Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The Water of Light

So i promised a post on the water... i hate to say that i am posting this just because i said i would, but what can i say? i got busy, the kids puked a bit, my parents got sick. i had to nurse everyone back to health! But anyway, here are my three cents (accounting for inflation!)



The water in the Temple is channeled from the Water of Light in the cave. i don't know how and i doubt they plan on explaining how. The point is that at some point someone routed it there. Ben was shot by Sayyid back in the 70s, Dharma time-loop. Richard says that he can heal Ben by taking him to the Temple (like Sayyid in season 6), but that he will lose his innocence and will not remember being shot.



Thus, when Sayyid is taken, he is changed in a purely negative way. Ben was innocent so the Utilitarian transformation of the Water made him cold and calculating but not purely evil (believe it or not!). Sayyid, on the other hand, is less socially awkward and more likable person, but his karma is clearly filthier. He not only tortured repeatedly, but his past "redemption" was for his own gain of his loved one, not on any higher principle. He shot an innocent boy rather than attempting to reason with him and avert Ben's future in a non-violent way. That is, violence against innocents is his first reaction in achieving a Utilitarian means to an end. Do remember that Modern Political Philosophy drives a lot of this plot (ala Locke, Rousseau, et al).



We see the same slight glimmer in the Water of Light cave, still present in the scene of Sayyid in the Temple pool. It serves to reason that this Water transformed him - with filthy karma - into the most cut throat embodiment of Utilitarianism... just as it did to Jacob's brother...



Personality-wise, we see in the last episode that Jacob's brother was a likable person... just like Sayyid. But just like Sayyid as well, he operates out of a passionate hatred. He kills out of hate, out of ego, not out of principle. He didn't kill to punish a murderer who killed his innocent mother. He killed only after decades when the same woman prevented him from leaving the Island. He killed because he didn't get his way.

Sayyid too killed out of Ba`ath nationalism, out of employment, out of selfishness. He did not kill out of principle.  They were thus both transformed in the same way. Sayyid's transformation was from contact with the Water's residual properties of the Light. Jacob's brothers was from direct contact with the Light itself. Thus he, like his surrogate mother, was transformed with full potency.

Now the question i leave you with is what happened in the parallel time strain, to this Light and the power thereof? Did it's release benefit all of the characters in some strange disbursement of power and life-blessing? It seemed at first that the show was trying to show that their lives would have been perfect without Jacob, but perhaps it was this disbursement that made everyone's lives a little better? i'm not sure what i think about that.

Let's see what they have for us tonight!

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