According to the producers in the May 19th 2006 Podcast, the Sickness causes those it affects to "go crazy." I suspect that Lindelof, Abrams, et al. have perpetrated a gigantic red herring on us regarding the Sickness. I don't think they mean to portray a physical illness such as measles at all, but rather a Sickness made of words, a thought virus that literally drives those who contract it crazy.

Damon Lindelof has stated in interviews that he's a fan of Robert Anton Wilson, in particular Wilson's (and Robert Shea's) book "Illuminatus!". Wilson was heavily influenced by a man named Alfred Korzybski, who wrote a book on non-Aristotelean logic called "Science and Sanity," which claimed, among other things, that the Aristotelean manner in which we use language alters our perception of reality. In particular, by mistaking the "is" of identity for an actual relation existing in the real world, i.e. existing independently of our verbal descriptions of the world, we literally become insane. Korzybski recommended replacing the "is" of identity with more explicit verbal constructions designed to ameliorate this verbal hallucination. Read, for example, the following sentence:

Sawyer is a bad man.

According to Korzybski, this verbal structure hypnotizes us into seeing Sawyer as embodying the quality "badness" in some metaphysical way. A key to Korzybski's thought lies in his elimination of the "is" of identity in favor of relational language, which he felt more accurately reflected observed reality. A Korzybskian (and Wilsonian) version of the sentence might read like so:

Sawyer often acts in a manner that many people would judge "bad."

At this point we may begin to see what I think Lindelof, et al., really mean by "the Sickness."

What linguistic construction have we seen become more common as the show has progressed? We have seen more and more people divide the population of the island into a "good" "Us" and a "bad" "Them." This constitutes the Sickness. Once infected, by a comment of Goodwin's that Nathan "was not a good person," or of Kelvin's regarding "the hostiles," or even merely the word "Quarantine" written on the inside of a hatch, the crash survivors begin to view all inhabitants of the island as either "one of us" or "one of them," as either "good" or "bad." Even Rousseau has already contracted the Sickness. To her, everyone else on the island "is" an "Other." She did not kill the other members of her expedition because they had become ill, but because she had become ill.

Some fans have already discovered the concept of Operation Mindcluck, another concept from Wilson's work, but no one that I have seen has asked what purpose OM serves. I submit that it serves as a vaccination against the Sickness; by destabilizing our current conceptual categories, OM allows us to break free of the division between "us" and "them."

Couldnt agree more....check out the link in the Speculation Forum that is titled Danielle The Crazy French Chick.:cool:

Is OM injectable?
Do you think the vaccine could be an OM type substance?

And if the generic were available, would it be called AUM?

That's an interesting question. I'd thought of the "vaccine" and "quarantine" labels as vehicles for the transmission of the Sickness, i.e. "Us = Not Sick" vs "Them = Sick," and of Boone's entheogenic experience with Locke as a form of vaccination against the Sickness. But, those could easily be my prejudices and/or preferences speaking.

In Grant Morrison's "The Invisibles," computers of the future use liquid hard drives, and at least one piece of equipment, a time machine, interfaces with the user via an IV. It's certainly possible that a fan of RAW might also be a fan of Morrison. I don't know how much of "The Invisibles" one could get away with bringing to television, though; it gets pretty damn esoteric. Of course, that would fit right in with OM.

Here is one example of linguistics.

In Collision, Ana Lucia shot and killed Jason McCormick with three shots.
read transcript here:
http://www.lost-tv.com/transcripts/Collision_Lost.htm (http://www.lost-tv.com/transcripts/Collision_Lost.htm)

Then in Two for the Road, Her mother said Jason Alder was the one killed with 5 shots.
read transcript here:
http://www.lost-tv.com/transcripts/Two_For_The_Road_Lost.htm (http://www.lost-tv.com/transcripts/Two_For_The_Road_Lost.htm)


So,

Did she kill Jason McCormick or Jason Alder? And how many shots? 3? 5? or 6?

;) Speaking of sickness, R. A. Wilson is deathly ill now and says he doesn't expect to recover, though he might.

At the time of the writing of Illuminatus!, Korzybski had no apparent direct influence on RAW; that came later. Meanwhile, Robert Heinlein had thought enough of Korzybski for a while to have included the occurrence of General Semantics in his History of the Future chronology.

Until Lost, I hadn't been sure Damon was a fan of RAW's, although his father David Lindelof sure was. Wilson's book that seems to have the closest cx to Lost IMO is Masks of the Illuminati, with its devil's masquerade.

Some fans have already discovered the concept of Operation Mindcluck, another concept from Wilson's work, but no one that I have seen has asked what purpose OM serves. I submit that it serves as a vaccination against the Sickness; by destabilizing our current conceptual categories, OM allows us to break free of the division between "us" and "them."
I think it's a lot simpler that that: just inculcating a general skepticism and questioning of authority.

