Island: Will Tantric Yoga save the world?

This is a tough one. Aldous Huxley's Island than a little bit pontificating, so its going to be sort of hard to talk about it as though it had a plot. But it's definitely food for Lost thought. isn't excellent--it's kind of manifesto-ish and moreThe novel is set on the Southeast Asian island of Pala, which is the namesake of the "Pala Ferry" mentioned in the Pearl Station Orientation video and the General Orientation video in Ben's flashback. Its unused dock is where Michael's boat takes off from (and where Jack, Kate and Sawyer are bound, gagged and hooded) at the end of Season 2, and where Sayid and Co. dock their boat at the beginning of Season 3. Still, even with all the action going on around it, (surprise, surprise) it's not entirely clear what the Pala Ferry is...it seems to have taken Dharma members from station to station and possibly from island to island.

Aldous Huxley's Pala is a little bit more clearly defined. The book serves as a corrective to the dreary distopia of Brave New World by presenting a working utopia that benefits from a synthesis of western science (especially medicine) and eastern spirituality (especially Buddhism). We learn about Pala from its inhabitants alongside a British journalist who has been sent there to scope out its oil resources for his boss (hello Widmore?) but who ends up getting pretty enthralled by what the Island has to offer. What is that exactly? Aside from the initial thrill of learning how much the Island inhabitants value tantric yoga, there are also carefully administered magic mushrooms, Mutual Adoption Clubs where children aren't tied to one set of parents for their whole childhood, and shared communal duties, both physical and intellectual, which strengthen all of the society...there's a really nice little jab at Western intellectuals who study one thing to the exclusion of others and become gross little blobs instead of whole people.

Of course there's a little bit of conflict thrown in for good measure...the soon-to-be rightful ruler (of a ruling family that had control over the island since before this utopian period) and his over-bearing mother, aware of the money they can get from selling off Pala's lucrative oil reserves, are about to really ruin things by cutting a deal with a nearby island that has westernized too fast, leaving a huge gap between the haves and have nots. Having something like this to be in opposition to makes the smooth functioning of Pala all the more appealing.

This could be a really great story, I think, but as it stands, it reads more as Huxley's own musings on the ideal society. And hrm..how do I put this? I am a little skeptical. And not only because the book was constantly proposing Buddhism-based alternatives to Western Christian attitudes about the way society should be. I will digress here: it is a noble effort for someone, like Huxley, so concerned with the problems of Western civilization, to offer an alternative, but the fact remains that he is a Western thinker and can't completely explain or understand Buddhism. Anyways, I'm skeptical because I think that any working utopia is going to seem a bit far-fetched. It requires too many people to be in sync with each other, or else it has to be so self-contained (as in the case of this island), that it hardly seems like a viable solution for the rest of the world. Which I guess is okay, if a little sad. Plus, dystopias are just so much more fun!

In the end, Pala's new ruler sells the place out for that all too-tempting oil money which he can use to buy himself happiness, by way of material posessions (like scooters purchased from catalogs). Although I hadn't bought into the Pala utopia wholesale, it's easy to see how depressing it is to give up a mellow and equitable society for industrialization, pollution, and gross economic disparities. But the ending of the book seems to suggest that, though the society was destroyed, it lingered in the hearts and minds of its adherents nonetheless.

So where's Lost in this? The Palan establishment is probably just a teensy bit like Dharma, which has ideals and goals that are intellectual, spiritual, and community-building in nature. Admittedly, its not working as well as Pala was (with folks like Roger assigned to one duty that just pissed them off), but maybe the name was chosen in a spirit of high hopes bythe Dharma Initiative.

Then there's the threat of big oil spoiling the fun. Although it doesn't seem like its going to be Big Oil, the corporations who are threatening to ruin the Lost Island(s) seem to want something, and maybe want to send others in to do it for them. I think its entirely probable that some of the Losties could be unwitting pawns for the Bad Guys who are also capable of being turned to the preferability of Island Life (like the reporter character in Island). At the same time, somebody had an inside man (a native son like Pala's ruler) in Dharma once: Ben. Although of course, the Hostiles were around before Dharma was...nonetheless, the crossing paths of the outsiders accepting a society that they were originally sent to hate, and of the natives betraying it are an important part of the big Lost Puzzle.

All that said, I think it's time to admit that the Others/Dharma/Hostiles/Natives jumble has gotten me so mixed up that the more times I allude to it, the less I know what I'm talking about.
Recently Aurora pointed out to me that I was operating on the assumption that the Hostiles (specifically Richard Alpert) were the good guys. And I said oh yeah, he is pretty evil, and I was embarrassed. But really, I think that the "special properties" of the Island have been protected by something good(?) for some time (as in centuries)...does that mean that there's been a bad around all this time too? Oh, man, I cannot wait for some of the Island mythology. If only for the simple fact that I could chase it around in my head for weeks and never get anywhere on my own.

Finally, in fun Huxley facts from Wikipedia, this was Huxley's last book, written after he was diagnosed with cancer. Near to death, he asked his wife to inject him with LSD, which much like the magic mushrooms in Island, eased his mind in his dying moments. His death got little public mention, though, as he died on the same day as President Kennedy and...get this..C.S. Lewis!
I love C.S. Lewis.

