Sociology, Social Organization, and Sociopaths

In an era of unrelenting globalization, of the strengthening and expansion of the complex web of social, economic, cultural and political interactions, it seems that humanity has always existed in this way. But the history of the human species could really be said to be the history of social organization: what is the best way to organize society?

Now, I'm no anthropologist - or even a sociologist - so this post will be about drawing fairly general, and almost superficial, parallels between the world of L O S T and the milestones throughout the history of the world; more specifically, the human world. Perhaps we should begin with a sketch of human history from the time of our hunter-gatherer epoch. Before that, things are a little murky - at least for me!

A hunter-gatherer society - if it could be called a society - is one where the members rely for subsistence on the near-constant foraging for edible plants and vegetables and the hunting of various animals for protein. Modern humans would call this 'living hand to mouth' or 'paycheck to paycheck', so to speak. Hunter-gatherer societies were generally small, probably only consisting of less than 100 persons closely related. This very accurately describes our Losties, at least before they found the Swan Hatch and all of its modern provisions! Although after Hurley distributed the spoils, they seemed to have reverted back to foraging and hunting to some extent.



Hunter-gatherer groups were generally non-hierarchical, egalitarian social structures. With our Losties, Jack may be the de facto leader of the group, but generally they have adopted a 'treat everyone as equal' philosophy, distributing Nature's bounty as equally as possible. The one exception is the anomaly of Sawyer. He's got more of the Ayn Rand-ian ethic of enlightened self-interest.

The next major step in the evolution of human society was the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals. This effectively ended the previously nomadic lifestyle of the hunter-gatherers. The development of this type of subsistence led naturally to a more organized type of social organization; namely, settled villages with more formalized rules for social interaction. This seems to relate well to the Others, at least in their confiscation of the previously occupied Dharma Initiative barracks. We saw at the Flame Station that Mikhail apparently kept chickens and cows.



The rise of agriculture and the domestication of animals allowed for larger and larger villages; and with the concomitant development of more and more advanced technology, this eventually led to States and Nations, which we still have to the present day - to present a very compressed summation of thousands of years!

But a more interesting comparison is between the Losties almost communist approach to organizing their 'society', to the Other's top-down, dictatorial approach to theirs. We now know that the top dog in the hierarchy is Jacob, who gives directions to Ben:

Ben: There's something you should know, John, before we go. Whether or not you think he's the Wizard of Oz, I can assure you that Jacob is very, very real. And we're gonna go see him, and he's not going to like it. In fact, I have a feeling he's going to be very angry. And that's why my hand was shaking; because he's not a man you go and see. This is a man that summons you.

But Ben is ostensibly the dictatorial leader of the Others. He has power over and directs Tom, Richard, Juliet; and he can stay Juliet's execution, even from the operating table.



A telling example, similar to Saddam Hussein's reign, is when he tells Locke about the illusion he needs to maintain for 'his people', and the tenuousness of his claim to power:

Ben: Well, get this: there I was, shaking hands with Jack and thinking I'd give almost anything to come up with a way to stop him from leaving, because to let him go would be a sign of weakness, of failure, of defeat. People would see that. They would know it. And that, John, would be the end of me. But to kill him - that would be cheating, because my people also heard me make a promise, and to break my word - that would be the end of me, too.

Ben is even quick to order the deaths of Bonnie and Greta in the Looking Glass Station, as well as almost sacrificing Juliet when Jack flooded the Hydra station. Clearly, this type of perceived ruthless behavior causes mistrust and division within Ben's community, as Juliet demonstrated when she took the risk of confiding in Jack:



Unless a dictator can maintain total control, he is liable to coups and assassinations. Under a dictatorship, the people suffer and revolt, and the dictator himself is under constant pressure and anxiety to maintain his stranglehold on power and manipulation.

On the flip side, a more communal or communist-type of approach ostensibly creates an atmosphere of egalitarianism. Hurley - and even Nikki and Paulo - represent this kind of approach to social organization. And even though Jack is the de facto leader - albeit reluctantly - he does try to treat everyone equally and magnanimously. This may be partly due to his reluctance to assert his dominance over the other Losties.

And a communal or communist-type of social organization is best described by the Marxist slogan of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." I'm using the word 'communist' with a lower-case 'c' instead of an upper-case 'C' to distinguish between the philosophy behind communism and the political animal it became under the Soviets.

I should also point out that Patchy's (or the "one-eyed maniac", in Charlie's words) namesake, the anarchist philosopher Mikhail Bakunin, had this to say about the nature of communism:

[The Marxists] maintain that only a dictatorship - their dictatorship, of course - can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can only be created by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people, and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up.

This characterization could really describe both the Other's organization and the Losties'. The pre-Ben Others might have organized themselves in a communist-type of community, and when Ben came along he instituted his own dictatorship.



We have yet to find out just how the "island's original inhabitants" organized themselves, but I'll stick to this hypothesis for now.

Likewise, we've seen several instances in the Losties' camp where discontent and grumblings over Jack's leadership have reared their respective ugly heads. But clearly Jack is a much more magnanimous leader than Ben, and he never resorts to physical violence - or even Machiavellian machinations. Though one could argue that he is becoming increasingly 'close to the vest', especially with his questionable partnership with former Other, Juliet.



But one could argue that Jack's apparent manipulations - or temporary secrets - are ultimately for the good of the group; whereas Ben's manipulations have seemed to benefit mostly Ben. Although in my previous post analyzing Ben's motivations, I noted that Ben may in fact have the interests of the island in mind, and it's been hinted that the island may in fact be the only thing standing in the way of the total extermination of the human race. But we have yet to discover if that is true.

So, in the world of L O S T, things aren't as clear cut as we would like them to be. I suppose that's what makes for good drama.

And in Through the Looking Glass, I think we may have - or at least may plausibly speculate - that there may be a merging of both camps - the Losties and the Others - in order to fight what Ben called "forces stronger than anything it's had to deal with in many, many years."

And if this consolidation happens, that opens up an entirely new can of worms in terms of social organization, hierarchy, and group dynamics. Not only will this new group have to deal with these issues, but they will still have to deal with the sociopaths within their respective contingents, and also with whatever these outside "forces" ultimately turn out to be.

Will this new group, if it does come into being, be able to not only coexist but marshal it's collective forces to repel this new sinister threat, the way the United States and the Afghani mujahideen attempted to do against the Soviets? Will they be able to coalesce into a harmonious society if they do in fact succeed in keeping these sinister forces at bay?

The new season will surely be rife with possibilities since the conclusion of this past season and its cliffhanger, and the introduction of a new plot device - the flash-forward.









Lost