ROFLMMFAO.

Your Jedi mind-tricks will not work on my, friend!

And “back on course” implies there is a “correct path” by connotation.

Do you think they let cynics in Heaven? If not, since I know there is no Hell – where will I go!!!

Passion!

The eye of the beholder, my friend, eye of the beholder.

Because I contest does not make me a terrorist (paraphrase from “Ten Things I Hate About You adapted from “The Taming of the Shrew”).

I’m not sure the Island is about eternal life or not. We have seen many people come and go, only Alpert seems anything close to eternal since it’s obvious everyone else seems to age off-Island. We can’t know that Jack is meant to be Alpert-like or someone just meant to resolve the issues around the Island (which we still don’t know for certain).

All for redemption, though. But what would Hurly’s redemption be – to accept good fortune, not see everything good as a potential curse?

Even hope Ben Bad Bad Ben finds his salvation and redeems himself.

But it is through Literature – and Lost is just that – that one is able to reach the multitudes (sorry, ‘masses’ is a word for collectivists and not in my vocabulary)!

If we can learn that yes, we are all connected but individuals essential to that connection, then great.

All fiction should be this, at the minimum. Seem deeper than others, obviously. Some more consistent than others, yes. All a piece of the Universal that connects with the reader, gives some impact, some catharsis!

Lost is probably like nothing else on television before it, one complete story that contains many small one, all connected.

Complete Universal Truth.

That’s great storytelling. It brings an emotional response and makes you think. about things differently.

And maybe, just maybe, you begin to appreciate that bigger picture around you that you are, in fact part of.

Still, I do believe he had every right to that post. I don’t think he was telling me not to write it, just that I stepped over the boundaries, and in doing so, in his eyes, the other things I was writing about that may have made sense, now seemed to have been tainted.

Did you read the entire article, particularly the last few lines? Your comments were unfounded and really against the whole spirit of this article.

We believe in ideas not things. It’s the ideas that Lost weaves into the story that I think Marc is talking about not the show itself. Those same ideas were around long before literature and people have been believing in them since.

There’s no need to post something if your basically saying don’t write the article I am posting about. Unless its just so we know you are a well read English major.

Thanks for your compliments and critiques. I also appreciate your sharing how “Lost” and literature have added value to your life.

I guess my writing does push the limits from time to time. I do not mean to offend, however. While the benefit of doing this short column allows me to reach a new audience, the downside is that, it’s only a short column, and sometimes the meaning of what I’m writing can be misinterpreted, or even, well…lost. I have a feeling that if you and I were to sit down with a beer and have a long discussion about what I really mean with the Lost as religion thing, while you might not agree, I think you would see that the notion isn’t quite as disrespectful as it might appear.

I agree that I have trouble keeping things in perspective, because I think my perspective is a bit skewed from most. I am really looking at this from a much bigger picture. A picture where the wisdom of every religion is correct, and no one religion is the best. I think that life is the best teaching tool and that there are lessons to be learned from a leaf on a tree, a book, a movie, and any religion or spiritual practice.

As someone who is obviously well read, I’m sure you would agree that I wouldn’t be much of a writer, if I curbed my thoughts because they might offend. Just about anything worth saying will offend someone. I do my best to remain objective and to not seem like my word is better than anyone else’s. Still, I hope you will continue to read my columns and point out comments that you like, and others that you didn’t. While it may not keep my writing in perspective, it may keep it from becoming unrecognizable. And that wouldn’t be valuable to anyone.

I’m not sure how you are getting communism from my observation that banks that were said to be too big to fail, have. This very statement is all over the news. The lessons are not that we shouldn’t have money and banks, the lessons is that if we base our society on greed and value materialism above all else, that society will fail. That’s not communism, that’s world history. I’m not advocating that no one should own property or material possessions, I’m just saying that if we horde them all, we will be made to see that our attachments amount to nothing.

Concerning the “correct path,” I’m unclear as to why you put that in quotes because I never used that term. I would agree that there is no one correct path. I just calls them as I sees them Smitty. I’m not trying to tell anyone how to live there lives. I offer my observations and if they feel right, go with them, if not, take what works (if anything) and reject the rest. Each of us has their own truth, and yes, even that is simply my opinion.

Concerning cynicism, and I’m assuming you’re commenting about my response to your post last week, I just see it as giving up our energy to what we don’t want. Cynicism is basically complaining with a sense of humor. From my experience, positive people tend to have good things happen to them, and negative people tend to have negative things happen to them. So if you want to be cynical, go ahead. You are only cheating yourself. If you don’t like things about the world, do something about it–start a channel on YouTube, have a blog, write your congressman, start a club, do something. But if you are just gonna be cynical, nothing will change.

I love your columns. They are full of tons of insight into how myths effect culture; you’re channeling Joseph Campbell a bit. However, I think you took it a bit too far in this post. Your exigesis about the numbers and interpretation of the title was excellent, but once you started claiming that LOST could almost serve as a religion, you lost me.

As an English teacher, and former English major, literature has played an important role in my life. I have learned as much from the lives of literary characters as I learned from my parents, and from my church. LOST falls into the category as well. It provides an amazing buffet of food-for-thought. Each episode–even the crummy ones–are filled with allusions, grandiose ideas, and tons of beautiful ambiguity that just begs to be discussed. But as with my favorite books, I can’t look at LOST as anything more than amazing literature. Certainly we can learn from it, but believe in it? Hardly.

Now, maybe you were being a bit cheeky. Overdramatizing a bit. And if so, the embarrassment is mine. For all the incredible work you’re doing, though, try to keep it in perspective.

The one resurrected here, if that is truly a theme of the show (I think “redeemed” more appropriate) would be Jack. Back into the vicious cycle, eyes opening again, this time filled with happy relief that he has a destiny. That Jack is The Man here, not Ben and certainly not John, is the fact that he has some still-mysterious family connection to the Island through his father Christian. It’s clear the Island favors the family, with Claire and Aaron and maybe even Grandpa (who I suggested in the live chat was actually Jack – an idea lifted [without credit?] by our host).

Communism is still communism – put all the “New Age” spin you want on it.

“The correct path.” Whose path would that be? Yours? Says who.

Oh, wait, certainly cynicism not allowed in the New Age.