At the end of my last column, I asked whether the “variable” would prove to be an event that could change everything. The one thing that could have a domino effect on the outcomes of every event that followed. I wondered if this changeable event is what Ben and Widmore have been fighting for control of. After watching “The Variable,” I have to say “yes,” this is what the term is referring to. However, I’m still not so sure whether the variable will actually vary anything according to the mythology of the show.
For diehard Lost fans (aka you and me), “The Variable” didn’t really offer anything we didn’t already know or suspect. Eloise Hawking admits to being Daniel’s mum. Okay, we knew that. Charles Widmore claims to be Daniel’s father. Okay, most of us suspected that. Daniel reveals that the young Other named Ellie who he’d met on the island in the 1950s is, in fact, his mother Eloise. Yeah, we were all pretty much taking that one for granted. The mystery that wasn’t answered however, is how the strapping and attractive Widmore and blonde-haired, blue-eyed Hawking produced a scraggly, dark-haired, goofy guy named Faraday?
Even if we suspend disbelief for the casting mismatch, where the heck did the name come from? Was Daniel named for Michael Faraday, the British physicist known for his work with electromagnetism? In fact, since Widmore has acknowledged that John Locke was named for a philosopher, does that mean all the characters who share names with famous people were given those names for a reason? We had always assumed that the character names were just little hints of the writers, but now it’s beginning to seem like the reasoning may be more integral to the plot. Are Daniel Faraday, John Locke/Jeremy Bentham, Mikhail Bakunin, Danielle Rousseau, Charlotte Staples Lewis, and the rest just players in some little game? Are they pawns that can be sacrificed for a desired outcome? Or are they variables whose actions can directly affect the outcome of the fate of the world? While Lost is hinting at all three possibilities, from a mythological perspective, it is the latter option that has the most relevance for our real lives.
The “variable,” as Daniel reveals in this episode, is “us.” Us, as in the viewers—people! “We think, we reason, we make choices, we have free will,” he goes on to say. “We can change our destiny.” Personally, I feel that you can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to view time as a straight line that doesn’t allow for paradoxes and that “whatever happened, happened,” then destiny is set in stone. However, if you look at time as I do—as an infinite number of possibilities 
and that we “jump” into the one our mind is attracting, then yes, I believe we can change our path. All we have to do is change our mind. While this is admittedly easier said than done, the repercussions either way go way beyond the fate of one person. As Lost shows us, we are all connected. For this reason, the choices we make not only affect our lives but the fate of the entire world.
Every single day of our lives, we make choices based upon our personal interpretation of our experiences. Most of the time we make choices to avoid pain and gain pleasure. And usually we make choices that are more likely to benefit us in the short term, than the long term. The reason is that the long-term choices are usually more challenging and less certain than the short term ones. With every variable that life throws at us, we can choose to take the easy path and do what we want, or take the more challenging path and grow ourselves so that we are more likely to succeed at our destiny. Unfortunately, since most of us have taken the easy way out over the last several decades, the result is the rather crappy scenario we must all deal with right now.
Think of each person on the planet as a gear in a huge universal clock. If just one gear doesn’t do its job, it messes up the entire mechanism. Conversely, the more gears that grow themselves, the easier it will be to get the mechanism to flow smoothly. Viewed from this perspective, every single life is important in effecting the fate of the world. And the more people that know this, the quicker we can make a difference. The more people who step up and challenge themselves, the more likely we will benefit as a society. And will all those who step up be personally rewarded? Not in the material sense. These challenges will require sacrifice.
As a young child, Faraday wanted to play music, but his mother insisted that his gift was science and that this was the path to his destiny. So, Faraday gave up music for physics which has seemingly resulted in his death—death at the hands of his mother. Why would his own mother, who was apparently aware 
of this tragic outcome, point him directly towards it? She must believe that Daniel’s sacrifice is for a much greater good. That his death was not in vain. That he sacrificed his love of music, his romantic relationships, his mind, and ultimately his life for a reason.
