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pchee pchee is offline
Building a Raft
Join Date: May 2006
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Old May 25th, 2007, 07:24 PM

Default Jacob in the coffin: interesting connection

OK we all know that several characters on LOST are named after 18th and 19th century philosophers that all had differing ideas on the the nature of man, etc etc. Well, I think with our last little clue in the newspaper clipping...the show's creators have done it again.
I was reading about the name that people made out from the clipping, "J...entham". There was a 19th century philosopher named Jeremy Bentham who, according to Wikipedia, was a philosopher, and legal and social reformer.
What was especially interesting is that this Jeremy Bentham designed a type of prison building which he called the Panopticon. The concept of the design was to allow an observer to observe all prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a "sentiment of an invisible omniscience." In his own words, Bentham described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example." Now, if you are so inclined you can probably read more details about it in Wikipedia or elsewhere, but does that not sound like THE ISLAND? A controlled environment with observation stations that are hidden, where people are being watched from...and the people themselves who are being watched unable to see or quantify their observers? Who would be the architect of all this if not Jacob, who even Ben defers too?
 
 
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