BrothaJefe316
04-12-2009, 11:28 PM
Ok. Regarding the nature of the LOSTies’ time traveling, whether they can change the past, whether “whatever happened happened”, and the wrinkles that have been thrown into a possible smooth explanation of this… like…. If you can’t change the past, why has Ben not seen the DI pic w/ the 815’ers in it? What’s with the “Processing” sign in DHARMAville/Otherton? etc., I think I’ve figured it out.
Previously, I was really questioning the “whatever happened happened” (i.e. you can’t change the past) school of TT thinking, propagated by Faraday and the episode of the same name, which most fans took as Gospel, a definite proclamation from the writers that this is how TT works in LOST. I had been doubting that… thinking that Faraday was either mistaken about this, or he was lying, for whatever reason, possibly to try and dissuade them from doing anything to change the past.
My doubt that “whatever happened happened” was intensified by the appearance a couple epis ago, of the Barracks, w/ DHARMA signs and other stuff that seemed out of place there after the Others had occupied it for roughly 12+ years. Surely, something went awry in the past that caused what is now perceived as discontinuity… whether that be an alternate time line forming, the left behinders changing the past, or something.
However, certain other events have begun to occur that seem to solidify the notion that “whatever happened happened” is the writers’ MO in regards to TT. Specifically the major happening of Sayid shooting Ben, then Ben being taken to the Temple to be saved. The writers went out of their way to explain, via Alpert, that Ben wouldn’t have remembered this in the future, thus smoothing out (albeit awkwardly) any narrative wrinkles that would occur with Ben, later in life, meeting the man who shot him as a child, when 815 crashed. An explanation of this is necessary if “whatever happened” really did happen… But, if you can change the past, then Sayid’s shooting Ben would have caused an alternate timeline, in which case Ben’s not remembering Sayid in the original timeline wouldn’t have been an issue, and no explanation of this would have been necessary.
*Furthermore*… when Ben sees the DHARMA pic w/ the Left Behinders in it, in “Dead is Dead”, he really seems genuinely surprised, rather than a feigned surprise to try and throw off Sun and Lapidus. Whether or not he’s seen that picture before is a very important detail, and so my guess is he was somehow coached as to what his reaction should be like. To me, it just didn’t seem like feigned surprise, it seemed genuine, like he had actually seen the picture.
Thus, in light of these and other things, I’m leaning towards “whatever happened happened” truly being the writers’ MO for TT.
But that still leaves us with the problem of the out of place stuff in 2007-ish Barracks… namely, the signs and the picture.
If you can’t change the past, and “whatever happened happened”, then how did these things suddenly show up, out of nowhere?
I think the key lies in Hurley and Miles’ discussion on TT, and in a clarification of narrative time as it applies to LOST, and Einstein’s theory of special relativity. (Regarding the last thing… Disclaimer: I’m *not* a physicist. There are many people on these boards who are much more science savvy than me, they can feel free to correct anything I get wrong.)
Part of the problem is how we precieve time, namely, in a linear fashion, and w/ the calendar. I.e., in our conceptualization of time, 2007 happened after 1977. In their discussion, Miles says to Hurley that part of the problem in figuring out their TT issues is that they are experiencing time in a non-linear fashion. That is, for them, 1977 happened after they flashed back in 2007… so, in narrative time, 2007 and 1977 are concurrent, as far as what’s happen*ing* in the narrative present. In the grand scheme of things, 1977 did happen in the past, but not as the LBers are experiencing it now… and how we are seeing it through their eyes… It’s all about frame of reference (Einstein’s theory of relativit). It could be said that the events of 1977 have both happened and are happening. They’ve happened b/c it’s in the past, from the framework of linear chronology, but they’re happening b/c that’s where the present of the story and some of the characters are.
It’s entirely possible I may not be explaining this well. Sam Adams’ Summer Ale just came out, and I’ve had a few already. J So let’s do a little thought experiment. Let’s think of September 22, 2004, the day of the crash, as a sort of temporal ground zero. That is where the story starts and thus where narrative time begins in LOST. While 1977 has already happened, from the frame of reference of linear time, it has *not* happened yet for the LBers who TTed there. Thus, 1977 is simultaneously past and future – it’s past in one frame of reference, and future in another.
Now here’s where it may get dicey. (If it hasn’t already) It may be difficult to communicate this clearly, because communicating this with any precision would basically involve a hypothetical way of measuring the chronology. 1977 has already happened, yes. But, the LBers experience of 1977 has not happened yet. Let’s say they land in ’77 x days after the crash. Now, even though they have traveled back 30 years, per their experience of time, they are still x days *after* 9/22/04!! As are Sun, Ben, Locke and Lapidus!! In narrative time, they are all still in the same present, (i.e. x days after the crash) although they are located in different points in time based on the frame of reference of the “objective” calendar.
