The power of Belief by DustinCahill

The not completely thought idea about the power of Belief

I’ve been toying with the idea of how important Faith or Belief is on the show, in actually practical terms on the Island. I started thinking about this after watching season 5 episode ‘316′. Belief comes up a number of times in the episode, most explicitly with Locke’s suicide note and Ben’s story about Doubting Thomas the Apostle. I then thought back to Ben’s description of the Island as a “Magic Box” and how whatever you wanted to come out of it would. Then I happened to watch the episode where Ben watches Alex get gunned down by Keamy, and the way he handled it always made sense, but in the sense that he felt his BELIEF that Keamy would not go through with killing her was enough. Then he proclaimed that Widmore had “broken the rules”. Then I thought about The Others not jumping through time in ‘Because You Left’.

What if there is a literal war between the power of free will and belief. The Island naturally emphasizes certain people’s desires or wounds (Ben maybe did bring the dying pregnant mother baggage with his elevation to leader, thus his personal obsession and Richards distrust of him), but The Others in general try and operate without the power of the Island because of Jacob’s principles. The ultimate test of Jacob’s concept of a progressing man is a group of people that allow each other’s beliefs to be actualized without the influence of the Island (or MiB).

Faraday represented the ultimate test of the Island’s power to grant desire. Someone so badly wanted to change things they forced Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid back in time to do so, reaching out to Aijira 316 with the Island’s power as they neared. Faraday then, at least in a deleted scene from The Variable, explains that the variable people need to BELIEVE (his word) they can change things to impact it. Once they do with that with Incident (most everything we have seen in the show has already been the “Alt” world, where things were changed), The Others see how they are breaking the world, and take on the role of keeping the powers of the Island in check. To become an Other is to set oneself outside the reach of the Island, to not let MiB touch you. But for some reason, The Others fake following the power of belief, and Keamy broke that rule and had Smokey sacked on him.

I’m tired and avoiding writing a final, but someone should take what I’m trying to get at here and turn it into gold. Sweet, logical gold! I realize these existential-tinged theories reek of infinite possibilities that could never actually be displayed, but I think I have something here with the constant emphasis on belief and the occasion hint of ‘rules’. Then again, conversations with Widmore about Alex always having die (if the Island wanted it, was Widmore becoming a MiB follower? Then why did Ben expect Keamy not to shoot Alex? He thought he wasn’t really an Other since he was causing the baby crisis, and expected his belief to be enacted?) are popping into my weary mind, and I can’t make it make sense right now… maybe get rid of the stuff about ‘rules’.