The TV series Lost was one of the most watched TV shows in history. Almost all of its episodes in all its seasons had more than 10 million views. It got 90% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. A New York Times reporter once called Lost "the show with perhaps the most compelling continuing story line in television history." Why was Lost so captivating? I have a theory but first a short summary of the show with minimal spoilers.
Lost starts and in many ways persists across its seasons as a story about a group of random people who are forced into existence in a new mysterious world unchartered by mere mortals. This world is so unlike ours that, at first glance, it seems like the show was popular for the spectacle of this world. This world was a tropical island (at least in the beginning) where there was a polar bear, a bunker with an apocalyptic timer, tech ruins of a failed business, a monster made entirely of smoke, a bizarrely modern community, and two ancient brothers with deep disagreements. Despite this dazzling sequence of items, the show is great because of the island's victims it concentrates on. We will soon see that these characters are really us here now.
After crash landing on the island, each character finds ways to come to terms with the island's reality. Some land on their feet and some on their face as they are thrown into this world. Some lose their integrity and some keep it to the end. Some find love and some lose it.
Like these characters we find ourselves thrown into this world from birth. By thrownness I mean the German Geworfenheit as introduced by philosopher Martin Heidegger. It is the fact of our finitude not just in time but also in length, height, width, nature, nurture, culture, and other non-physical dimensions of our existence. We are brought here without warrant, with unwarranted features and given unwarranted stories about why we belong here (or not). Ultimately, Lost resonates with us because it brings us back to that raw truth that we did not ask to be here but nonetheless have to fight back against the random entropy that constantly threatens to engulf us. This entropy does not wish to reshape us into some image but rather seeks to deshape us altogether. We try our best to avoid that eventuality. The more heroic among us even try to fight off entropy for others.
Thrownness is different from dereliction as emphasized in "Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought" by William J. Richardson. We are not saying that our lives are abandoned or unwanted but that they are not explicitly/clearly justified. We can not deny that we, and all living things for that matter, are born naked of explicit function. Our parents might like each other and us very much but they don't have any idea what is going on either, in terms of the universe they found themselves and each other in.
The show invites us to reflect on what we discover and become in the chaos of our projectile existence. Through Desmond and Penny, we are reminded that even in disarray, we can still find one another—and that connection can be the invariant that keeps us from drowning deep in the chaos. Being hurled through life would be much more harrowing if faced alone and, in some ways, that is the essence of hell. Michael shows us the cost of betraying fellow lost souls, no matter the justification. We look at Ben and John to see how the pursuit of destiny twists one man and makes another man whole. And in Jack and Charlie, we see the appeal of sacrificial leadership.
One exception to the narrative portrayed by Lost and lived out in real life is the position held in Christianity. Christians are told not to see themselves as orphans lost in the world but rather as legitimate children of the world's creator set to ultimately inherit this world which right now appears to be very much like the island in Lost and quite full of orphans.
