There was a cartoon that I remember watching when I was a young child of maybe 4 or 5. I can't remember what it was called, but the details of the story I remember, mainly because it scared the hell out of me.
It was about a girl who was playing with a ball near some caves. At some point the ball goes into a cave by accident so she runs to the cave, but is stopped from going inside when she sees that in there is a really old guy with a long beard. She asks him to pass her the ball, but he refuses and tells her to go get it herself. He manages to convince her to go into the cave herself and while she's picking up her ball, he runs out. When she tries to run out she is stopped by an invisible field blocking the entrance. The old guy then explains that he's been trapped in the cave for hundreds of years, for there must always be one person in the cave. He tells the girl that she will be trapped in the cave until the day she manages to convince somebody else to enter the cave.
What I'm suggesting is that this is what LOST is all about. The island needs two 'people' at all times to keep it balance. The light and the dark. These two people need to take their posts through free will. These posts most recently have been held by Jacob and Smokey (who is trapped and wants to go home). They have to somehow make it so people somehow willingly relieve them of their possitions on the island. So the bring people to the island, but no matter what they do they people always end up becoming side tracked with the magical properties of the island and fight, destroy, corrupt, etc. What we have been watching is their very complexed plan to make a 'candidate' willingly take the role of either the light or the dark. There are rules which bind them, but they've been on the island long enough to think of ways to bend the rules. Yes, they hate each other. They were once friends who, after a few hundred years alone on an island, became sick of the sight of each other. P! erhaps only one person can be released at any one time, which is why they are fighting.
Our great twist at the end of the series will be that the two sides were only every Jacob and MIB vs everybody else. Everybody else was played. Jacob and his mate will be free, and two of our losties will now be trapped, with a new game ready to begin.