Man of Science, Man of (Bad) Faith

When one 'takes the red pill' and apparently sees the world for what it is, when one is faced with all the vagaries and vicissitudes of life with no recourse to a heavenly keeper, when one realizes that the responsibility for one's life is squarely on one's own shoulders, when one is assailed with doubts, unsure of one's purpose, and when one is the object of other's projections, both flattering and derogatory - what does one do?

If you're Jack Shepard, you take refuge in a airtight rationalism, obdurately immersing oneself in an almost Puritan-like work ethic.



Although pre-island Jack has not undergone such a dramatic awakening as Neo from The Matrix did, he nevertheless continues to trudge doggedly through his life in an almost Sisyphean manner, moving from one task to the next, in an alternating series of accomplishments and frustrations.

After Neo is liberated from the Matrix, he goes through a period of almost rudderless labor, battling agents, freeing minds from the Matrix; yet while this gives him a temporary sense of purpose and accomplishment, along with a growing confidence in his own abilities, he remains in search of a greater purpose, or at least a possible Archimedean point by which he could gauge his life's work, a way of knowing if he's on the right path - if there even is such a path.

And Jack could be considered to have a somewhat anti-Existentialist outlook on life. From a Sartrean Existentialist perspective, someone who lives life through an exclusively rationalistic lens could be said to be acting in 'bad faith'; that is, using rationality as a means of assuaging one's existential anxiety and dread betrays an essential (and possibly unconscious) fear of being in the world.

Jack doesn't seem to have an overt fear of being in the world, but one senses that fear, or sees a shadow of that fear, in Jack's at times overly obstinate courses of action - a kind of compensation, if you will. What did Jung say, fanaticism is always a sign of repressed doubt? Jack's rationality could be seen as an attempt to impose order and normalcy on phenomena that are fundamentally irrational - like the idea of pushing a button every 108 minutes.

But by limiting oneself to apperceiving the world's phenomena through a strictly rational lens in an attempt to suppress one's feelings of anxiety and dread, one is prevented from finding meaning in a meaningless world. Additionally, one thereby confines oneself to the mundane and the banal, relinquishing one's claim to true freedom in the process. This, in turn, opens oneself up to being possessed by the 'look of the other', in Sartre's words; that is to say, to take on the projection of other's subjectivity where one's sense of oneself, one's sense of personal identity, is effectively controlled and defined by what others think.

That is precisely what has characterized Jack's life, both pre-island and on-island. Pre-island Jack is seemingly repeatedly told by his father that he "doesn't have what it takes". On-island Jack is repeatedly seen as a savior and a leader, not unlike Neo in The Matrix mythology. The true challenge for Jack lies not in putting out fires and 'fixing things', as Ben condescendingly asserts in the Season 3 finale, but in transcending other people's views of himself, and becoming the person he chooses to be, given the talents and resources he has.

Will Jack look inside himself and find his own authentic life, divested of the projections of countless others in his life? Has he already endured his 'dark night of the soul'?



Or will he continue to play the role which others (and possibly the Others) have prescribed for him? Or will he continue to look somewhere else, outside himself?



Or will he fall prey to the kind of despair to which one of Kierkegaard's characters had fallen:

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it, why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

Jack may have secured salvation for the survivors (or he may not have):



But has he secured it for himself? Can he? Can he finally embrace existence and disentangle himself from everyone else's expectations, desires and wishes, and be born anew, the way Locke seemingly has been?

Lost