Dostoevsky and "The Grand Inquisitor" / The Temptation of Jacob

As a respite from the certain inundation of my many science-themed posts you must be feeling (and I do like to exude hyperbole), we will now drift toward a couple other topics that are rather unrelated to other material here: 19th century Russian literature and Lost. If you like neither, I suppose stopping now would be wise.

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Given where we are after the Season 5 finale, there are still a lot of unknowns that make it hard to pinpoint the path Season 6 will take, but I believe the following is a very possible arc to the Lost storyline:

We have seen many literary references throughout the Lost lore, but one of the more notable ones that I will build upon here is that of the great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who some consider as the founder of 20th century existentialism (the philosophy concerned with finding self and meaning of life through free will and personal responsibility). Dostoyevsky explored themes of rational thought and religion, freedom versus faith. Christian Existentialism is maybe a more specific way to describe his works as they relate to Lost, how his characters must decide on their own how to follow their life path toward (or away from) religion and faith.

You will remember that in the episode “Maternity Leave” in Season 2, Locke gives Ben a copy of Dostoyevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, which begins a discussion between the two on how Locke is following orders from someone outside himself (Jack) rather than using his own personal responsibility to choose what to do (to push the button, or to not push the button!). By the end of the episode, the two finish their discussion, and Locke is upset that he is not following his own path but rather the path/directions of someone else (Jack). The themes of free will and existentialism are definite connections here. This book has more interesting connections to the evolving story of Lost, however.

In the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, there is a very famous chapter entitled “The Grand Inquisitor.” In this chapter, two brothers, Ivan and Alyosha, are sitting at a table getting reacquainted with each other after a long absence, and they talk about their views on religion. Ivan tells his brother Alyosha of a poem he made long ago. In this tale, Christ comes back to earth during the Inquisition to perform a number of miracles, but is arrested and sentenced to death. As Jesus Christ waits in his jail cell, the Grand Inquisitor (GI) visits him and denounces him.

The GI denounces Jesus for His responses to the three questions Satan asks Him during the temptation of Christ. Basically, Satan tempts Jesus to perform a set of miracles to gain the trust of the masses and to rule over all of the kingdoms of the world, but Jesus refuses these in favor of offering people the freedom to choose to believe in Him or not. The GI asserts that Jesus misjudges human nature, and that most of humanity cannot handle this freedom, and so Jesus has, in essence, doomed humanity to a life of sin and despair.

The GI and the Church, through the Inquisition, have sought to right this wrong made by Jesus. The GI and the Church choose to follow Satan instead, by providing humans the miracles they need to make them believe, and to instill in them a sense of obligation to follow only what the Church says. It is the sole responsibility of a select few of the Church to take on the “burden of freedom”, to choose what the masses should do and should not do, so that even if the people are still sinning and robbed of salvation, at least they are well-fed and happy during their time on earth!

At the end of the tale, Christ says nothing, but instead kisses the GI on his “bloodless, aged lips”, and Christ is released from jail, but the GI tells him to never return.

I can’t help but see very strong connections between “The Grand Inquisitor” and the evolving tale of Jacob, the Smoke Monster and the Island. What we have seen of Jacob so far is that he is portrayed as a kindly, saintly man. He is soft-spoken, ageless, capable of miracles. He mentions choice several times in the Season 5 finale to other characters he speaks to (Hurley has the choice to come to the Island if he wants, Ben has the choice to stab Jacob, etc.). With what we know of Jacob so far, he fits in well with the character of Jesus Christ in the parable of “The Grand Inquisitor”.

Christ’s opposite in the parable is the Grand Inquisitor, much like Jacob’s opposite in Lost is the Smoke Monster/Anti-Jacob. Jacob’s viewpoint that human nature is benevolent and that free will is the right of all humans mirrors Christ’s denial of Satan during the temptation of Christ, where Christ chooses free will for humanity rather than using miracles to gain trust and rule over all of the kingdoms of Man. The GI denounces Christ for this decision and faulty viewpoint of humanity, much like Anti-Jacob denounces Jacob for thinking humans can choose the right path on their own (Anti-Locke denounces Jacob for summoning the Black Rock to the Island, saying that human nature will cause only despair and ruin).