So, here is where the picture (and DHARMA sign) come into play. Let’s say the picture was taken 3 years after the crash (in their experience of time.) Then, it would also not come into existence in the other location (i.e. the barracks, 2007… also 3 years after the crash from the narrative point of reference using 9/22/04 as temporal ground zero) for Sun, Ben, and Lapidus to find it, until that time.
So yes, I’m saying that in 2007, that picture appeared in Ben’s house out of thin air. (At least that’s how it would have appeared to someone watching things unfold in 2007…. Although it was in fact the action of someone in 1977… the “objective”, calendar past, but also the narrative present happening concurrently with 2007, that caused it to appear in 2007) And so while Miles was right (in his discussion with Hurley) that they couldn’t “disappear” because the past can’t be changed, that does not mean that their actions couldn’t cause things to appear (or at least appear to appear out of nowhere) for their compatriates in 2007, since the 2 are actually happening concurrently, due to their not experiencing time linearly. At this point, the caveat/clarification of differentiating between time and their experience of time is necessary. In a way, you could say that’s really the heart of what I’m saying… that while time has remained linear, their experience/moving through it is not, as Miles says, thus the temporally caused anomalies… i.e. them causing things appearing in the “future” (i.e. 2007 which really isn’t the future, but rather also the present, happening concurrently w/ their experience of 1977)
Now, lest anyone call me crazy, or blame Sam Adams for this, there is precedent for what I’m describing, and perhaps an illustrative example will communicate my ideas much clearer than my rambling… Beginning of the season, Faraday goes to find Desmond in the hatch at some point in the “past” (linearly speaking, but it is the present from the frame of reference of narrative time) and Des suddenly wakes up in the “present” with a memory. Now, confusion arises when we categorize Dan’s experience of this as “past” (because of the TTing they were doing), and Des’ as present… when in fact, *both* happen in the present, (in terms of narrative time) and only their experiences of it differ – specifically, Dan experiences it in front of his eyes as an event, Des experiences it as a memory. Both of them really experience this at the same time, but the modes of their experiences differ… Desmond perceives it as a “past” memory, b/c from the frame of linear time, it happened at a point in the past. *But*, he still does experience it in the present, in the form of a memory, and that experience happens at that time (speaking in terms of narrative time) because that is when Dan was there talking to him at the hatch, which, though happening concurrently, from the standpoint of linear time, is in the past.
100%
In regards to the picture… Ben couldn’t have seen it before that point in time, because it hadn’t existed yet. As the Shotgun Willie song from the beginning of the season says, “You can’t make a record if you never been there.” The LOSTies hadn’t been to ‘77/DHARMA yet, and thus a record hadn’t been made yet.
Previously, I was really questioning the “whatever happened happened” (i.e. you can’t change the past) school of TT thinking, propagated by Faraday and the episode of the same name, which most fans took as Gospel, a definite proclamation from the writers that this is how TT works in LOST. I had been doubting that… thinking that Faraday was either mistaken about this, or he was lying, for whatever reason, possibly to try and dissuade them from doing anything to change the past.
My doubt that “whatever happened happened” was intensified by the appearance a couple epis ago, of the Barracks, w/ DHARMA signs and other stuff that seemed out of place there after the Others had occupied it for roughly 12+ years. Surely, something went awry in the past that caused what is now perceived as discontinuity… whether that be an alternate time line forming, the left behinders changing the past, or something.
However, certain other events have begun to occur that seem to solidify the notion that “whatever happened happened” is the writers’ MO in regards to TT. Specifically the major happening of Sayid shooting Ben, then Ben being taken to the Temple to be saved. The writers went out of their way to explain, via Alpert, that Ben wouldn’t have remembered this in the future, thus smoothing out (albeit awkwardly) any narrative wrinkles that would occur with Ben, later in life, meeting the man who shot him as a child, when 815 crashed. An explanation of this is necessary if “whatever happened” really did happen… But, if you can change the past, then Sayid’s shooting Ben would have caused an alternate timeline, in which case Ben’s not remembering Sayid in the original timeline wouldn’t have been an issue, and no explanation of this would have been necessary.
*Furthermore*… when Ben sees the DHARMA pic w/ the Left Behinders in it, in “Dead is Dead”, he really seems genuinely surprised, rather than a feigned surprise to try and throw off Sun and Lapidus. Whether or not he’s seen that picture before is a very important detail, and so my guess is he was somehow coached as to what his reaction should be like. To me, it just didn’t seem like feigned surprise, it seemed genuine, like he had actually seen the picture.
Thus, in light of these and other things, I’m leaning towards “whatever happened happened” truly being the writers’ MO for TT.
But that still leaves us with the problem of the out of place stuff in 2007-ish Barracks… namely, the signs and the picture.
If you can’t change the past, and “whatever happened happened”, then how did these things suddenly show up, out of nowhere?
