Well, the new season of LOST is finally here. Given last season's finale, I thought it would be interesting to explore the nature of sacrifice.
Many thinkers throughout the ages have discussed the phenomenon of sacrifice. I will be discussing the nature of sacrifice from a Nietzschean perspective. My thesaurus defines sacrifice as "an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy."
I think most people who aren't philosophers or linguists tend to classify the term sacrifice into two kinds: the kind as defined by my thesaurus above, and a kind that could be called "self-less" sacrifice. But I think that an easy bifurcation of this term, as well as other dichotomies like "good" and "evil", doesn't do the term justice. I think the phenomenon of sacrifice is more nuanced and that there are degrees of sacrifice.
First, let's discuss what may be called Charlie's "ultimate" sacrifice: risking (and ultimately giving) his life for the sake of our Losties; but primarily Claire.
Clearly, Charlie was prepared to sacrifice his life because of his love for Claire (remember, he was motivated to do this because Desmond told him that if he didn't, Claire wouldn't be rescued). Many if not most people believe that love is unconditional - or at least self-less. But is it? We all like to think so, but let's see what Nietzsche had to say* about it:
"Our pleasure in ourselves tries to maintain itself by again and again changing something new into ourselves; that is what possession means. When we see somebody suffer, we like to exploit this opportunity to take possession of him; those who become his benefactors and pity him, for example, do this and call the lust for new possession that he awakens in them "love"; and the pleasure they feel is comparable to that aroused by the prospect of a new conquest."
In the paragraph immediately preceding the one quoted above, Nietzsche presents the stark contrast of "avarice" versus "love," where avarice is a sort of wanton greed and love is something generous and more sublime. But the point Nietzsche is trying to make in this quote is that one derives a certain pleasure from helping someone in need, someone who is suffering. It makes us feel good to do nice things. If it made us feel horrible to do those things, if there wasn't even an ounce of pleasure or satisfaction, I don't think we would do them.
Nietzsche was as much a psychologist as he was a philosopher, and in other places he talks about how we humans are "knowers who are unknown to themselves"; which basically means that many times we have reasons for action that are not in accord with the true reasons behind our actions. It's almost a Freudian view. We are adept at deceiving ourselves.
But the kind of love Nietzsche mentioned in that quote isn't the primary kind of love that motivated Charlie. Again, love can be thought of as a coarse spectrum or continuum, going from lecherous lust, to romantic love (a mix of the sexual and affectionate impulses), to platonic love (admiring and intimate, but not necessarily sexual). Nietzsche is describing all three of these (and would call both romantic love and platonic love sublimated versions of the sexual instinct) when he says:
"Sexual love betrays itself most clearly as a lust for possession: the lover desires unconditional and sole possession of the person for whom he longs; he desires equally unconditional power over the soul and over the body of the beloved; he alone wants to be loved and desires to live and rule in the other soul as supreme and supremely desirable. If one considers that this means nothing less than excluding the whole world from a precious good, from happiness and enjoyment; if one considers that the lover aims at the impoverishment and deprivation of all competitors and would like to become the dragon guarding his golden hoard as the most inconsiderate and selfish of all "conquerors" and exploiters; if one considers, finally, that to the lover himself the whole rest of the world appears indifferent, pale, worthless, and he is prepared to make any sacrifice, to disturb any order, to subordinate all other interests - then one comes to feel genuine amazement that this wild avarice and injustice of sexual love has been glorified and deified in all ages - indeed, that this love has furnished the concept of love as the opposite of egoism while it actually may be the most ingenuous expression of egoism."
Now, Nietzsche was definitely known for his frequent overkill, and it certainly offends our modern taste to equate love with egoism, but I think he's right - to a point. Let's look at Charlie again.
Charlie definitely wanted to possess Claire's love in the sense used above. Remember, he was jealous when he noticed that Locke was "stealing" some of Claire's attention away from him - jealous to the point of making a public embarrassment of Locke. Additionally, Charlie overcame his heroin addiction primarily as a result of his love for Claire.
But what was the nature of that overcoming and that love? It's undoubtedly a great good that a person like Charlie is able to overcome an addiction; but he gave up one possession (the pleasure derived from the opiate) in the hope of acquiring another: Claire's love.