The Grand Inquisitor and the chosen few who are given the “burden of free will” lead the masses toward the image of Christ, and the masses follow their human shepherds because they are protected and sustained through the Church. I argue that certainly we can see a connection here to how the Others are lead toward the image of Jacob and follow closely the directions of their leader(s). The leader(s) (Anti-Jacob and those Anti-Jacob influences) are the ones who decide what path to take, and the Others follow, because this provides them their community and safety. As the GI and the Church speaks of the miracles of their Roman Catholic faith to convince the people they are of the one true faith, so does the leader(s) and those Anti-Jacob influences reminds the Others of the Island’s miracles, and that the Island and the image of Jacob needs to be defended from threats (the Dharma Initiative, the Losties, the US military) to maintain their community.

A really interesting parallel is simply found in the Inquisition itself. During the Inquisition, heretics were judged for their crimes against the Church, much like we’ve seen the Smoke Monster judge those for their own crimes. The GI would judge the heretic on if he or she were damaging the path of the Church or spreading lies to its followers, and the Smoke Monster judges a person based on if they helping or hurting Anti-Jacob’s mission (and that of the chosen few) of keeping the Others in line and withholding true freedom from them.

To Anti-Jacob, the physical manifestation of Jacob damages his ability to lead his people, as was the case with the GI locking up Christ for performing His miracles. Anti-Jacob does not need a prophet like Jacob running around showing the Others that they can use their free will to peacefully live together and cohabitate with those that come to the Island. The GI did not need Christ around, either, for the same reasons. The image of Christ/Jacob and authoritarian discipline is what the people need, not free will.

Coldly, the GI mentions that, if he were to give the order to kill Jesus Christ, his people would do it without protest, and we see the same thing happen in the finale with Anti-Jacob setting up Ben to follow orders and kill Jacob. In either story, the followers kill the human representation of that which they worship.

Outside of these strong connections, there are other more trivial connections that are interesting in their own right. Names like “Ricardus” and the Other's Latin roots give another connection to the Roman Catholic faith. Also, and probably nothing, but when Jacob spoke in Russian to Ilana, it hints at us to again consider Dostoevsky’s work and the new connections we are seeing with the Smoke Monster/Anti-Jacob and “The Grand Inquisitor.”

So what does this all mean?

It is suggested that Jacob is weaving the Lost story’s timeline via weaving his tapestry, and perhaps is making sure that all of our Lost characters crash on Flight 815 and find and interact with the Others (led by Anti-Jacob and their leader). Maybe Jacob wants to give humanity another chance to prove themselves capable of sustaining free will and harmony with each other and the Island, and Anti-Jacob is adamant that that cannot happen. Now that the Grand Inquisitor (Anti-Jacob/the Smoke Monster) has banished Christ (Jacob) once again, what will happen next? Will this apparent failure of humanity lead to some cataclysmic event that actually does lead to the end of the world (or the permanent destruction of free will), unless our Lost characters find a way to fix what has been broken by the end of Season 6? Will all these characters ever learn how to coexist on the Island peacefully and on their own accord?

Free NIN Concert Footage

Eight months ago, Nine Inch Nails released their latest full-length album The Slip online for free and immediate download.

Now, Trent Reznor is helping propagate throughout the Internets a whopping sum of 405 gigabytes worth of high definition video footage filmed by surreptitious fans from their latest tour, Lights in the Sky over North America.

Fans capable of handling that much data at once should proceed directly to http://thisoneisonus.org/ to help with downloading and seeding the enormous files.

Fans like me who are typing on outdated (school) computers should simply digg this story, and stop smiling so damn much, since we can't see the concert footage just yet.

This was an amazing show. I am Excited!

My Detention

Teacher: Alright, who's going to stay after school to learn English with me?

Students (collectively): AIEE NOOO MAESTRO

pew pew pew

I utilize a laser pointer during direct instruction to help guide students to understanding, pointing across the room to PowerPoint visuals elucidating biological form and function in perfect rhythm with the timing that its corresponding topic is discussed during lecture.

...but when students turn around, I train my laser-sight on their figures, narrow my eyesight and whisper, "PEW PEW PEW", and silently cheer my acquisition of one-thousand imaginary points to my imaginary scoreboard.

Gym Clowns

When I go to the gym, there are many sights to behold, as I think I've talked of before. But let's not go down that road.

Another image I often see concerns the high concentration of young dudes trotting around with bulging muscles showing through revealing, sleeveless (and sometimes "sideless", with torso wings flapping and flexing wildly about) shirts. They often are too focused on their own muscles to remember to put (any of) their free weights away when they are done with them. Case in point, the bozo today who left his station, knowing I wanted it next, with weights still a-weighing and sweat still a-dripping from the equipment.

