For a place that is supposed to be about making a better life and living in harmony etc etc ( the 70s stuff) dharma sure is strating to have a dark side.
Both Horace and Radzinsky seemed pretty scarry/sinister when they came in to interrogate Sayid. And they were all pretty quick to "eliminate" the Hostile. there must be a real bad history between the two groups.

Also what sort of Utopian society would allow a father to be so cruel and abusive to his son ( (ben and his dad)...it is unlikely NO ONE else ever saw their negative, abusive interactions....(If you are wondering where this came from I was a Foster parent/child services worker in my former life LOL)

Of course, this is, in fact, a dystopia-the ultimate result when anyone tries to build a "perfect" society. From Orwell to Rand to Gilliam to Darlton, the dystopia seems to be the unavoidable result of people who seek societal perfection.

Seems to be kill or be killed at the Island. Their 'namaste philosophy' doesn't make sense anymore.

Remember that is one of the reasons Ben killed off the Dharma folks. He said they wanted to live in harmony but in reality that was not the case.

Of course, this is, in fact, a dystopia-the ultimate result when anyone tries to build a "perfect" society. From Orwell to Rand to Gilliam to Darlton, the dystopia seems to be the unavoidable result of people who seek societal perfection.I'd phrase it as "they're on the steep slope to dystopia". Not "1984" yet, but absolutely heading that direction. And, as you said, utopian societies of real humans always end up falling apart.

I haven't read Erewhon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon) in (literally) decades, but somehow that's percolated up from the depths of my brain. Hadn't really considered the side comment of "Jacob hates technology" from the perspective of "The Book of the Machines". Annnd, it also brings us back around to Huxley's "Island".

(Damn, I really need new reading glasses. To watch Lost. Yeesh.)

Seems pretty simple to me: the guys brought to the island were kept in the dark about a lot of stuff. Most of them are just cogs in the DI machine. They're now stuck there, and they have to cope as best they can. As it turns out, they're only human. They can sign on to angelic ideals, but they haven't the wherewithal to see it through on a personal basis.

People are people, they can collectively convince themselves that they're there to do anything, really. When threatened, though, they cower together and react the same as any other people who put action before ideology.

The idea of "Utopia" was just a sales pitch/fundraising campaign; remember the "real" reason for the DI has yet to be discussed on the show.

And don't forget, many people there are probably there just because it's a job (like Roger Linus); so naturally, when their lives are threatened, they're thinking about staying alive, not the "best way to handle the situation based on our collective utopian ideology". The concept of working toward "building Utopia" was probably the DeGroots idea, that Hanso, Widmore, and others took advantage of for their own purposes.