Mythologically speaking, the cherubic Ms. Hawking represents our guardian angel or fairy godmother. She is our gut instinct that guides us on our path for better or worse. It remains to be seen why Daniel’s scientific contributions were so important to the fate of the world that they were seen as more important than his own life. I do not believe that the message here is that we are all doomed, or that all our work will be for nothing. Instead, the message seems to be that we are all going to have to make sacrifices if we want our world to move forward.
Right now, almost all of us are being forced to make sacrifices because we haven’t volunteered to make enough on our own accord. Many of us have been greedy but because of the recent economic downfall we now must learn to be more fiscally responsible and less materialistic. Many of us have inadvertently abused our planet but because of severe climate change, we now must reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and move towards renewable sources of energy. Had we stepped up to these challenges in the sixties and seventies when they were first presented to us, we wouldn’t be in this predicament right now. If only we had chosen mutual respect and spirituality over the excesses of the “me” generation, what kind of world would we live in now? What if we could go back in time and prevent the assassination of Martin Luther King or Robert Kennedy? Or somehow convince the world to change? Could we affect the outcome, or would the world have simply course corrected because it was our fate to learn the hard way?
Regardless of whether or not we could change the past, because we were selfish in recent times, now, we must pay. Since so many gears in our universal clock didn’t grow themselves, it’s now going to take much more effort from all of us to get this clock ticking properly again. The lesson we’ve all hopefully learned is that when given a choice in life, we should choose the more challenging path—the one that will enable us to grow. We should be proactive, make sacrifices, and choose to take a leap of faith because if we don’t, the universe will choose for us. It’s the sacrifice “the island” demands.
While I believe that we do have control over the outcome of our lives and, through our connections, the path of the world, I’m not sure yet if Lost is on the same wavelength. It seems to me that this variable is what Ben and Widmore are fighting about. Is Ben one of the good guys? Is Bram on the team that’s going to win? Does the island “course correct” to ensure a certain fate? If the variable can be changed, Lost’s message is that any one of us can affect the fate of the world. However, if it turns out that whatever happened, happened and dead is dead, the message is that we’re all just pawns in some big, and probably sick, game. Since I also believe that the media channels real messages and Lost in particular has tapped into some pretty big truths, it isn’t just the fate of Lost’s characters that will be decided in the season’s final episodes. It’s ours. Can we as humans change the path that the world is going? Do we have any say in our ultimate destiny? Tune in to Lost to find out.
Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers a simple solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page.
The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.
24 Responses to “Marc Oromaner’s Lost In Myth: “The Variable”—Choosing to Sacrifice For the Sake of the Island”
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Excellent article as always, Marc! I think that based on your assertion that media channels real life, the “whatever, happened/dead is dead” approach to Lost’s endgame would be kind of pessimistic, rather than enlightening for us viewers. So I still have hopes that Daniel’s first point of view about events in time being unchangeable was a big red herring to cause a juicy debate among us fans (Hurleys versus Mileses). Keep us interested with your fascinating insights.
With respect to Daniel’s name, was he named after himself? If he introduces himself to his mother prior to his own birth, then his name is already pre-determined, somehow…..
If I remember right, he didn’t say his name. Just that he was her son. However, she might’ve read the notebook if it was on him and gotten the name from there. That’d be a paradox, me thinks.
the first time they met, in the 50s, he introduces himself to ellie as daniel faraday.
Don’t we think he must have been born already by 1977? Especially if we suspect that the Incident will be the reason that women can’t successfully have children anymore on the island? yes he was the youngest graduate of the doctoral program but he should be at least a tweak older than 19 when Desmond visits him at Oxford in 1996, no? It does not explan why his last name is Faraday however.
In my opinion, Destiny and Free will are no debatable concepts, and certainly not mutually exclusive. And that is what most people fail to notice. In the real world, we can always say Destiny exists, because everything can be tagged as being pre-ordained… not by an intelligent super-entity… but by causality. I think we can all agree that to every cause, there is one effect, and that effect is the cause of another effect, and so on. Everything is set in stone already. Even our very decisions are the effects of some cause. We can say, without shade of a doubt, that everything is predestined to happen in this endless chain of events we call Destiny.
BUT…
… it… doesn’t… matter.