I have a fail-safe measure to respond in my usual, passive-aggressive, I-will-stare-you-down-until-you-die, way. I picture them with a red, squeaky nose and face paint:


And Calm is issued, like a goddamn charm. (Image source)

Fresh Prince of the Eukaryotic Cell

A student turned in his cell project that I assigned the class. I gave a list of options as to what each student could choose to make for their project, and this student chose to write a short story about the organelles in a cell. Here is an excerpt:

"Hello, you may think that even the smallest of organelles, the ribosome, is not of any importance to the cell, but you're wrong! This is my story about a little organelle like me in a BIG cell! Today I was making proteins for the cell and giving them to the E.R. to fold them correctly. Suddenly, the cell went into code red! Every organelle needed to get its job done and protein was in high demand. Usually we can get stored protein from places like the vacuole but there were none left! The whole cell was working and in the confusion I was ripped from the E.R. and went flying through the cytoplasm.

I tried to swim back but I didn't have the strength. "I'm just a lowly ribosome!", I said as I tried to get back connected to the E.R. Just then, I bumped into another couple organelles who were up to no good, started making trouble in my neighborhood. I got in one little fight and my mom got scared and said, "You're movin' with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air." I whistled for a cab and when it came near, the license plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare, but I thought, "Nah, forget it. Yo Homes.. To Bel-Air!" I.. pulled... up to the house at about 7 or 8 and I yelled to the cabby "Yo homes, smell ya later!" I looked at my kingdom I was finally there, to sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel-Air.

I fell out of my chair laughing.

Tonight's the night

"It's gonna be a glorious day!
I feel [our] luck could change."

- Lucky by Radiohead

Yes! Yes! Yes!

I love me some rubber stamps, and have a creaky and dusty drawer full of them. Some are motivational, some include puns (like "You rule!" with a ruler underneath), all are amazing. The one I was using today for checking submitted homework after school was simply the word "YES!" inscribed within a 5-pointed star.

I came across a very lovely poster of the various groupings of ecology, from populations to biomes, that was perfectly drawn and colored, so instead of the obligatory stamp-to-stamp-pad-to-paper journey, I decided to apply my teacher brush a few times in succession! This unintentionally led to the following phrase in big, inky green letters across the poster:

"YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!"

And then I laughed a great deal and hoped no one would laugh the same way when they saw it, too.

Still Here!

Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?

hahahahahahahaha

Teacher Accused of Wizardry

BREAKING NEWS: Man made toothpick vanish in class.

Nine Inch Nails: The Slip (free album download)

Nine Inch Nails, one of my favorite bands since the beginning of time, has a new album out. They are giving it away for free.

The new album, The Slip, can be downloaded from the NIN website. If you're interested, please also digg the story and spread the word.

That Asshole Mouse

Son-Of-A-Bitch Mouse Solves Maze Researchers Spent Months Building

IOWA CITY, IA—The mouse briskly traversed the complicated wooden maze in under 30 seconds, roughly 1/8,789,258 the time it took to secure funding for the experiment.

Valentine's Fun for Biology Lovers

Valentine's Day drags its tentacles into the laboratory. I hate poems and puns but these are slightly awesome:

I give you my heart on this Valentine’s Day
In a jar you can keep on your shelf,
With your books and your papers, in cluttered array,
Or a prominent place by itself.
It is really my heart—deep within every cell
Are the strands of my own DNA;
I could have just given you chocolates, but, well,
My message is clearer this way:
I love you much more than a card, or some flowers,
Or trinkets you see in the stores;
So it’s off to the lab for a few hundred hours,
And my heart—if you’ll take it—is yours.

- The Digital Cuttlefish

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A rat cadaver’s donor heart
Is stripped of every cell
The protein fiber matrix left
Looks like a ghostly shell;
This matrix, in a sterile flask,
Is bathed in rat-heart goo
With both adult and baby cells,
And starts to grow anew.
In only days, the growing heart
May beat, or merely twitch,
Then work, at roughly two percent…

Like yours, you heartless bitch.

- The Digital Cuttlefish

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- Ironic Sans

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- Jacks of Science

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Students: if you give out anything like these to loved ones (or awesome teachers), I will give you a million 'A ' plusses. Me and my awesome grading techniques.

..and Finger Mustache Tattoos For All

Also known as "fingerstaches", also known as amazing. They even have their own online networking community.

