How Ben Controls People: Jacob, Psychology, and the Fountain of Youth
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By HappyAtheist
- How Ben Controls People: Jacob, Psychology, and the Fountain of Youth
- Created: Jun 25, 2007
- Last updated: Aug 13, 2008
- After episode: 3.22: Through The Looking Glass
- Status: Current
- Flag this theory:
The Dharma defecters are a religious cult and the island is their God.
— HappyAtheist
This theory is based on the ideological breakdown I discussed in http://lost-theories.com/theories/2007/jun/04/my-attempt-explain-dharma-hans/.
Ben read the work of B.F. Skinner while a young man in the Dharma Initiative. Why? He grew up among the leftist, idealist Dharma Initiative researchers and studied their psychological experiments in school. He developed an interest in psychology and particularly loved Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B.F. Skinner.
The book’s intense and shares a lot of themes with Lost: society, utopia, behavior, postmodernism, manipulation, mind control, mindf*ck quality it’s all there.
Here’s an editorial summary of the book from amazon.com: In this profound and profoundly controversial work, a landmark of 20th-century thought originally published in 1971, B. F. Skinner makes his definitive statement about humankind and society. Insisting that the problems of the world today can be solved only by dealing much more effectively with human behavior, Skinner argues that our traditional concepts of freedom and dignity must be sharply revised. They have played an important historical role in our struggle against many kinds of tyranny, he acknowledges, but they are now responsible for the futile defense of a presumed free and autonomous individual; they are perpetuating our use of punishment and blocking the development of more effective cultural practices. Basing his arguments on the massive results of the experimental analysis of behavior he pioneered, Skinner rejects traditional explanations of behavior in terms of states of mind, feelings, and other mental attributes in favor of explanations to be sought in the interaction between genetic endowment and personal history. He argues that instead of promoting freedom and dignity as personal attributes, we should direct our attention to the physical and social environments in which people live. It is the environment rather than humankind itself that must be changed if the traditional goals of the struggle for freedom and dignity are to be reached.
Beyond Freedom and Dignity urges us to reexamine the ideals we have taken for granted and to consider the possibility of a radically behaviorist approach to human problems-one that has appeared to some incompatible with those ideals, but which envisions the building of a world in which humankind can attain its greatest possible achievements.
Science vs. Faith
Alpert stopped aging several decades ago. He has been on the island longer, has been afftected by its powers. He was one of the first DI members to arrive on the island. He had always been a scientific man (maybe a doctor), but he got carried away on a wave of marijuana and hippie love when he got to the island, and became an idealist.
After seeing countless pieces of evidence as to the island’s effects on human biology (patients cured impossibly quickly, etc.), he concludes that the island has special powers. He can’t accept this rationally, and he turns to his spiritual friends for guidance. They have all slowly realized that the island has special powers. They break away from the DI in order to defend the integrity of the island, refuse to try to harness its powers, to violate it, and become strident envoronmentalists. The Dharma defecters are religious and the island is their God.
When Alpert sees Ben looking for the vision of his mother in the jungle, his hippified self assumes Ben has special powers, is closely tied to the island, possibly because he was born there. (Alpert simply wasn’t aware of every live birth on the DI compound, because he’d defected several years ago, as many years ago as Ben is old). Alpert tells his fellow worshippers that he’s met a boy with special powers, and they’re very excited. They’re ready to accept a prophet, a seer, a leader to guide them through their mystical journey with the island, to help them build their Temple.
Dude, religious communes with prophets happen all the time. And they’re more widespread than we tend to think (watch Big Love’s sensitive portrayal of the community on HBO).
Jacob has been on the island even longer than Alpert, and this explains his transparency. (Perhaps he came on the Black Rock and is related to the Hanso ancestor who was associated with the Black Rock, according to The Lost Experience.) The islands’ super healing, regenerating energies have that effect on the human body over time. That’s why Jacob is only visible when Locke shines his flashlight on him (http://lostpedia.com/wiki/Jacob).
Alpert and the forest hippies are a hapless bunch who discovered Jacob by accident, and he tries to manipulate them to do right, to be moral, but can barely talk. He is a righteous man, as Ben says. He’s an old-school puritan from back in the day who landed on the island in the 19th century, and his religiousity helps foster the cult-like atmosphere among the ex-DI hippies who are in awe of the island. The discarded, regenerated parts of Jacob’s essence make up the smoke monster and are responsible for its powers of influence (hallucinations, dream journeys). He’s cut off from humankind in some pretty significant ways, but the hippies want to communicate with him, and so they need a priest. They hope Ben will fill the role.