It doesn’t matter because we have no way to know the details of the future actions, and that’s why you lack the power to negate future possibilities. If you can’t really know the future, if you can’t know what future events are the components of that chain we call Destiny… then all we have is our decision-making process. All we have is free will. Yes, even free will have causes… psychological, physical, etc. But we’re just enjoying the ride. And we need to carefully think through our choices, because we don’t know what’s going to happen. Easy as that.
The problem is that some people, in the real world, believes in future-predicting systems. Like Astrology, for example. I’m a confess ex-skeptic who was converted to astrology. Serious astrology, not magazine horoscopes. And if you believe in it, like I do, then you believe in both destiny AND free will. Because astrology doesn’t give you every single detail of what life has in store for you… it only predicts the weather… the influences that will affect you, both from within your psychology and from the conditions surrounding you.
Think of it as a little sails boat in the ocean. A very strong wind may be blowing. But you don’t have to go in the direction of the wind if you don’t want to. You can set the sails in another direction, and maybe you can row. It depends on the strenght of the wind, of course. Sometimes you can’t fight it. Sometimes it’s too strong. Sometimes the circumstances in your life are too difficult to change. Sometimes it is out of your power and reach. You can’t fool yourself thinking otherwise. Real Freedom is the ability of doing things, and for that you need Power, or Favorable Circumstances.
Strengh to row and skill to control the saild… or favorable wind.
That’s what I believe Life is about.
LOST is about such a scenario. Some people got back in time and that gave them certain foreknowledge. They don’t know all the details, but they know some things, and of course they want to try to exercise power and change future events. But they can’t. It wouldn’t make any sense if they could. It would be a stupid paradox. So far, they’ve been trying to do it without success, and they’re own lack of knowledge is constantly And they’re being unable to change things.
But if they can… if they can the very rules of Universe are negated, and nothing works anymore.
If they can, then God helps them all.
In our world… in our world it’s the same thing. We may know some details about the future, but we don’t know them all. And we’re not supposed to. All we have to do is KNOW, for sure, that Destiny DOES exist…. and not care at all about it. It’s our choices what shapes that destiny, and we have the power to change most things, not only in our lives, but also in the world. The question is if we are willing to do what it’s necessary. The question is if we are willing to sacrifice what needs to be sacrificed to achieve our dreams.
Sometimes it’s not worthy. Sometimes it is. And Destiny has nothing to do with it. It doesn’t have anything to do with anything.
I do believe that there can be both fate and freedom of choice. I wrote a bit about my perspective on that here: http://www.docarzt.com/lost/marc-oromaners-lost-in-myth-lost-on-fate-versus-freedom-of-choice/
I also get what you are saying about how they can both exist within the non-paradoxical approach to time travel: because we don’t know what’s supposed to happen, we are choosing the events that ultimately will happen. I spoke about this perspective as well in that column. Ultimately however, I think the main mythological interpretation of this non-paradoxical, “whatever happened, happened,” approach, is favoring fate much more over freedom. The theme is that something has to happen, and you are going to either cause it, or be unable to prevent it.
From the little I understand about quantum physics, I side with the multiverse or many worlds theory. So, I actually don’t believe in this non-paradoxical approach to time simply because I do not believe in one single timeline. I believe that time is an illusion. It is just one person’s experience of all the events they have experienced within the timeline they currently exist in. In other words, I believe that every possible scenario that could ever exist is happening right now, and wherever our minds go, that is the one we leap into.
It’s kind of like a video game. A character can have an adventure in that game, and choose to make certain moves, but because everything has already been programmed and exists in one moment, he cannot choose to do something not within that program. We all have a destiny which we can succeed at or not, and the details are malleable. This is the way I believe there is fate and freedom of choice. We have a number of choices available to us which lead to a certain number of places. The way we get to those places is up to us. This is freedom of choice and fate.
As far as time travel, I believe it is possible to go back and change things, but once you do, you can never return to what you knew as your present. That’s because what we consider to be our present time, is just a series of events we have experienced–a series of memories. If I go back and change something, this will have a butterfly effect which will change the timeline I’m now in. There will still be key things within this new timeline that will direct the world in a similar path or fate it’s meant to go (perhaps instead of the economic recession starting from the mortgage crisis it would start from a disease epidemic), but the details wouldn’t match up as I remembered. For that reason, it would be unlikely that I would predict much. The bigger the change I cause in the past, the less I would recognize the future.