But what about Charlie's ultimate sacrifice at the end of Season 3?
We could say a number of things, since we don't know what exactly is going on inside of Charlie's head (thanks to Darlton), or even any other human being's head! Speculation runs rampant. But let's have a try at educated speculation.
We could say that since Desmond told Charlie that his flashes are jigsaw puzzle-like, and that the picture can change, that maybe Charlie is a betting man and was betting that Desmond wasn't seeing clearly, or was simply wrong this time.
Or maybe he was thinking that making a go at a life with Claire, which of course contains the possibility of failure, disappointment, and depression - and therefore a possible relapse into drug addiction - would just be too difficult, too great a test for his mettle, and if he could end on a "high note" (remember the episode titled "Greatest Hits"?), he would at least have the satisfaction of knowing, before he died, that he would be remembered and revered by Claire and the rest of the Losties as an admirable hero. (Of course, that still remains to be seen, given the fact that we don't yet know what Naomi's people want with the Island.)
If Charlie derived no pleasure from Claire's love; if he derived no pleasure or satisfaction from knowing that amongst his island community he would be remembered as a hero; then what would be his motivation for sacrificing himself? What would be his reason(s) for action? Have you ever heard of the "BDI" formula? It's short for Beliefs plus Desires equals Intention (or you could say Intentional Action). Working backwards: one's actions are the result of one's desires; and one's desires are based on one's beliefs. For example, I drive down to Starbucks because I desire a coffee, and I believe I can get one there.
So Charlie swam down to The Looking Glass station because he desired to help Claire and his friends by securing their safety and returning them to their lives of normalcy.
Charlie did this because he believed that doing so would in fact secure the rescue he sought. If Charlie didn't desire rescue for anyone, and/or he didn't believe that turning off the jamming equipment in The Looking Glass would secure that rescue, then he wouldn't have swum down there.
But Charlie's sacrifice at the end of Season 3 still seems different to us. When he surfaced in the moon pool to discover that it wasn't flooded, he assumed Desmond's vision was inaccurate and that he wasn't going to die. But once he was captured and tenderly interrogated by Bonnie and Greta, and he saw the flashing yellow light and the jamming equipment, he told the nice Other ladies that he was ready to die.
And even after disabling the jamming equipment and receiving the transmission from Penny and mumbled, "So much for Fate," he was still willing to sacrifice his life for Claire - and now Desmond, who would most certainly have died in the moon pool - after Patchy pressed a grenade up to the portal window.
But can we say that Charlie's reasons for action were now categorically different than those Nietzsche talked about? Could we say that the initial shock of hearing he's going to die gradually faded to the point where he was in fact ready to die? Think about it: if someone came up to you on the street and said you were going to die in 10 seconds, you would be horrified and panicked. However, if you were on death row, and had time to get your affairs in order and make peace with your Maker, you would be more psychologically prepared for your impending non-existence.
Could it be that once this thought worked its way into Charlie so deeply that it became part of his motivational set - his character - even if it was now disconnected from its source? Can we call the fact of desiring the safety and salvation of a loved one a truly self-less act? And if we could, would that make it somehow more valuable or admirable? If it does, then why?
But we could argue that the original impetus was a selfish - or at least a self-interested - motivation. Does an action's value increase as the nature of the motivation for that action changes from selfish to something approaching neutral? If so, why? Does the concept of a self-less act even make sense? Are we simply deluding ourselves again?
Regardless, this analysis doesn't have to demean or devalue Charlie's sacrifice. The sacrifice still took place; and both Charlie and Claire - and all the other Losties - get something in return. In some ways you could call it a win-win-win situation: Charlie's last thought - that he will be remembered as a hero - is a positive one; the Losties (presumably) get rescued; and Claire at least gets to believe that Charlie was not only a hero, but loved her enough to sacrifice his life for her well-being.
I ended up spending more time on Charlie than I had anticipated, so I'll analyze other characters in a subsequent post...
* All Nietzsche quotes are from his book, The Gay Science.
Lost, Charlie Pace
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