LOST Theories - DarkUFO

If you check out my post history, you will see that I am an adamant opponent to the Loop theory. Well, here is the only way that I can figure out how to get it to work without causing massive paradoxes.

First, let's break the "time loop"s into two scenarios:

1) You could say that a loop occurs whenever someone goes back into time to a point when they already exist. For instance when the Losties go back to 77, when a lot of them were alive in the "real world".

2) The type of time loop that I am opposed to is the following type. Jack and company work their way through the plot in Lost until there is some kind of "reset" and they find themselves back on the beach, as in season 1. This would keep happening (as in Groundhog Day) until something is fixed.

It is obviously true that (1) exists unless all the "time travel" is actually an illusion created by going to an alternate universe. I am so profoundly uninterested in that theory that I will let it die in peace.

From what Damon and Carlton have said, they wanted paradox-free time travel. For this to be completely true, "whatever happened, happened" must be exactly true. This would completely wreck scenario 2.

Let's say that the reset just transfers Jack's memories or his entire mind back into his old body on the beach. Also imagine that we know the loop happened 3 times. The implications of exact WHH are the following

- then all 3 sets of memories would have to be in Jack's head from the 1st time we see him. Imagine 3 minds vying for control of one body? Insanity?
- Jack or anyone else who was reset in this way would never be able to change anything by going back in time because WHH says that if it happened before it will happen again exactly the same.
- not only that, but it would literally be impossible to create the loop or to end the loop.
- Writing this would be very ugly.

The problems with resetting by transferring his body back would be even worse... there would be a new version of Jack's body back in the bamboo for every single loop. And each time the loop goes through the new body would be maybe a year or 2 older. Strict WHH would also mean that there were 3 versions of Jack on the island from the beginning. Not a Pleasant thought.

The only way I can get around this problem with WHH and looping is to assume that the reset would be something like REINCARNATION. This would fit in so well with the rest of the semi-Buddhist/semi-Egyptian/semi-Greek spiritual themes.

The thing that flipped the switch for me was a description Buddhist of reincarnation/rebirth that I stumbled on while researching another Lost theory. The idea was that on death the "soul" joins the impersonal infinite and when it is reconstructed into a consciousness to be reborn it may or may not be constructed in exactly the same way. Unfortunately I cannot find the exact reference so I will have to go by memory (yuck!).

Another aspect of rebirth is that certain attributes of the previous self will be preserved. The scene with Richard and young Locke (where Richard presents YL with several objects and asks him to choose) mirrors the method by which the current Dali Lama was chosen. His affinity for items connected to the previous Dali Lama, and certain aspects of his personality and "unleared-knowledge" were the proof that he was the rebirth of the Lama.

The trick as far as the reset goes is that a tiny fraction of Jack's "soul" would be replaced during the reset. That replacement would be just enough to tip the balance but not enough to be noticed by Jack's consciousness.

Taking WHH into consideration from the beginning this would look like:
- Jack boards O815 Australia as the same old jack that everybody knew.
- The plane gets into trouble and crashes
- The part that was never shown to us was that there was a flash similar to what happened to the Ajira316 flight (though this is not exactly necessary)
- During that flash, 3 tiny pieces of Jack's soul would suddenly change for no apparent reason (since there were "3 loops")
- Jack would go on with life as normal (or as normal as is possible with the Island)
- At some point the 3 tiny pieces of Jack's soul will cause him to do something (or maybe 3 different somethings) that will make the difference in the coming conflict
- AFTER this has happened, someone will convince Jack that he has to transmit part of his soul back in time to make sure that the cataclysm doesn't come to pass
- Insert mumbo jumbo here. The mumbo jumbo may happen 3 times to make 3 separate "loops".
- Since there is "conservation of soul", the 3 tiny pieces of his soul will be exchanged between the future Jack and the the Jack who was crashing in flight 815.
- Now future Jack has exactly the same soul that he had before 815 crashed.

This is not perfect for the following reasons:

1) if you noticed, the 3 parts of the soul cause the same kind of paradox as the compass. They come from nowhere and return to nowhere. Obviously this is not a problem as it has been used before.

2) i am using the term loop, when there is no evidence that there ever was a loop. Even the idea that the loop "happened" 3 times is not exactly apparent. But that as good as you can possibly get if WHH is true. The 3 pieces of soul have the same exact kind of life cycle as the pocket watch and "loop" forever, trapped in an eddy of time.

Before anyone gets too caught up in the fact that I used a spiritual analogy, this would also work if you replaced the word soul with the memory (and rarely the word mind).

We welcome relevant, respectful comments.
 
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