From this perspective, there are no paradoxes. If someone goes back in time and kills their own grandfather, someone else will become their grandfather in this new timeline. I believe we are sort of time traveling every time we make a decision about something. And we are traveling with everyone we find in this new dimension. It’s like 6 billion people all playing the same video game, but making different decisions. Within each of those games, all the characters are going along for the ride of that one character’s choices. So even if I were to know how the game were meant to end and knew the character’s destiny, I could still have freedom of choice to explore the path however I wanted.
I don’t see Lost’s mythology as aligning with this perspective if non-paradoxical time indeed turns out to be set in stone. There could still be freedom of choice, but it’s based only on ignorance of our path, not the consciousness of it. Perhaps ignorance is bliss, but consciousness is enlightening.
Marc, all:
Recommendations for those fascinated with time travel / timelines / programmed reality:
“Parallel Universes of Self” (Frederick Dodson)
“The Universe – Solved!” / TheUniverseSolved.com (Jim Elvidge)
Lesmanaste,
Rob
Awesome man–thanks! I just posted this in an email to Jim:
“I live in NYC and recently went to see “Transcendent Man” at the Tribeca Film Festival. It’s a documentary about Ray Kurzweil and he was there taking questions after the film. One of his points was that because we use technology to make the next level of technology, technological advancements go exponentially faster. He spoke of alternate reality games like Second Life in the film and it got me thinking. I’m sure you’ve seen movies like “The 13th Floor” and “eXistenZ.” I asked Ray this: since technology advances exponentially, then very soon alternate reality games like “Second Life” should become so realistic, it will be difficult to decipher them from the real thing. At that point, we will also likely create alternate reality games within those games. This being the case, isn’t it very unlikely that we live in the very first reality? Isn’t it much more probable that we too live in an alternate reality and that The Matrix got it right? Perhaps all this afterlife stuff we believe in is just mythology to help us interpret what’s really going on? In the documentary, he’s obsessed with living long enough to have technology help him live forever. My point was that there is no need. Once you die, you just take a step back into the previous simulated world and can come back as a different avatar and try again—our “reincarnation” mythology comes from this. I now believe that the likelihood of us living in the very first reality is as possible as us living on the only world with life on it in the entire universe. Not too likely.
Ha, perfect, that’s right up Jim’s alley!
BTW, what did Ray reply to your questions? (Feel free to let me know @ FaceBook if you feel it’s getting too off-topic for here)
Lesmanaste,
Rob
Yes – please tell us what his answer was.
Ray didn’t really answer the question. Well, he answered it by saying that Second Life is becoming more and more realistic and it is entirely possible that it will get to the point that it is indistinguishable from the real world. What he didn’t comment on though, was whether his own theories point towards the probability of our world not being real either. The audience laughed after I’d asked the question, so perhaps he thought I was joking or just got too caught up in his answer to comment on what I was really asking. I like to think that at the very least, I put an idea in his head that he might not really have thought of before: that his own theories seem to indicate that our world is a simulation.
“From the little I understand about quantum physics, I side with the multiverse or many worlds theory. So, I actually don’t believe in this non-paradoxical approach to time simply because I do not believe in one single timeline. I believe that time is an illusion. It is just one person’s experience of all the events they have experienced within the timeline they currently exist in. In other words, I believe that every possible scenario that could ever exist is happening right now, and wherever our minds go, that is the one we leap into.”
I don’t really believe in multi-verse theory, or parallel dimensions, for that matter, for two reasons:
1. because there is absolutely no evidence to support it, and…
2. because I strongly believe that it is a simplistic answer to the
(so far) unresolvable divorce between Quantum Mechanics and Newton’s mechanics.
Since physics came to realize that they can’t apply Newton’s mechanics to subatomic scenarios, then they had to come up with an scenario where matter and enery is not disappearing (because it can’t disappear) but only disappearing in this dimension and appearing in another one. I think this is a preposterous and clumsy designed to attenuate the fact that we lack the theoretical and practical devices to trace that matter/energy. We simply don’t know what’s going on. And in our fear to the unknown, we came up with a highly simplistic scenario.
