"WE'RE ALL MAD HERE" This post was written to help analyze "Happily Ever After" and "Everybody Loves Hugo." It's a synthesis of what I've been working on the last few years on my blog (for those of you who drop by over there). However, I've added some cool Sci-Fi references to cover all the bases and some massive questions about what we've seen recently on LOST. [Plus I tell you a funny story about spiders, and funny stories are always a good thing!]
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MEMORIES ARE IDENTITY
After your brain processes your experiences and knowledge and translates them into memories, they become the building blocks of Who You Are (your You, your identity, your consciousness or ghost). The process is cumulative and comprehensive. As long as you're able, your brain is constantly adding and integrating new memories to your You. Therefore, your You constantly changes. Since your personality and perspective or perception (how you interpret what you experience) are based on who You are, your personality and perspective is constantly changing as well.
Since memories are what constitute your You (your identity or consciousness or ghost), changing your previously stored memories will inevitably cause your You to change too.
This is why permanently losing your memories can be so devastating. Your brain can only develop your You with what's stored in your brain. Since your You is constantly redeveloped by your brain (processing incoming memories with stored memories), loss of any or all memories reshapes Who You Are. Your prior You disappears or changes depending on the extent of stored memory loss. Lucky for you, your brain (usually) never stops adding new memories. Eventually, you'll develop your You anew. [We've seen this on TV (Samantha Who) and in movies (Regarding Henry, Total Recall).]
Forgotten memories (those lost slowly over time) are still stored in your brain but inaccessible to your conscious self (you can't summon them to mind at will). However, as long as they are stored somewhere in your mind, they can still be utilized by your brain. (Just because you've completely forgotten taking swimming lessons in the past doesn't mean you no longer know to swim).
Repressed memories (those hidden FROM you BY your brain) are often your brain's way of protecting you. Ultimately, your brain just wants you to be happy (because if you're happy, you are more likely to take care of your body and keep your brain alive, which is what it really wants). Blocking out certain events or shutting down in the face of intense fear or pain is pretty handy when you think about it (HA!), but, unfortunately, repressing memories can't prevent your brain from using them to build your You, and that can wreak all kinds of havoc on your mind (and sometimes even your body).
SPIDERS ARE EVIL
For example, let's say one day when you were little (just shy of three), you wake up in the middle of the night with a HUGE spider crawling on your arm, and it scares the living crap outta you so bad, your blood-curdling scream prompts your next door neighbor to call and ask if anybody's been murdered (true story, btw). This experience gives you a healthy (and overwhelming) fear of all spiders (officially called arachnophobia), but you cope during the day-to-day because spiders can be easily spotted. Mom will stinky spray any spider you point out to her with the big, green can up top the 'fridgerator, and she'll let you watch until you know that sucker is good and dead.
But now at NIGHT you've got a problem cuz you know a HUGE squirming pile of spiders is hiding under the house just waiting for to you to fall asleep so they can crawl up out of the floor, swarm into your bed and skitter all over you with their prickly legs before you even know they're there! Your toddler logic tells you the spiders will only come if you are alone in bed (cuz that's when it happened before). Simple solution: you must never be alone in bed. EVER. And as far as you can tell, the best peeps to keep you company are the very peeps who got you into this mess in the first place by 1) giving birth to you and 2) living in a spider-infested shack on the edge of hell!
In your terror-driven determination to avoid waking up covered in spiders (and the ensuing descent into madness), you panic and scream in protest every time your parents put you to bed by yourself. When that doesn't work, you quiet down, wait until they are watching TV and then sneak into their bed and go to sleep. If they move you from their bed to yours, you get up every 30 minutes throughout the night and either climb into bed with them or ask them to come to your room and protect you (because the spiders are COMING).
If your parents are rational peeps, they will 1) figure out why you are so afraid and 2) take logical steps to help you overcome your fear BEFORE forcing you to sleep by yourself. However, your parents are MY parents (because this is MY true story), and my parents tell you that you WILL sleep by yourself in YOUR bed, and you will STAY in your bed the ENTIRE night because the spiders are all in your head, and you are fine. You say the first spider was not in your head cuz it was on your ARM! My dad reminds you he killed that spider. You say, "There's lots more." My mom reminds you about the man who crawled under the house and sprayed a "magic potion" that keeps spiders away. You say, "It didn't work."
[Oh yeah. I drove my parents RIGHT OUTTA their MINDS.]
For one sleepless week, my parents try everything they can think of to coax, convince or MAKE you stay in your bed. You stick to your guns in the name of primal self-preservation, common sense and all things holy. When it becomes clear that you aren't willing to submit to horrors unknown so they can sleep through the night, they decide to go Old School (country style) and pick a switch** off the tree in the front yard. They sit you down, show you the switch and tell you that from that night on, every time you get out of bed one of them (Daddy) will switch you until you get back in bed.
After three nights of fighting the system, you surrender (switching stings like FIRE, and you are not a complete moron, even at 2 1/2). As you force yourself to stay awake as long as possible night after night to keep watch, you absorb two important facts that will shape your identity from then until now: 1) my parents are unsympathetic sadists who will never believe anything you say if they don't like it, and 2) you'll just have to stay awake all night, every night the rest of your life to stay alive.
SPIDERS ARE STILL EVIL
The truth is, I can't remember experiencing all of the exact events of this story. I don't remember anything about waking up with that spider on my arm (which my dad now admits was "not small"). I do remember getting switched back into bed a few times (but not specifically in association with spiders), and I absolutely remember deciding my parents suck for switching me without cause. I kinda sorta remember forcing myself to stay awake out of fear when I was little, but it's just a glimmer.
