I continue to be intrigued by ABC’s LOST.  The stories of 22 lost people continue to captivate millions of viewers.  The themes of the show run deep in the collective conscience of our society:  mortification, justification, redemption and then the other side of the coin–reaping what you sow vs random luck, fate vs. choice, sentient creator vs. universal principles.  The writers are tapping into questions common to us but also into collective knowledge–these are things our culture believes to be true.  So here is my stab at what LOST seems to say my generation believes to be true:

 

1.  People have a story.  People have a story that provides reasons into who they are and why they are.  Understanding people, even having compassion and empathy requires that we get to know their story.

 

2.  People are connected.  People do not live without affecting the lives of others.  Whether we give or withhold, whether we engage or withdraw, by virtue of existence we are connected to each other.  This connection is assigned a certain amount of "morality" and demands a certain amount of "virtue" as the intersections of our lives affect or could infect the story of other people.

 

3.  There are forces with impact beyond the control of people.  There is always something that eludes the control of people.  People are affected by the movements of forces that elude sight.  Whether IT is gravity that brings down a plane or more personal entities that can choose when to take a form that can be seen not just perceived as in Eko’s confrontation, humanity faces forces beyond controlling.  The questions generated by our engagement of these forces are dominated by a personal perspective on whether those forces are neutral, good, whimsical, vindictive, or just.

 

4.  People are drawn into relationships and therefore into conflict.  The interplay of human will plunges people into storms generated by love, lust, security-seeking, greed, survival and sometimes utter generosity.  Conflict is understood to be inevitable but rarely managed well.  Creative solutions are still believed to be possible in climates of trust or even alliance against a common enemy.  But there is serious doubt in our culture that sincere, unmixed, motives are likely or even a state to be desired.

 

5.  People have a common state of lostness.  People have a common sense of being lost and of loosing.  The sources of this sense are legion and can be found within our stories.  There is a common longing for meaning. People have lost…someone, something, their moorings, their attentiveness to right and wrong, their rootedness, their security, their connectedness to others, their courage, their faith, their hope, their way, and their dreams.

 

These are just a few of the "LOST learnings" that can be drawn from the show.  Other lost learnings?