Women can’t give birth because their bodies reject the fetus as a “foreign invador” (http://lostpedia.com/wiki/Pregnancy) and the island has heightened their immune system and regenerative capacities to an incredible degree. (That’s the price of richness: it clogs the arteries, the richer things get, the less viable too. Too much lushness. Compare the final scenes of the Aronoksky flick The Fountain).
Ben, the sociopath, used everything he had learned from B.F. Skinner to easily manipulate and expand the commune that readily accepted his leadership. He’s been playing them like puppets for years now. And essentially created the feared, powerful “he”/”great man” that the producers confirmed is Jacob. Jacob is Ben’s ultimate puppet. But he’s threatening to take on a life of his own via Locke, who can actually hear him. So, it’s not that Ben invented the idea of Jacob, but that he thinks that he’s got him contained (by the gunpowder boundary). Locke messes with that equation.
And the ex DI did accept Locke as a new prophet, also mystically in touch with the island. But Ben did NOT expect Locke to kill his father, thereby fulfilling the prohpecy that deranged and ephemereal Jacob made to the ex-DI during one of the rare moments he was able to communicate with them (through their dreams, perhaps)? Ben did NOT expect Locke to be able to HEAR Jacob.
I see it all so clearly now.
I bet you want some of what I’m smoking.
Don’t forget Skinner’s “Walden Two”. Interesting read.
Very plausible, HA. It’s been a while since you’ve graced us with a dissertation, but it was worth the wait. :-)
I like it, a lot.
Thanks, Prof, I work in spurts. You, on the other hand, amaze me with prolific presence here.
HA: nicely done. I’d like to hear your thoughts on 3 areas of your theory:
1) why does Ben age, but Richard does not?
2) are you saying Ben concocted Jacob as a false idol - BUT somehow Jacob became real? That wasn’t clear to me…
3) what’s going on with an x-ray of a 26yr old woman appearing to be in her 70’s?
This is great. I have not read anything on Skinner. I think I will now. Very interesting theory. The only thing that puzzles me somewhat is the fact that the others really do seem to be looking for some type of leader or special person to give them a higher sense of purpose, or the feeling of special things to come. It seems that the others know so much about the island at times, and at times it seems as if they are truly “lost”, and looking for some sense of direction towards thier purpose or ultimate goal. I agree that Richard may have spread the word when he found Ben in the forrest, that he thought Ben was that special someone that they were looking for. Ok, before this comment gets to long, my point is that it seems as if they are looking for the one. Kinda of like how Morpheus searched for Neo in the Matrix. Now it appears that Richard and the others see something special in Locke. GREAT POST!! +1
Thanks Stip. To answer your questions: 1) Ben met Richard for the first time when he was a boy. Richard had already been on the island for a while, found the fountain of youth and his life had extended. Ben was not in touch with the fountain of youth yet. He began the process of life extension later, when he was already an adult. The same actor played Ben when he killed his father years ago.
2) Jacob is a real force, but Ben only pretends to be intouch with it, and has fabricated Jacob’s personality and actions. Jacob can’t communicate directly with the Others; the Others think Ben can. Lock, significantly, can hear Jacob. Ben will no longer be able pretend his words are Jacob’s.
3) As part of the life extension process, the reproductive organs go into overdrive. A woman is born with only a limited number of eggs; but a man continues to produce sperm throughout his life. As the reproductive organs go into overproduction, women run through their available eggs, while men’s sperm goes into super-production. If you take a sample at this point, the women will have less eggs and a maturing uterus but a man will have a huger than normal sperm count. Eventually, after you’ve spent a really extended period of time on the island, your reproductive organs will be fossilized. It’s the great irony of immortality that you can’t reproduce. This reminds me of Interview with a Vampire: once they’re immortalized, their insides freeze up.
I’m not sure I believe all of this. It’s just one possible version out of the many that Lost makes possible.
Thanks HA. I may have to revise my take on Alpert and Jacob as they are the weak link in my overarching theory.
To answer Stip’s question more fully: yes, i do think that Jacob has communicated with the cult-like followers at some point, in some way. Maybe this is the original source of the prophecy, maybe this is why the followers are on the lookout for “the one”.
I would maintain, however, that Ben has pretended to convey J’s messages to the followers, while actually doing and saying whatever will further his own plans for the followers and the island.