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Is “Lost” Preparing Us for the Collapse?
One of my favorite mental tools learned from excessive exposure to conspiracy theory is to look at media through the lens of it being used as a technocratic tool to prime populations into having predictable emotional triggers and shared cultural responses to various phenomena as they unfold.
Since we’re talking a lot about the collapse of civilization though, has anybody seen “Lost”? Since it’s such a huge hit, I imagine some people have. But I regret to say that I have not. Or, if it is a media psyop, then I’m happy I have not seen it. I have seen snippets though, as my roomates seem to be watching it a whole hell of a lot on DVD. So I will have to rely on other people’s experiences of the show to be able to fuel a conversation about what - if anything - this show could be seen as doing from a media-conspiracy perspective.
Is it preparing us to re-tribalize into a post-collapse world, and allowing us to work through emotional scenarios before they happen? Secondly - and this has been buzzing around in my head for some time - if humans naturally organize into tribes (and I believe we do), then why do we need to champion this as a viewpoint or prepare a population for it with a television show? Aren’t we all already organized into any number of loose tribes? Don’t you have several you already belong to? Who or what are they?
- Let the World Change You
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- Giants Dance
- Something I’ve Discovered About Fear…
- Exactly the Right Question
- Prev: Heat Death
- Next: Attack & Defense
September 20th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Well I am a highscool kid, so the idea that humans organize into tribes seems obvious to me. I wish it wasn’t as morbidly true. There is always a leader, a power stuggle…. it kinda is too perfect, like they do it on purpose. Especially girls. It pisses me and the 2.5 other thinking people in the school of 3000 off.
I’ve never watched a full episode of Lost, which is wierd, because Lord of the Flies is like my favorite book ever, and I love that sci-fi stuff…. looks like the only non-programed people will be you and me, Tim. haha.
September 20th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
If there’s a leader, it isn’t a tribe. Egalitarianism is one of the defining characteristics of a tribe. If a leader emerges, it becomes a chiefdom. Though I think what you’re talking about is more along the lines of a Big Man, no formalized power.
Under stress, humans normally form tribes. They disregard hierarchy as a luxury that cannot be afforded. Just look at Katrina. If there’s a preparation for collapse that’s needed, it’s not tribalism, but to instill the possibility that life beyond civilization is even possible. People don’t starve for lack of food; they starve for lack of imagination. If Lost is helping spread that much imagination, then they’re doing humanity a far greater service than I ever would have imagined.
September 20th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
That show is just a poor attempt to capitalize on the fear and loathing that rule in our culture.
Being stuck on their goofy island seems better to the viewers and more interesting than their own meaningless life styles, so they tune in .
The show is built around the advertisements. The plots are impossible to unravel. Like modern life, pointless strange events, then strange interpretations.
Prison break is another strange one. It resonates, because the average person has the feeling they are actually in some sort of strange prison.
American television used to be watched all over the world because it had some interesting things to say.
That is no longer the case. American television is not thought of as interesting anymore. Some Americans watch it , beats the hell out of me why. Advertising perhaps.
We do have a corporate created culture. People are awfully gullible to watch nearly anything, if it is promoted enough. Corporations set the tone of culture. They program it.
September 20th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
I would shoot myself before I was forced to survive and coexist with any of the people on that show. I would just drift off to my own island by myself and read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
September 20th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
If there’s a social programming purpose behind the show it’s not too effective since there are as many opinions about the show as there are viewers (which is reason enough to watch it). My 2c:
Lost is the best drama on TV since Twin Peaks and Northern Exposure. The surface story is vague and convoluted. The characters are either too cliche or too strange. But, like TP & NE, the interplay of ideas beneath the surface is remarkable.
It’s worth noting that creator JJ Abrams (sp?) is involved in Alternate Reality Gaming. It seems to me that Lost is a delivery system for the notion that all of our social constructs and philosophies, and possibly physical reality as well, are little more than competing alternate reality games. Or it could be he’s just riffing and all that shit is in there by accident. Whatever, ignore the haters and get Lost. If I’m wrong you can vote me off the island.
(Everything’s a psyop. Running from one is running into the arms of another.)
September 20th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
t.v. is losing it`s cool nature with the advent of hi-def. it becoming more of a hot medium like cinema and as such will become more cinematic in it`s portrails……or die. soap operas and sit-coms will be the first to go, thankfully.
when a medium is cool you have to add so much of your own content to make it work. when a medium becomes hotter you tend to sit back and let the medium do the work.
t.v. as a cool medium is, by it`s nature, subversive. it draws you into the fantasy and you project your beliefs onto the medium to make it work. i can`t watch it. it makes me cringe.
what is a chiefdom, by the way?……….of course tribes have leaders. egalitarianism is an intellectual construct left to university professors paid to spin yarns and proselytise young girls. the tribe is a society led by speakers. the written word fragments the culture of the tribe because the spoken word is now replicable on paper. one doesn`t need to be there to hear the speech……….
the “failure” of literacy is the effect of the new emerging tribalism of the internet. we don`t need to read so much when podcasts and youtube video is becoming more popular. we can see and hear the speaker again so we don`t need to articulate the process through the literate filter.
we have come 500 years since gutenberg……….now we are listening as a tribe again. community is a group of people. it`s what people naturally gravitate to, not out of stress but out of a natural desire to be in groups. we are teams, gangs, clubs and associations.
my teams are in soccer and in business and at starbucks. the rugged individualist is becoming extinct…….and desperately lonely.
