They have released a title for the premier episode from LOST’s upcoming season. “The Beginning of the End.” That’s a great way to keep interest and get speculation started up again, but the title doesn’t really tell us anything.
I did come across something that was significant in some book or other that I read recently. Fans of LOST will know that the name of the person whose funeral Jack went to in the flash forward sequences in last season’s finale seems to have been Jeremy Bentham. The actual philosopher by that name was famous for a number of things, but one is his hedonic calculus. This lists seven considerations a utilitarian should weigh in deciding whether a course of action maximizes pleasure/minimizes pain for the greatest number.
Recall that LOST’s mythology from the beginning centers on the opposing forces of light and dark. Ben famously referred to his group as “the good guys”. Could the struggle be over a power (whether technological or magical) that could destroy humankind, unless those who know about it are willing to sacrifice some in order to save others? This possibility has been hinted at elsewhere in the LOST storyline.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled patient waiting until February, in which (in keeping with Bentham’s calculus) you put LOST out of your mind to minimize the pain of waiting until the new season begins…
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