On that note, adios. I'll be dropping by for a short post on The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon soonish. I've started Our Mutual Friend (oof!) and want to finish the RansomTrilogy and talk Lewis a bit. Aurora should be doing a bit on literary and cultural threesomes (um?) and what they can tell us about looking at Jack/Kate/Sawyer. I for one, am looking forward to it.
Bye!

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Rainbow Six or Showing My Pinko Colors, for reals.

I think I confused Tom Clancy with John Grisham, and eagerly picked up this book.
Unfortunately, I am not a White, conservative, deeply heterosexual 35-65 year old man interested in paramilitary secret service members of a similar demographic, their guns, their nemeses, and the innocent women and children that they endeavor to save. And I did not completely admit to the error of my ways until I was about 400 pages into a 700 page book. Oh good Lord. Now don't get me wrong, I like morality plays, and I like stories about the world in peril, and I am not really against maintaining social norms, but Rainbow Six rubbed me the wrong way. We'll discuss.
Rainbow Six was seen on the Swan Hatch bookshelf in 2x03-Orientation.
Lostpedia points out that R6 was published in 1998 so could have come in a supply drop.


Rainbow Six chronicles the founding and early missions of an international counterterrorist organization. Conveniently, our heroes are pure-blooded Americans--ok, one of them is Hispanic- with stalwart values. There's an exciting encounter with plane hijackers in the first chapter, but after that the terrorist incidents they deal with seem predictable and relatively small-- a bank holdup, Marxist idealists holding up some rich dudes Castle, Basques or a close approximation thereof holding hostage sick children at pseudo-Euro-Disney, and finally (horror of horrors!) the provisional IRA taking our heroes wives, one of them pregnant no less, hostage at the hospital they work at. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and the good guys always win with maybe one casualty on their side, and plenty of pontificating on the nature of their Very Important Work. Perhaps the best part of this plot line is how quaintly "terrorism" was defined less than a decade ago, and how exciting the start of the internet age is--some time is taken to explain the wonder of "e-mail" and other computer technologies. Aw.

The other plot, which is interwoven with the counterterrorist one, is a bit more interesting and relevant to our show. Some folks, whose identity eventually becomes clear as a major drug company, abduct some homeless dudes and then some young career women and start testing some deadly virus on them. It is sinister and shrouded in mystery, and sort of fun to read. As it turns out, the culprits are planning to release a virus at the Australia(!) Olympics which would eventually wipe out most of the world's human population. It's sort of ingenius, but their motives, again, are sort of cheesy: They want nature to be returned to healthier balance...some of the members of the organization are even...*gasp*..vegans.

The Rainbow group intervenes in the eleventh hour, of course, and literally saves humanity. Not that I'm not grateful, but really, I'd like to think that the implications of mass plague ( as in The Stand) are more interesting than just the threat of it. Interestingly enough, the tip-off comes from a master terrorist named Popov, who had been coordinating the terrorist incidents in the book as a sort of middleman between the world-annihilating corporation and the terrorist groups. When he realizes who he's really working for, he bolts and saves the day. Although he's a sneaky, sly, amoral Russian, a eye-roll worthy stereotype in many respects, ultimately, he knows where to draw the line. And he was probably the one thing in the book I couldn't predict from chapter to chapter.

So what does this have to do with our show? Some looming threat of bio-terrorism on the broadest scale in one form or another, certainly( there's some intimation of this in the Lost Experience, apparently). Along with that comes the balance between the natural world and the encroachment of man: I don't think LOST comes down for either over the other, but they're definitely in some conflict. Then there's the evil of big corporations (which is sort of a relief in the conclusion of this book after the parade of unpopular political separatists who I'd probably side with over whitey in some situations). What I hestitate to say this book shares with LOST is its world-view. It is so simple and black and white. LOST doesn't approach its storytelling in that way, and doesn't present morals without some nuance. That's not to say that there aren't moral extremes on the show, as in Evil Under The Sun, good and evil do exist and are real. But they can't be taken care of by secret services, at least in the conventional sense.

Here's what I think: the book was in the Swan Hatch, and Kelvin Inman was there (he was sort of a cutie). Kelvin was in Sayid's flashback as a member of the American forces in the Gulf War, and tells Desmond that he was a spy, "but left because '...men followed my orders.'" It's unclear how he came to the Island, and its debatable what his true work there was. His arrival, after the first Gulf War, would also be after the Dharma Purge, and the initiative would be defunct. So, was he a true or misguided Dharma-ite, or was he an Other in Dharma clothing? Oof. I don't know, but a military book read by a military dude on an Island whose nature (both regular and super-type) people struggle to retain control over, seems to make some sense.

So that's it. I don't want to talk about it anymore. And like that, it is out of my life. Read it, if you have tons of time or if you don't feel guilty doing some skimming. It could be a much better story in someone else's hands, since the structure of it doesn't completely stink. Or play the video games. They seem to be pretty popular. And I'll get back to reading!

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