Man #1: So I get the tattoo, what do I get?

Man #2: You get to be in disguise, at any time....

Get pitted, so pitted

All this talk of education has me neglecting the lighter side of life, like stoned surfers on the news:

Anonymous Confessions Online

In case you're not in the know, the Spring 2007 Berkeley Anonymous Confessions is online. Come procrastinate studying--or if you have come to terms with your inability to study, come spend your freetime-- by reading others' secrets. And post your own....

Cue in a Dane Cook joke

I know it's late.

I know I perhaps might be delusional.

But there is honestly a scientific word describing how a strong gravitational field stretches objects into long thin shapes.

That word is spaghettification.

If you were a deep-space astronaut you'd worry about Black holes spaghettificating you.

I'm not making this up.





You're not helping me do my homework, internets.

Bobby and I

Every online perch I call home must have an obligatory Bobby Burgess post. This is that post.

What helps most in processing through my warring emotions and primal desires is reading how others have acclimated and advanced onward, as Bobby accounts:

4/24/03
8/7/03
10/4/03
2/4/04
3/21/04
4/8/04
6/12/04

The timeline seems painfully familiar, and it never really ends, right? Stages are supposed to progress linearly, like Super Mario Brothers, but all I end up doing is taking the warp pipe back to start. For years this has happened: same girl, same game. It's pathetic.

I wrote this way back in 2003:

You visit me more in my dreams than you do in real life, and I pick up the phone to hear your voice because I stumble into a small pocketed oasis of my unconsciousness, where everything is alright again, only to have illusions fade, oases disappear, phones turn into drool-soaked pillows. My eyes open and everything is back to the way it was. And the way it is.

...

I’m going to carry on like I have been, happy ecstatic joyful and loving of life, because my life right now is going well, and I love my job and I love my friends and not thinking about you is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.

Here we go again.

This wisdom-through-aging process is not working as intended. I might be defective.

Decal Free Write #2

With less than a month of actual instruction, the 60 post minimum for my Decal looms ominously in the approaching horizon, eating babies and what not. Here's some free writing I did in class, where we made up the rest after the first line:

A man walks into a laundromat with a dog named Jesus. Actually, the dog's real name was always "Spot", that is, up until that fateful accident at the old oil refinery a few years back that almost claimed the man's life. Since his brush with death and subsequent accidental saving by a random, well-placed defecation by "Spot", the nearby neighborhood stray that lost his way and found himself in quite an oily situation, the man had seen the light, as some might say. Or, rather, he lost his mind, as many more would say.

Inside the laundromat, the man holds Jesus tightly, the dog rolled in white linens and a few dirty socks. The two of them stood before a lone washing machine, empty inside but covered with freshly uprooted flowers on top. The man's robe was also pure and white, but in the long walk to the laundromat it frequently fluttered upward and exposed much of his purity to passing cars and laughing children. 'Heathens', he thought, as he quickened his pace down the middle of the road, amidst honking cars.

Standing before his makeshift altar, the man quietly whispers lines from a few random pages of the Bible he memorized the day before. 'The ritual begins now', the man then asserts, inching his way to the washing machine. Jesus barks only once, and hides in the linens whimpering.

Grinding Organs

In our decal class today, instead of the usual workshop, we encountered a short free-writing prompt given by our gracious, facilitating host. No rules, no restraints, just write for a bit of time. So I did, and I think some of my personal life has rubbed its way into my writing (god forbid), but I hope to start writing more frequently on other topics soon enough. This is fiction, by the way.

***

I grind organs. All afternoon of every day last week, and every day thereafter, I've extracted little clumps of living tissue from freshly euthanized animals. Their bodies are still warm when I make my incision, and fondle their insides for ripe targets. Isolated in plastic containers, I line up my specimens next to a complicated-looking lab instrument that resembles a power drill with a blunt bit. I turn on my tool and

I grind.

"There's little we can do to change this"
"Please..."
"You've not been honest with me"
"Please..."

My hand cramps from the effort and my nose protests the scent. Slowly, slowly the organs break down. Flecks of tissue climb the test tubes' sides. Guts, brains and all, dissolve into a lumpy lubricant for another machine.

"We can't go back to what we had"
"Please..."

When I grind organs, I must focus my attention on the heart.

"Please forgive and forget me"

Muscle turns to fibers turn to loose threads, and I continue to grind. The heart is the hardest organ to break. But it always does.