Lost and World-view

I have watched every episode of Lost since the beginning. That makes me a fan. I never seen any episode more than once, so I guess I am not obsessed. Lost is a clever show that shrouds itself in mystery so that fans have to keep coming back for answers. Lost executive producers, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof deftly offer just enough of a peek behind the curtains to keep viewers craving more, but never achieving satisfaction.

Those that managed to not get entangled with Lost early on never really understand what all the fuss is about. After all, the idea of plane crash victims stuck on an island that inexplicably moves through time and space, combined with characters living out two timelines (one on the island, one in the regular world--depending on what really happened when the atom bomb went off. See that explains everything!) seems preposterous!

To the credit of the show's creators, the show is written in such a way that a regular watcher of the show begins to buy in. The implausible seems plausible, at least in a world where such an island can exist. But I suspect the show's real success is its willingness to explore real-life mysteries. It blurs the lines between life and death, space and time, destiny and free-will, and faith and science. Lost refuses to come down conclusively on either side of any of these metaphysical questions. So, unless you are a person who wants a simple black-and-white answer to every complexity of life, then you are not driven away by the show's philosophical wrangling. The most devoted believer and the most ardent atheist could enjoy watching Lost together.

Personally, I enjoy a little nuance in life. I am always turned-off by answers to complicated issues that seem too simple, hence my disdain for ideological political gibberish on either side of the aisle. But in a recent interview given by the aforementioned producers of the show, I realized the biggest questions remain unanswered, because they do not believe they answerable, including whether or not there really is a God. Here's a telling piece of that interview (Carroll is the interviewer).

Carroll: It’s like purposefulness versus randomness.

Lindelof:. That’s right. It’s order versus chaos, which is what it always was. But first it had to start as science versus faith, because Jack is a doctor and Locke is a guy who got up from his wheelchair and walked. Now the question has been boiled down to its essential root—is there a God or is there nothingness?

Carroll: Presumably, if it is order versus chaos or purpose versus randomness, there is no right answer. It’s not as if in the finale you’re going to say, “Yup, it was order.”

Cuse: I don’t think there’s a right answer.

It is a frightening thought to consider that we can't really answer the question of purpose vs. randomness or even God vs. nothingness. This is why Leslie Newbigin suggests that post-modernism actually leads to nihilism. Well, Lost is the quintessential postmodern experience.

The vestige of modernism that continues to hold sway over post-modernists is the definition of knowledge. Moderns defined knowledge by what could be empirically proven. In this environment, science became king. Faith was okay, if you needed that sort of thing, but don't mistake it for knowledge! Post-modernism rejects the arrogant confidence of scientific empiricism, but still allows their conception of knowledge to be defined by it, which is why when pushed to its extreme, true knowledge becomes unattainable. In other words, post-modernists agree with moderns that knowledge requires empirical proof, but disagree that even science itself has reached that level on life's biggest questions.

The result is that a post-modern world-view will the hold metaphysical questions of life, such as those portrayed in Lost, as unanswerable. Post-modernists will not ascribe to science omnipotence as moderns did, but simply believes attempts at answers to be futile.

A Christian world-view does not counter by insisting that God is empirically provable, but rather suggests all knowledge involves a commitment, which is to walk by faith. It grounds knowledge/wisdom in the being of God himself. Certainly, Christianity needs to show itself to be intellectually viable (which it is), but it does not bear the burden of the "modern" definition of knowledge. Post-modernists are correct that the biggest questions in life cannot be answered with empirical knowledge. It does not follow, however, that there are no answers!