No Free Will on Lost

Anyone who has taken high school english knows how many literary works have weighed in on Fate vs. Free Will.  Without much fanfair, Lost has as well now.

I always looked at events on the island as non-conclusive.  After-all, despite anything the producers say, I think the “reality” of the island is questionable.  Not that it’s a dream, but it may not be what it appears.  Fine.  But off island, we are to take as our world.  Sure, there are some strange occurances in that world, but generally, we can run with that theory.

All things considered, when the Dr. showed up on the island dead before he was killed on the boat, we found out a massive piece of information about the Lost world.  Whether that was actually his body washing up, or even a manifestation in the island world, clearly it takes the choice out of Keamy’s hands.

This is further evidenced by Michael’s inability to kill himself.  Although, I would actually argue that these two scenarios present an inconsistency in the writing of the show.  In a fatalistic world, it is generally assumed that people still have the illusion of having made a choice.  Keamy believes he chose to kill the Dr.  He was fated to make the choice, just as he was fated to actually do the killing.  This seems to apply to most of the characters, except Michael.  He somehow makes a choice that conflicts with his fate, and is therefore unable to follow through with it.

If those pieces of evidence are ignored, then you have a paradox, whereby the Dr’s body could wash up on shore, and Keamy could not choose to kill the him.  So you now have the Dr.’s dead body on the island and he is alive on the boat.

Taking that one step further, could that same time paradox have caused the Lostees to be alive on the island, but have a dead body and wreckage in the normal world?  Do we have any real proof that the plane in the bottom of the atlantic is a fake?  Right now, we just have Lipidus’s word and Ben’s picture of a desimated graveyard.  Oh, and he has a receipt for the plane.

A lot of modern physics theories that deal with time are based on the idea of a new fracture or parallel universe being created for each possible outcome of an event.  The idea the island could be related to this theory has been raised by fans before.

Until we know the “final” theory, I’ll be watching to see if they stay consistent with the lack of free will in regards to time anomolies.