BTW, I liked your letters to Playboy. ;)

Good and Evil have an interesting history. The concept was popularized by Zarathustra and the Zoroastrian religion. It neatly swept aside diverse local cosmologies in the middle-eastern region, and along with them such quaint concepts as 'shortcoming' and 'intention', to make way for a dualistic system of absolute polarity. It saw the world as a battleground, a chess board played by two beings of equal power. Zoroaster probably adapted it from eastern notions of yin-yang dualism. His religion included an eschatological principle that the world would end in a final showdown between the two powers as their armies vied for the destiny of earth.

The success of Zoroastrianism owes a lot to its greatest champion, Cyrus the Great, probably one of history's mightiest conquerers. Cyrus was convinced the eschaton was imminent, and was determined to be ready for it, armies mustered and on the battlefield waiting to be of service to the "good" god. To this end, Cyrus rigorously sorted out the various local tribal belief systems in his domain... those he felt were 'good' were invited to convert to Zoroastrianism and join him... those he felt were 'evil' he just obliterated.

Cyrus was later reincarnated as George Bush, I think.

Judaism was one of the religions Cyrus sorted out. The story he told is that he had a dream in which the Jewish diety Yahweh came to him and claimed to be an agent of the 'good'. To this end, he exported the wealthy elite of Israel (taken captive by his predecessor Nebuchadnezzar) back to their homeland and funded the rebuilding of their temple, with the stricture that they were to reinvent Judaism as a faith servile to Zoroastrianism. Several Jewish holy texts (the book of Job being a great example) were rewritten or revised accordingly, and Judaism took on some of its more draconian characteristics at this time.

By the time of Christ or Yessue or whatever you want to call him, Zoroastrian notions of "god" and "satan", were very common amongst the lower castes of people, and were inherited later by Christianity when it got the ball rolling as its own religion.

Gnosticism, a heretical sect of Christianity vengefully stomped on by the early church, toyed with a role-reversal notion, they saw the 'light' god as a deranged creator of a madhouse reality, and the 'devil' as a righteous rebel determined to liberate an oppressed creation.

It's interesting to me that the words 'good' and 'evil' should be conceptually similar to 'yin' and 'yang', and yet because of the perverse history behind them, should have such a radically different and more sinister character.

It's worth noting that not a single army in history has ever marched in the service of 'evil'. If the Ohers claim to be the 'good guys', that's the surest sign yet of their dangerous nature.

Here is one example of linguistics.

In Collision, Ana Lucia shot and killed Jason McCormick with three shots.
read transcript here:
http://www.lost-tv.com/transcripts/Collision_Lost.htm (http://www.lost-tv.com/transcripts/Collision_Lost.htm)
Actually she denied that Jason McCormick had shot her. All we know about the one she shot was that he answered (or reacted) to "Jason".

Then in Two for the Road, Her mother said Jason Alder was the one killed with 5 shots.
read transcript here:
http://www.lost-tv.com/transcripts/Two_For_The_Road_Lost.htm (http://www.lost-tv.com/transcripts/Two_For_The_Road_Lost.htm)


So,

Did she kill Jason McCormick or Jason Alder? And how many shots? 3? 5? or 6?

After the "McCormick" episode ("Collision") first aired, I expressed doubt in alt.tv.lost that the two Jasons were the same person. I thought it was possible that her shooting of a Jason had occurred before she was asked to identify Jason McCormick, the order of the flashbacks being deliberately misleading. I wasn't sure at the time, but just thought the makers of Lost had planted doubt deliberately to mess with the audience. Now with this name discrepancy (noticed by my & Damon's friend John) I have added reason to think my speculation to have been correct. Ana Lucia shot & killed Jason Alder; Jason McCormick was let go.

Now the question is, did Ana Lucia shoot the right Jason? I'm still not sure whether Sawyer killed the right Sawyer, even if John Ford thinks he didn't!

Robert

I expressed doubt in alt.tv.lost that the two Jasons were the same person. I thought it was possible that her shooting of a Jason had occurred before she was asked to identify Jason McCormick, the order of the flashbacks being deliberately misleading.

Didn't AL's mother tell her something roughly like : "you did not identify him and 2 days later we find the guy dead" ?

That was right after her mother greeted her in the parking lot in front of the police station
and I think she tells AL something like that just before she gave her badge up

Just think of in your lives how misleading or mis-interpreted linguistics is/are on a day to day basis. Diversity is good, but let's all be on the same channel lingusitically. There are meanings within the words used on hereI think in the end, we will all see.

Didn't AL's mother tell her something roughly like : "you did not identify him and 2 days later we find the guy dead" ?

That was right after her mother greeted her in the parking lot in front of the police station
and I think she tells AL something like that just before she gave her badge up
The day a body is found is not necessarily the day it became dead.

The day a body is found is not necessarily the day it became dead.

True, but it's also very difficult to identify someone in a line-up at the police station when they are already dead :D