Yeah, I'm sorry for commenting on my own post (see bottom of this post) --TACKY!--but I have more that I'm trying to work out in my head.

Have any of your read CAT'S CRADLE by Kurt Vonnegut? In it the concept "karass" is central to the East/West blended culture and relgion invented as part of a utopian society on a fictional tropical island.

(See! My post is relevant!--ha ha)

A karass is a group of people who are central to eachother's lives in every life they experience on earth. My brother in this life may be my husband or son or employer or mother in another, but in each we are extremely significant to eachother. A karass can have a very large number of people in it. Most have 4-10. Many people never learn they are part of a karass, and many of those who do are never able to list every member in their karass. A "duprass" is a karass of only 2 people.

Ever since I started watching Lost I have thought of the Losties as a karass. This fits with my idea that other Jacks, Kates, Hurleys, Sawyers, Vincents, etc. exist in other parallel dimensions and that in each one there is overlap in these character's lives. It fits with my idea that possibly the Jack/Kate/Sawyer love triangle exists in each dimension. They all need to be in eachother's lives. They all need to have overlapping storylines, so it's natural (supernatural, actually) that they all end up on the island together. It is FATE.

The idea of a karass was essentially an Eastern idea long before Vonnegut thought to put it in his fantastic novels. Ok, in some Eastern religions it is explained that karasses keep happening in lifetime after lifetime because something about the relationships between the members of a karass is unresolved. Maybe the person who torments you most in this life treats you that way because you did the same to her in a past life and an important lesson of the universe hasn't yet been learned. I think the karass ends and life stops repeating when everyone in the group has learned all that they were meant to and there are no more unresolved issues. Then there's that whole Eastern merging of ids and wholeness and oneness with the universe and no need for karasses because everyone is one, namaste, the end.

I've been wondering if Shannon and Boone weren't a duprass and once each one, in their own way, was finally able to break free of that relationship (Shannon learns to believe in herself b/c of Sayid and ends her dependence on Boone/Boone emotionally frees himself of Shannon and is able to focus on his own interests) and find redemption through self-reliance and emotional adulthood, they both died shortly thereafter because each had solved the duprass and moved on to a higher level. Hey, it's not so crazy. The Lost producers are a literate bunch. They are the type to have devoured Vonnegut in high school and anyway, the idea is not so different from many LostTalk posters' notion that the people on the island die once they've resolved their problems.


Chickenpotpies said:
"Maybe several parallel dimensions exist at the same time, In each there is some version of Kate, Sawyer, Jack, Rose, Bernard, Vincent, and everybody else. They may not have crash landed on the island in every parallel dimension. (<--I'm not sold on this last idea, and have the inkling that they do make it to the island in every dimension, but who knows???) Charley might be the leader of the group in some dimensions. Boone and Shannon might be alive in others. Or Hurley might be the brooding hottie and Sawyer the chubby everyman. You get the idea.

Well, I think in whichever parallel dimension we are shown in the flash forward...that version of Jack is more like Sawyer (for one thing, Jack is definitely reckless and alone). Maybe the Sawyer we haven't met from that dimension is more like Jack. Maybe the Jack/Kate/Sawyer love triangle exists in all of the parallel dimensions and she chooses differently in each, because it's substantively different Jacks and Sawyers in each. And I guess substantively different Kates too."

WOW.. awesome find. I've never read Cat's Cradle, but this definately sounds very close to the personalities of the island. It's funny, because it could be so closely interpeted as purgatory, yet it's not, and is not religious by nature, but natural, like the sun and moon.

If time travel is not involved as the producers claim, and it wasn't just a dream that Desmond had, because, well, who wakes up naked after a dream (yikes) then this has got to be the answer for Desmond and all the characters on the show.

I've also wondered if Rose and Bernard are not a duprass. I love the scene where they meet. They're both so lonely (and apparently Rose's daughter had died not long before, I think) and they find eachother out in the snow one day. I love it.

Hey, I just remembered that Kurt Vonnegut's idea of "Ice 9" from Cat's Cradle was used in an episode of Alias!

In CC, Ice 9 is a material that, once added to water, premanently freezes that liquid and any other liquid sources attached to it. Meaning, squirt a drop of Ice 9 into a miniscule stream in upstate NY that happens to connect to the Hudson River, then all of that water plus all of the Atlantic (and then Arctic, Pacific, the Mediterannean by way of Gibralter, etc.) will become permanently frozen. It's another armageddon, like nuclear winter. It's a terrifying idea of situations humans put themselves in after screwing around with nature in ways they were never meant to. Much like the Dharma Initiative does, hmmm?

In Alias, Sydney and her group (Holy crap!--SYDNEY, the MAIN character from Alias--what an OBVIOUS connection to Lost, I never spotted it before--DUH!!!) is chasing an Ice 9 arms dealer guy selling it as a terrorist weapon. They chase him through the streets of Morocco (?) until he shatters into a million pieces. He had unintentionally ingested it and froze himself from the inside out.