I think the key lies in Hurley and Miles’ discussion on TT, and in a clarification of narrative time as it applies to LOST, and Einstein’s theory of special relativity. (Regarding the last thing… Disclaimer: I’m *not* a physicist. There are many people on these boards who are much more science savvy than me, they can feel free to correct anything I get wrong.)
Part of the problem is how we precieve time, namely, in a linear fashion, and w/ the calendar. I.e., in our conceptualization of time, 2007 happened after 1977. In their discussion, Miles says to Hurley that part of the problem in figuring out their TT issues is that they are experiencing time in a non-linear fashion. That is, for them, 1977 happened after they flashed back in 2007… so, in narrative time, 2007 and 1977 are concurrent, as far as what’s happen*ing* in the narrative present. In the grand scheme of things, 1977 did happen in the past, but not as the LBers are experiencing it now… and how we are seeing it through their eyes… It’s all about frame of reference (Einstein’s theory of relativit). It could be said that the events of 1977 have both happened and are happening. They’ve happened b/c it’s in the past, from the framework of linear chronology, but they’re happening b/c that’s where the present of the story and some of the characters are.
It’s entirely possible I may not be explaining this well. Sam Adams’ Summer Ale just came out, and I’ve had a few already. J So let’s do a little thought experiment. Let’s think of September 22, 2004, the day of the crash, as a sort of temporal ground zero. That is where the story starts and thus where narrative time begins in LOST. While 1977 has already happened, from the frame of reference of linear time, it has *not* happened yet for the LBers who TTed there. Thus, 1977 is simultaneously past and future – it’s past in one frame of reference, and future in another.
Now here’s where it may get dicey. (If it hasn’t already) It may be difficult to communicate this clearly, because communicating this with any precision would basically involve a hypothetical way of measuring the chronology. 1977 has already happened, yes. But, the LBers experience of 1977 has not happened yet. Let’s say they land in ’77 x days after the crash. Now, even though they have traveled back 30 years, per their experience of time, they are still x days *after* 9/22/04!! As are Sun, Ben, Locke and Lapidus!! In narrative time, they are all still in the same present, (i.e. x days after the crash) although they are located in different points in time based on the frame of reference of the “objective” calendar.
So, here is where the picture (and DHARMA sign) come into play. Let’s say the picture was taken 3 years after the crash (in their experience of time.) Then, it would also not come into existence in the other location (i.e. the barracks, 2007… also 3 years after the crash from the narrative point of reference using 9/22/04 as temporal ground zero) for Sun, Ben, and Lapidus to find it, until that time.
So yes, I’m saying that in 2007, that picture appeared in Ben’s house out of thin air. (At least that’s how it would have appeared to someone watching things unfold in 2007…. Although it was in fact the action of someone in 1977… the “objective”, calendar past, but also the narrative present happening concurrently with 2007, that caused it to appear in 2007) And so while Miles was right (in his discussion with Hurley) that they couldn’t “disappear” because the past can’t be changed, that does not mean that their actions couldn’t cause things to appear (or at least appear to appear out of nowhere) for their compatriates in 2007, since the 2 are actually happening concurrently, due to their not experiencing time linearly. At this point, the caveat/clarification of differentiating between time and their experience of time is necessary. In a way, you could say that’s really the heart of what I’m saying… that while time has remained linear, their experience/moving through it is not, as Miles says, thus the temporally caused anomalies… i.e. them causing things appearing in the “future” (i.e. 2007 which really isn’t the future, but rather also the present, happening concurrently w/ their experience of 1977)
Now, lest anyone call me crazy, or blame Sam Adams for this, there is precedent for what I’m describing, and perhaps an illustrative example will communicate my ideas much clearer than my rambling… Beginning of the season, Faraday goes to find Desmond in the hatch at some point in the “past” (linearly speaking, but it is the present from the frame of reference of narrative time) and Des suddenly wakes up in the “present” with a memory. Now, confusion arises when we categorize Dan’s experience of this as “past” (because of the TTing they were doing), and Des’ as present… when in fact, *both* happen in the present, (in terms of narrative time) and only their experiences of it differ – specifically, Dan experiences it in front of his eyes as an event, Des experiences it as a memory. Both of them really experience this at the same time, but the modes of their experiences differ… Desmond perceives it as a “past” memory, b/c from the frame of linear time, it happened at a point in the past. *But*, he still does experience it in the present, in the form of a memory, and that experience happens at that time (speaking in terms of narrative time) because that is when Dan was there talking to him at the hatch, which, though happening concurrently, from the standpoint of linear time, is in the past.
100%
In regards to the picture… Ben couldn’t have seen it before that point in time, because it hadn’t existed yet. As the Shotgun Willie song from the beginning of the season says, “You can’t make a record if you never been there.” The LOSTies hadn’t been to ‘77/DHARMA yet, and thus a record hadn’t been made yet.