Of course, all of this is my humble opinion, and I mean no personal offense to those who adhere to this theory. But I believe it has more to do with maintaining the intellectual status quo than with actually finding out true elements of reality that, so far, are being neglected or rejected by modern science. I believe it was Socrates who said that “the progress of human science is more about correcting fallacies than discovering truths”. And that applies both to religion as for science… in the face of the unknown, human nature tends to assuming things and treating it as the Truth, as opposed to assuming our own ignorance and slowly working to fill the void. Like the buddists say: “the humans being suffers from ignorance”. I think that’s what happened to Daniel in his final days. Desperation got the best of him and he assumed to much.
But even if we believe the multi-verse theory, it doesn’t mean that EACH ONE of those dimensions have its own strict and immutable timeline. Time is not an illusion. Is the sequence of every change in the material world…. the succession of every event. That’s time. It’s not subjective. It’s not illusory. Our approach to it may be, but time it’s not subject to changes. It would be illogical to do so. Hence, our actions in this universe shouldn’t be subject to the actions of any other universe… because they wouldn’t be connected. They just exist. To pressume otherwise would be to pressume that there are some kinds of events in this world which cause can come out of nowhere…. i.e. an event cause by an action in ANOTHER universe. And that simply cannot be proven, and Occam’s razor says it should be dismissed.
That’s why, in our everyday philosophies, we shouldn’t be afraid by the existence of a rigid, unchangeable timeline. We shouldn’t be discouraged by the existence of a thing called destiny. It’s way much bigger than we are, and operates in a whole different level. Our actions are still what matter to us, and we must approach this actions fully exercising free will. There is no other way. Whatever is meant to happen, will happen. We humans are not the masters of time. We couldn’t be. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Put in perspective… it’s actually irrelevant.
what i find great in Lost, among several other things, is the level and nature of discussions that it raises every week among its fans. we do take it as a heads up, and when i read articles like this one, i really feel rich, and glad to see how out of a tv series we are being able to grasp their messages. from day-1 lost showed to the world it was a different idea. we, hardcore fans, did believe that, and i’m pretty sure we won’t just end up our discussions after the show’s big finale. i do believe lost built up for an alternative way of life that we are engaging in week by week.
congrats for the article! really enlightening.
Desmond is the variable.
And I fear that someone might kidnap little Charlie as motivation for Des to go back to the island.
Very Excellent article…Enlightening (as elaine says).
If all the correlation is true between the writers and Steven King. This article convinces me how/where LOST is heading. In the Stand, it’s all about good vs. evil, black or white,choosing someone who will reestablish society running on time again by using terror vs. choosing freewill/learning by mistakes made but taking the longer road.
Yes I would like to think that we humans do have a choice to change the course of our world, we just have to take a STAND.
Katesfriend
Thanks to everyone for contributing to the discussion. I like to think we are all learning from each other. Namaste.
One last point – so it has also been said that the original conception of LOST was the video game MYST. The character that you play in MYST has to make choices and their ‘ending’ was dependent upon those choices.
If you ‘replay’ the game (travel back in time) and make difference choices, you get a different result.
Just something to chew on.
So serendipitous that you should say that b/c I’ve specifically mentioned MYST in reply to people who ask me what I think is going on with the whole Egyptian stuff on LOST since it isn’t really necessary for my theory. Where did you hear that–do you remember? Was it from the creators themselves or just fans taking guesses about the show? Also, I only played it once. Was there a reason MYST was capitalized like LOST?
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[...] will eventually be returning in a more powerful form as well. The message for us (as discussed in “Choosing to Sacrifice for the Sake of the Island”) is that by challenging ourselves we grow into stronger people, better able to handle the [...]
[...] will eventually be returning in a more powerful form as well. The message for us (as discussed in “Choosing to Sacrifice for the Sake of the Island”) is that by challenging ourselves we grow into stronger people, better able to handle the [...]
[...] will eventually be returning in a more powerful form as well. The message for us (as discussed in “Choosing to Sacrifice for the Sake of the Island”) is that by challenging ourselves we grow into stronger people, better able to handle the [...]