So anyway, there's your evidence that the Lost producers are Vonnegut fans and that other themes from Vonnegut's books might have heavily influenced themes in Lost.

I love Vonnegut and I cannot believe I didn't think about that, but the whole "karass" thing makes a lot of sense. There are a few different major authors out there that I believe have made an impact in one way or another on the show and I suppose you could just add Vonnegut to the list. I am just waiting for Palahnuik to be added to the list in a "Diary" sort of way. Ooo, give me time and maybe I will find a connection. For now I have to go and wanted to give you kudos for a unique and interesting possible connection.

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Speaking of Palahnuik, people say Fight Club has a lot to do with Lost as does a newer novel of his does as, but the name escapes me. I suppose the quote "Only after disaster can we be ressurrected." is a fitting quote for our characters.

here's another interesting conversation with Tyler:
Tyler Durden: [pointing at an emergency instruction manual on a plane] You know why they put oxygen masks on planes?
Narrator: So you can breath.
Tyler Durden: Oxygen gets you high. In a catastrophic emergency, you're taking giant panicked breaths. Suddenly you become euphoric, docile. You accept your fate. It's all right here. Emergency water landing - 600 miles an hour. Blank faces, calm as Hindu cows.
Narrator: That's, um... That's an interesting theory.

I don't know what that has to do with the show, I just love the movie... sorry for jacking the thread with Chuck Palahnuik

I'm another Vonnegut fan but it's been decades since I read Cat's Cradle. I know I have a copy somewhere, I'll have to dig it up. Makes sense to me that Lost writers are fans too. But I'll have to read the book again before commenting more. I went out to Wikipedia to see if reading the plot summary would jog my memory. Here's some more vocabulary from the book. More ways of relating it to Lost.

# karass - a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will. The people can be thought of as fingers in a Cat's Cradle.
# duprass - a karass of only two people, who almost always die together. The typical example is a loving couple who work together for a great purpose.
# granfalloon - a false karass; i.e., a group of people who imagine they have a connection that does not really exist. An example is "Hoosiers"; Hoosiers are people from Indiana, and Hoosiers have no true spiritual destiny in common, so really share little more than a name.
# wampeter - the central point of a karass
# foma - harmless untruths

In Vonnegut's own words: (from Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons)
“ Dear Reader: The title of this book is composed of three words from my novel Cat's Cradle. A wampeter is an object around which the lives of many otherwise unrelated people may revolve. The Holy Grail would be a case in point. Foma are harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls. An example: "Prosperity is just around the corner." A granfalloon is a proud and meaningless association of human beings. Taken together, the words form as good an umbrella as any for this collection of some of the reviews and essays I've written, a few of the speeches I made. ”

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I just listened to a podcast with Damon and Carlton and they pretty much squashed this theory.
here is a summary:
A fan asked this question:
as far as the fast forward goes that we saw at the end of season 3 is that a definite occurence that takes place or is that something that is one possible future that could very possibly be changed if jack makes it back to the island to maybe be able to change whatever happened?
Carlton:
we are not big fans of the idea of sorta multiple futures and
I think that it kinda robs the story of its stakes in a certain way so
we are working very hard to basically maintain the future is the future and we are not going to go back and sorta recast the future by affecting events in the past and then all the sudden have a completely different future
Damon:
We are not saying time and spacetime and the ability to sorta travel through time is not going to continue to be a motiff on the show. But sorta everything we have to say about what the effects of time traveling are is in "flashes before your eyes" specifically in the scene between Desmond and Ms hawking. The rules that she basically explains to Desmond are the rules we basically live by in the writers room. Basically the future is fixed
Carlton:
and not parallel futures
Damon:
thats right, Jack and Kate are going to get off the island and he is going to grow a very large beard.
Carlton:
and buy a razr phone
Damon:
yeah all those things are going to happen

You can listen to the podcast here
This question is asked at about 10:10 on the counter

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Doctor playing golf. Woo, boy howdy, now I've heard everything. What's next, cop eating a donut?

OK, it's not exactly what I wanted to hear, but if it's true...well, then, I guess it's true.

One question, though, that keeps coming back to me:

If the future is so fixed why is there a Mrs. Hawking at all? If Desmond was never going to give Penny the ring and he was always going to end up on the island, why is she in the antiques store all worked up in a tizzy when he buys the ring? Further, why is the Dharma Initiative on the island at all? If the Valenzetti Equation can't be manipulated, why all the work to change the future? And if it can, why the sense of urgency in the Dharma Initiative's research?

Just wondering...

Hey, I just learned that it's Korean Thanksgiving this week. (The actual day is this coming Saturday.) Happy Thanksgiving Jin and Sun! I think it's so cool to have a program on American prime time TV where a language other than English (or even Spanish) is prominently displayed. Yes to variety.

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OK, I give up. Maybe I should just start heavily medicating myself. That way I could watch the show in an accepting stooper and never get these dang headaches.

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