The futility of theorizing by GeorgeM4

This is not a theory of how Lost will eventually play out or indeed what it's all about. Rather, it's a collection of thoughts as to why it's impossible to know what we've been watching for the past few years before the very end.

A major element in the story of lost is the art of the con. Sawyer introduces us to it early in season 1. The con artist skilfully directs the victims by manipulating their most basic instinct: desire. Sometimes it can be seen as greed, but that's another form of desire. Furthermore, the con artist does not directly offer the victim what they desire, but sets the situation in a way whereby the victim thinks they are more clever than the con artist and somehow they discovered a secret and it's their choice to exploit it (hence "you can't cheat an honest man").

Another major element is faith. Religious faith can be perceived as the biggest con of all time: we blindly believe in a reward without even the need to be convinced or even knowing what exactly the reward is. On the other hand, Buddhism as one the prominent religious references of Lost doesn't depend on faith but the elimination of desire to achieve nirvana as the reward.

A good con requires some faith and a lot of misdirection. Misdirection does not necessarily mean using lies; being "economical with the truth" is also quite effective. Even more so, because you can always claim that you never lied, it's the other person's fault if they assumed wrong. Thus you can continue the con even if parts of the deception are discovered.

To claim that the way the Lost story is presented is "economical with the truth" will be a galactic understatement. The result of this long con that is Lost was a myriad of bizzare theories which, nevertheless, sounded plausible at the time given the information at hand. You may initially disagree with me calling your favourite show a "con" but anything with a surprise ending has manipulated your confidence of understanding what was going on and is therefore a hustle, albeit one that entertains.

But now in Season 6, all has changed as we are getting ANSWERS! Aren't we? Well... No... Not really... What we are getting is progress. Partial clues about things that may turn out to be of little relevance. So Locke is dead and Flocke is MiB/Smokey/Monster; that's not an answer of what smokey is, and if you remember MiB was introduced just before season 6. So Jacob was watching the losties (and others) through the mirror in the lighthouse; we already knew he had some way of manipulating their lives, does the existence of the lighthouse answer anything? If anything, it adds more questions. So we know the losties are candidates, but candidates for what? With every single clue, more questions... Even worse, these are questions that before season 6 we didn't even begin to fathom that we will have to ask.

Isn't it interesting for example that from early on we knew about the good vs. evil theme and it's now white vs. black? Is it a coincidence that "Candidate" comes from the Latin word for the colour white? Or that the Latin word for the colour black is "niger" when Nigeria has played a prominent role in the Lost universe? How come we didn't consider these things before? We just didn't have the full picture. We weren't even close.

I believe theorizing is futile even now: we are still missing such important pieces of the puzzle that we are not even close to understanding the picture.

In the ancient Greek theatre, at the point where the story would be weaved into a tangled mess impossible to resolve, a "deus ex machina" (litteraly "god from a machine" because they were actors lowered onto the stage by a crane) would appear and sort everything out. Much like most of the Star Trek stories were the chief engineer would deliver some jargon and invent a new technology on the spot to kill some Borg or stop a star from going supernova. However, there is a skill to using such a basic element of storytelling. After all if I told you a story about a hungry lion stalking a scared man who eventually kills it by suddenly producing a previously unmentioned riffle you wouldn't be impressed.

In the same vain, we need to wait for the point of revelation. My guess is that episode 15 or 16 will provide a simple answer to life, the universe and everything that is Lost(I hope the answer isn't 42... well, it may be). And I am pretty sure the answer is going to be so simple and basic that will have the whole planet - or at least the fans of the show – exclaim a collective "D'oh".

Having said all that, I am not advocating that people should stop submitting theories. The internet has accumulated 6 years of theories that would be enough for a few thousand new, completely different shows or books. I certainly had a lot of fun reading them. Just don't keep your hopes up that you are correct. To paraphrase Jacob: it only ends once, it shouldn't end in disappointment.