Night Tensions on the Island

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In the 2010s, whistleblowers, conspiracy theorists and hackers ruled the Internet, firm in their conviction that if we only had (and shared) all the information, if we could just crunch the numbers, we could finally make the world make sense. Ironically, this movement placed great faith in the rational mind. Even though this netizens' movement opposed the rising technocrats, who mean to hold sway with big data and artificial intelligence, both responses to hypertechnology were similar. Whether we looked at the powerful or the powerless, everyone believed in quantification over qualification.

Fast forward a decade, and we have sobered up. Our predicament defies understanding. Truth in the real world is slippery and elusive. We are all part of a gigantic, surreal mystery. I don't think anyone is really in control. Our souls ache for resolution and get only ongoing tension. Tonight, to ease the tension, I listened to the video, Slow Nights in Manhattan - 40s Jazz (above); underneath the video, someone wrote the comment: "my heart aches for us all ... I send you love and joy, a light in the darkness ... from my soul to yours ..."

 

An example of the tension occurred to me this week, as I began watching the television show, Lost (2004-2010). I lived abroad when it originally aired and thought I would finally binge watch it this summer. 

Was Lost Predictive Programming? 

The basics of Lost's story resemble that of ill-fated flight MH370, the real lost airplane from 2014. With the benefit of hindsight and the hype around the original show now long gone, an eerie thought came to me as the characters talked about how their plane had suddenly turned and gone off course and then broken up in the South Pacific. I wish no disrespect to the families of MH370 passengers in making the comparison. Nor do I wish any disregard for the actors and crew who produced Lost. But it struck me how truth followed fiction, particularly the way the fictional characters repeat the name of the series' airplane, Oceanic Flight 815. 

Conspiracy theorists would call the television show predictive programming for a future air disaster. But that would mean that a non-divine someone was in control of the mystery that bears down upon us all.

As I stated in this post, I think we have to move past conspiratorial speculations and get to Level Three - where we accept the larger mystery and move past the idea that we can mentally control reality. At the same time, we can relinquish our modern obsession with the artificial dichotomy between faith and reason. This is possibly why Lost featured characters' names shared with famous philosophers: Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Burke, Carlyle, Austin, Bentham. Did the characters' trials mirror tests of those philosophers' ideas? 

MH370: The New Search in 2025 

Meanwhile, the search continues. Malaysia reopened the MH370 investigation this year. There is no extensive wreckage to speak of - no bodies, just silence and unknown answers out there somewhere. Commentators on both sides of the political spectrum are still trying to get to the bottom of what happened to that plane. From a 2019 piece in The Atlantic: "The fact remains that ... no one has yet been able to work backwards from where the debris has washed ashore and trace it to some point of origin in the southern Indian Ocean."

Redditors do keep track of this story. They debate everything from basic details, to the semiconductor researchers who were on board, to UFO abductions of the passengers: 

"The original secondary radar + ACARS pings show that the aircraft was deliberately deviated from its planned route and flown to a remote spot in the Indian Ocean, where it ultimately crashed due to fuel exhaustion, either crashing uncontrolled or deliberately ditched." 

In another eerie resemblance with the television show, there is a complex conspiracy theory that the plane and passengers were sabotaged by the US military and/or redirected to a UK/US military base at Diego Garcia. As of 2025, a new company has been contracted to search the ocean bed: 

"Transport Minister Loke Siew Fook announced that the Malaysian government has formally signed an agreement last week with British seabed exploration company Ocean Infinity to resume the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. However, he stated that the search has been paused due to seasonal weather conditions, and will resume at the end of the year. 'Whether MH370 can be found depends on the outcome of the search,' he said. Loke was speaking at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) during a welcoming ceremony for the resumption of British Airways’ direct flight from London Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur.

🛥️ Ocean Infinity’s New Technology

When asked whether Ocean Infinity’s upgraded technology — including the use of robots and three vessels — increases the likelihood of finding MH370, Loke responded: 'Whether it can be found depends on the search. No one can predict the outcome.'"

Some passengers' family members even believe, in a way akin to the television series, that the passengers of MH370 were secreted away to a military-controlled wormhole island. Rumours persist that their loved ones have been alive for the past eleven years. In other words, just because passengers were lost to the information and communication networks of the modern world, just because their plane never arrived at its destination, it does not mean that they are dead.

Are We Lost? 

The television series gives us even more to consider. The actors have moved on - and they could not now go back to the time and place when and where they made Lost, even if they wanted to. The series lives on, and can be revisited or watched for the first time, as I am doing this summer. The art is out there, acting on its own accord.

Moreover, that fiction has overlapped with our reality. It is interesting that the whole era of Reality TV began in earnest in 2000 with an island metaphor on Survivor, where survival depended on 'voting people off the island.' Season One winner Richard Hatch's antics formed the blueprint for a whole new way of existing in a new real-fictional space of the undefinable and the unexpected. We see where this trend has brought us: the current US President is a former (and current?) Reality TV star.

Lostpedia states that the series breached the energetic field of realities between created drama and audience: 

"Breaking the 4th Wall The Island is not a physical entity, it is a metaphysical escape for those who are not ready 'to let go' or to 'cross over.' The most interesting of this, is that the Island concept does not only apply to the characters in the series, but for all people who are 'thinking' about the series. Since we continue reading and discussing about it, WE ARE STILL ON THE ISLAND. We are still looking for 'answers.' The Island is a metaphysical metaphor for the viewer and his/her relationship to the show. Life of the characters before the crash represents the life of a viewer before the airing of the television show, LOST. The afterlife/FS represents the point of view of the viewer after the show. The funeral represents the moment a viewer of show realizes the 'truth,' which is not known at the moment. At the end of the show, it is not Jack's homecoming in the church. Jack is in the pew facing the departed: you. You're dead. You are part of the narrative. You are part of the cast; you are part of the production. You are the one being encouraged to move on. You are the one they have been waiting for. Damon Lindelof summed up the drama this way: 'The show is, at [its] heart and soul, a character study. We were fascinated as storytellers by what makes people the way they are.'" 

What lies beyond the purgatorial compulsion to find the answers? What transcends reason if not faith? Perhaps: artistic expression. People believe in stories, even the most anti-rational narratives, because that is the most rational thing they can do when they live in the midst of a mystery. And inside that mystery, if they choose to believe in a love story, it means they are connected to the most primal tale of survival there is. The lead actors below, Matthew Fox and Evangeline Lilly, posed below in character; the publicity shot reminds us of the art which they briefly brought to life. It's a fictional love that lights the way for us in real hard times, twenty years later.

See my original 2014 post on lost flight MH370.