Lost: Flashes Before Your Eyes review

I normally try and keep my comments about Lost minimal since this is a show I simply enjoy to watch (as I have noticed my tv habits have digressed into). Last night's Lost episode, Flashes Before Your Eyes, however, went full force into the free will versus determinism debate. Because this is one of the things I enjoyed about my various undergraduate philosophy classes, I will briefly respond to EW's review about the episode.

The question of whether free will or determinism triumphs is multifold and intricate, and I have neither the time nor the background to explore it fully here. For some interesting movies that explore the concept, see the original Bedazzled (with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore), Oh God! (with George Burns and John Denver), Minority Report, the Matrix (but you'd have to sit through the two sequels) and on a certain level, Lady in the Water (although the last two are a bit of a stretch). Obviously there are plenty of books as well. Hume's are probably a good start.

Essentially (and I draw this from what I remember from my undergraduate courses), one school of thought has everyone making free choices and the other (Hume's particularly) suggests that the choices will result in the same consequence (leading to the conclusion that everything is pre-determined). Last night's Lost episode played on this theory a bit by positing the idea of whether someone would make a different choice if he were given a "do over," so to speak. Despite this opportunity, however, a mysterious Oracle (who, as pointed out by Hannah Tucker is the same woman from The Others) guilts this character (Desmond) into making the same choice "to save the world." If anything, the pressure to make the same choice has to skew the result. Why does everyone in the show except for Jack assume everything exists on that island at face value when nothing has given them any indication of such?

What I find more interesting than the way this theory has been presented on the show is how subtle they have done it. If, as the Oracle on the show points out, "the universe has a way of course correcting," it would appear that the show wholehearted embraces the deterministic viewpoint where everything happens for a pre-ordained reason and free will, even when exercised, is a theoretical construct that will not alter the end result. For several reasons which I need not get into here, I disagree, and it will be interesting to see if this determinism theory the writers have put on the table is merely a red herring. (Besides, if Desmond did wake up in the past, he couldn't have changed anything because it had already happened). As such, I stand by my original assumption that Lost carries the same theme as The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

Think of driving to work. Whether you turn on street A or street B doesn't matter if either street eventually takes you to your destination. Determinism would have you believe that you choose one because it is fated that you do so, but even granting you have the free will to take the other path doesn't matter since your destination is the same. I would argue that the choice lies not in deciding which road to choose, but whether you decide to choose to get in your car in the first place. To me, this is the free will, not the choice resulting from that first choice.

The determinism comeback to this point may include an argument that societal mores push you into making the choice to go to work, and any deviation from this choice (e.g, being sick or lazy) doesn't change the fact that you'll eventually go. Or if you choose to do something else, this was predetermined. I submit that this argument begs the free will question. Further, nobody said free will was easy - anyone can choose, at any point, to do something else. The repercussions of choice (for most people) are not world-changing, although sometimes I do wonder about the snowball effect one choice has on someone else's and so forth. That theory, of course, is for another entry on another day.

Tags: abc, lost, bridge of san luis rey, free will, determinism, hume