September 21st, 2006 at 1:10 am
I have to second unthinkable’s comments on this one. I don’t get sucked into tv-anything too easily, but Lost has managed to win me over. And I started watching it just after Carnivale (an amazing series I hope the makers finish and release on DVD) got cancelled on me, so there were high standards to live up to. Lost really is one of the best dramas on tv.
September 21st, 2006 at 1:51 am
Gotta agree with….ah, whatever.
It’s one of the few shows out there that’s been willing to break away from the usual, nearly fossilized, storyline. If one, or at least I, miss an episode it’s actually apparent that this has happened from watching the effects of plot or character development. Sure, that’s not allways the case. But the fact that it ever happens is surprising. And seeing plot and character development, centered in a mystery that I can’t figure out in the first five minutes, is an amazing sign for TV. And the fact that it’s found such a large audience is actually building up my hope that stations will stop treating the viewers like idiots.
As for the tribal aspect, I think you’re putting effect before cause. People like watching it for the same reason a gorilla will find watching video of other gorillas so interesting. We like to see our own culture at a slightly different angle, skewed and grandiosity overblown enough to become mythic, but still recognizable as validation.
Good, bad, does it matter? Do we have to worry so much about what humans should be, instead of just accepting what the species is and enjoying it for that rather than focusing on what we don’t or can’t have?
September 21st, 2006 at 10:10 am
i’m with unthinkable and brooke — i haven’t followed a television show since i was in junior high and the X files was on… until recently. i am REALLY into LOST. i like watching the characters existing in this weird vacuum wherein the universal laws are slightly “off.” i have always been into that kind of weirdness, ever since i was little kid — i liked to entertain creepy ideas like “what if i came home from school one day and my house was GONE,” etc… stuff that’s really eerie but in a sort of nonsensical way… and LOST appeals to that part of me. it’s basically a “what if the universe unraveled” scenario… the people on the island aren’t just surviving, they’re in a situation where they can’t really count on their REALITY… which adds a whole other weird, arcane, and in my opinion FUN element to the show.
September 21st, 2006 at 10:22 am
i want to add that i suspect that we humans have some kind of built-in desire to operate in a “tribal” setting/system, and that for many of us the sheer massiveness of the world we now live in has become a very depressing and unnatural thing… so i think that the idea of living in this smaller, kind of finite community wherein you are more able to KNOW your place and your purpose is probably appealing to us on a biological level… so maybe that’s why we enjoy seeing this small group of people being forced to live and work together under these weird trying circumstances, because it’s some kind of cellular memory thing and our primitive brains or whatever are living vicariously through the characters. i don’t know. i do know, though, that living like that is actually appealing to me in a weird way. i’m sure i would change my tune if i were actually put in those circumstances, but for whatever reason, the impulse or longing or whatever, does exist in me.
September 21st, 2006 at 10:26 am
If “Lost” is a potential psyop preparing us for the collapse of civilization, then what is “Survivor”? Sure, there are are obvious differences, but the setting and plot share some glaring similarities.
Also, doesn’t this whole theme of “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” seem to run through most so-called “reality shows” in which people are deemed unfit to continue on the show and are voted off? Seems like sort of the same concept to me in a way…without, of course, the more obvious setting distinctions. But the underlying principle (i.e. “the unfit being weeded out”) still seems to be there.
September 21st, 2006 at 10:30 am
the tribal culture will re-emerge alongside technology, medicine, etc. it took 500 years of literate culture to create our modern mechanical society but we are going back to the comfort of community now……….
we think that tribal culture is lived on a floor of dirt. we have floor coverings and entire buildings and cell phones now, and all the technology and robots to build them for us.
September 21st, 2006 at 10:54 am
In my opinion, there’s really no good reason to NOT be planning for a post-collapse civilization. One of the best elucidations I’ve seen of what a post-computer, post-technological civilization might look like is in Vernor Vinge’s book The Peace War. If I remember correctly, the writing is of very high quality….
-k
September 22nd, 2006 at 4:57 pm
More semantic games! There’s no such thing as a human group without a leader. Just doesn’t happen. People are naturally different than one another - different strengths, abilities, drives. Those differences naturally result in social rankings.
What you’re saying is equivalent to saying that it isn’t a wolf pack if it has an alpha male. And by your own definition, then Anthropik is not a tribe either. It is a chiefdom and you are the chief.
September 22nd, 2006 at 5:22 pm
But that’s just it: the programming (if any) wouldn’t be intended to build intellectual consensus among people. It would be intended to program the subconscious into certain patterns.
Hey! Now we’re talking! So what’s the answer?
September 23rd, 2006 at 7:43 am
Of course, how silly of me.
What’s the answer to everything being a psyop?
Live with it. Let the world change you. If you don’t like the result you can always change again.
If your experience of the world doesn’t change you at all, well that’s kind of boring and stale, and I think the fear of brainwashing that’s widely held among the media-literate can lead to intellectual paralysis.
Sometimes I change my mind. Sometimes it’s done for me. Nothing to get too worked up about. It’s just a game.
September 23rd, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Wow! That’s a really awesome way of looking at it!