my reasoning does not convince you, check out the more recent quote by Jacob while speaking to Richard in front of the fire after his arrival in the island:

“(…) That man who sent you to kill me believes that everyone is corruptible because it is in their very nature to sin. I bring people here to prove him wrong. And when they get here, their past doesnt matter.”

… need anything more specific?

Feral Children and The Noble Savage

So, what’s this thing called a “feral child”? Wikipedia explains that a “feral child” is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no (or little) experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language. These mythical children are often depicted as having superior strength, intelligence and morals compared to “normal” humans (hmmm, remind you of our favourite white- and black-shirted friends??), the implication being that because of their upbringing they represent humanity in a pure and uncorrupted state: similar to “the noble savage”…

The myth of “the noble savage”, again from Wikipedia, talks about the concept of the natural man, unencumbered by either civilization or divine revelation. The idea that in a state of nature humans are essentially good is often attributed to the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, who postulated that the moral sense in humans is natural and innate and based on feelings rather than resulting from the indoctrination of a particular religion. For him, humans were neither good nor bad, but they possessed a moral sense based on the emotion of sympathy, and this emotion was the source and foundation of human goodness and benevolence. Like many of his contemporaries, Shaftesbury was reacting to Hobbes’s famous formulation (in justification of royal absolutism), that in a state of nature men are depraved and their lives are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

Wow, so one side thinks that, in a state of nature, humans are essentially good… and the other side believes that in the same state of nature, men are depraved. This is beginning to sound more and more like our adorable Jacob and MIB… Let’s see that quote again:

“(…) That man who sent you to kill me believes that everyone is corruptible because it is in their very nature to sin. I bring people here to prove him wrong. And when they get here, their past doesnt matter.”

Anthony Cooper Times Two

But wait, there’s more…. Wanna know who else thought that man was born with the potential for goodness? How about Jean-Jacques Rousseau…? And guess who saw in JJ Rousseau their source for philosophical inspiration….? The Jacobins of the French Revolution!!! Well, this is simply too much…… or is it?

No, no, no…. there’s more, much more! Wanna know the name of that Shaftesbury who defended the intrinsic “goodness” in men? Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury and grand-son of Anthony Cooper (1st Earl of Shaftesbury), who had diametrically opposing views on the nature of men and defended that men were essentially bad. Oh, and by the way, his marriage to Lady Dorothy Manners was arranged by none other than… John Locke (!!!!), who incidentally played a key role in teaching Latin to the 3rd Earl…!!!

Wow, is this for real???

So, let’s recap…. We have a man called Anthony Cooper who believes that men are essentially bad, who is very close friends with John Locke, and whose latin-speaking grand-son (also called Anthony Cooper) promotes Locke’s views that men are in fact essentially good… Does this ring any bells in terms of the thoughts and beliefs of the Lost-Universe Anthony Cooper and John Locke?? If that’s not direct correlation, then what is…???

Feral Children Revisited

So, back to this concept of the “feral child” because it looks very promising from a “Lost-Universe” point of view… There are many such children myths throughout history (Mowgli from Kipling’s “Jungle Book”, Tarzan from Rice Burroughs’ “Tarzan of the Apes”, Enkidu from “The Epic of Gilgamesh”, Atalanta from Greek mythology…), but the one case in particular that inevitably drew my attention here is that of the twins Romulus and Remus. From Wikipedia: Roman legend has it that Romulus and Remus, twin sons of Rhea Silvia and Mars, were raised by wolves. Rhea Silvia was a priestess, and when it was found that she had been pregnant and had had children, the local King Amulius ordered her to be buried alive and for the children to be killed. The servant who was given the order set them in a basket on the Tiber river instead and the children were taken by Tiberinus, the river god, to the shore where a she-wolf found them and raised them until they were discovered as toddlers by a shepherd (hold on, is that “shepherd” or “Shephard”??) named Faustulus. He and his wife Acca Larentia, who had always wanted a child but never had one, raised the twins, who would later figure prominently in the events leading up to the founding of Rome (named after Romulus, who eventually killed Remus in a fight over whether the city should be founded on the Palatine Hill or the Aventine Hill).

Ok, so we have two “feral children” (twins, to be exact), Romulus and Remus, with superior powers, who are raised by a shepherd and eventually one kills the other over an argument…

Let’s try and rephrase that: we have two children, MIB and Jacob, with superior powers, who are raised by a (Christian) Shephard and eventually one kills the other over an argument…

When was the script of Lost written again…??

Is It Really Them, Though?

Well, I’m not saying it is… But check this out, if you’re not convinced that MIB and Jacob might just be a modern version of Romulus and Remus, here’s another “wink” from the producers:

The knife that MIB gives to Richard to kill Jacob…. the exact same knife given by Dogen to Sayid to kill MIB… Guess what’s engraved on the side of the knife…? Well, if it ain’t a depiction of the she-wolf Lupa suckling Romulus and Remus?!?!?!?! (You can check this out on Lostpedia).

Re-Cap Before My-Nap

Now….. I’m definitely not sure how all of this fits together with Lost, and what parts might be genuinely hinted at by the producers, or which parts may not. But there definitely are toooooo many coincidences for this to be simply that: a coincidence…

1. The philosophical struggle between innate benevolence or depravation, good and bad, within a human soul, supported by John Locke and Anthony Cooper — both inside Lost, and in real history…

2. The thought experiment by Ibn Tufail about a “feral child” in a desert island developing from a tabula rasa to an adult… mimicking the trips that each and everyone of the island inhabitants is going through since their arrival at the island…

3. The super-powered, latin-speaking “feral” twin brothers Romulus (MIB) and Remus (Jacob), raised by a (Christian) Shephard, with fratricidal blood in their veins… I think this could give some meaning to the Latin-element in Lost and its importance in everything Jacob-related…

4. By all means, it looks like Jack will be the candidate to replace Jacob. And, incidentally Jack = Jacob in some historic references, and Jacob comes from the Hebrew “he who supplants”… So, will Jack “supplant” Jacob/Remus??? … And will he give in to his “fratricidal tendencies” and kill his way-out-there sister Claire in an attempt to prevent her from killing Kate? (Now, there’s a thought!!!)

5. All those names popping up and interacting both in Lost and in real life…. Rousseau…. Hume…. Cooper…. Locke…. Shephard….. What are the odds?