But the damage was done. All growing up, I could never fall asleep at night. I spent most school nights reading by flashlight because I was bored. By 5th grade, I was a full-fledged insomniac (my pediatrician actually wrote a paper on it). To this day, I work best at night, only sleep well during the day and can't sleep more than 4 or 5 hours a night unless I take a prescription pill that's considered illegal in several countries.
All because of a spider event I can't even remember.
Eventually, my arachnophobia became a healthy lust for arachnocide. Now I violently smoosh any spider that crosses my path. Then I leave its carcass out for a day or two so serve as a warning to others. Hopefully word will get around in the spider community that Amy's house means instant death. [However, to this very day, if I know there's a spider anywhere near my bed, nobody in the entire house sleeps until that sucker is found, and I watch it die with my own eyes.]
One night my junior year of college, I was "asleep" on a couch at a Halloween party, and a coupla guys, knowing how much I hated spiders, conducted a little experiment to see if my hatred was powerful enough to wake me from my hunch-punch coma (this is what geeks do for fun at parties. I know! Right?). One guy used his fingers to tickle my bare arm while the other, my roommate's idiot boyfriend, shouted, "Amy! Spider!"
A millisecond later, spider boy was rolling on the floor with blood squirting out of his face, my roommate's boyfriend was rolling next to him laughing and I was just gone. My roommate said she found me barfing in the bushes with spider boy's blood on my elbow (I have no memory of any of this). Next morning I told my roommate if she didn't break up with that jackass boyfriend of hers, I was kicking her out. She said she was just happy I didn't barf in her car.
When I see a spider these days, I may not be afraid of it, but clearly the utter certainty that spiders = death has never left me. It's become an instinct, a part of who I am even tho I can't remember how it happened. So if you're thinkin' about playing any spider pranks on me whilst I'm unawares, please know I can't be responsible for what subconscious Amy does to you.
REMEMBER SCIENCE FICTION?
The idea that your identity can be altered, erased or replaced pops up all over sci-fi/fantasy stories, books, films and television, and to a one, they rely on the idea that human memories can be separated from or added to a human brain telepathically, genetically, chemically, magically, or (most interesting to us 21stC viewers) digitally.***
The most famous telepathic version of memory manipulation, I'd argue, is the Vulcan "mind-meld" trick used by Mr. Spock on Star Trek and all of its spin-offs.
Basically, Mr. Spock pulls a telepathic whammy where your mind is "joined" with his, so you can "experience" his memories (and vis versa). After this happens, you remember experiencing HIS past events as if you were him, including his thoughts and emotional reactions. You're "living" them during the mind-meld and keep them after, but you still recognize that they are not YOUR memories. You also retain his knowledge -- well, whatever he allows access to. So after a mind-meld with Mr. Spock, you'll know what he knows, and you'll instantly have skills and abilities you didn't have before. However, you are still YOU when the mind-meld is over [Unless you don't survive the process (it happens) or unless Mr. Spock uploads his entire mind into yours (Wrath of Khan)].
For most effective chemical memory manipulation, the award goes to the snooty, nun-like cult of women in Dune.
When one of these nun-like chicks is about to die, she partakes in a ceremony where the entire contents of her brain are uploaded into a newbie's head. Trick is, this little tradition has been going on for thousands of years, so the old gal's got her "ghost" AND a bunch of dead nun-like chicks' "ghosts" stored in her mind. After the newbie drinks some nasty gook (made from spicy worms), she passes out from the pain and wakes up with about 400 or so "ghosts" of women arguing in her head! In this way, any knowledge gained throughout the years is retained because the newbie can ask any of these 400 women questions (with her thoughts). Either they'll know the answers, or they'll talk amongst themselves and come up with something smart.
NOTE: These women aren't allowed to control the newbie. They just nag her bonkers when she does something they don't like. They CAN control the newbie in case of emergency, but by then the newbie's got bigger problems.
The genetic memory manipulation award goes to THE sci-fi dystopia film: Bladerunner.
This film is the story of 4 "replicants" who illegally sneak onto Earth and cause all kinds of problems. A replicant is basically a genetically designed android (grown in a jar like a clone) that looks, kills, bleeds and dies just like a human being. The only difference is their lack of emotional maturity (you do NOT want a replicant to get mad at you). To combat this problem, a guy named Tyrell (the android king) decides to experiment by implanting memories into a prototype replicant named Rachel (Sean Young). He gives her his niece's memories, and she's none the wiser. That's right! She has NO idea that she's a replicant because she remembers an entire lifetime lived as a human. When Harrison Ford (the bladerunner Deckard) tells her what she is, she has a serious identity crisis: What's "real?" Where does Tyrell's niece end and I begin? How do I trust my instincts if they are based on experiences I never had?
Eventually, Harrison convinces Rachel to roll with it (mainly through sex and piano playing), but what's interesting here is the idea that a human's memories can be duplicated in such a way that you can't tell the difference between the original and the duplicate. Also interesting: the idea that a set of introduced memories can become the basis of a completely new identity. If we extracted Rachel's mind, it would not be a copy of Tyrell's niece because as soon as Rachel started adding her own memories, her identity developed independently.
[If you have not seen Bladerunner, stop what you are doing, locate "The Director's Cut," and watch it immediately. I'm totally serious. Also, does the name "Deckard" remind you of any particular characater on V?]
And finally, the award for digital memory manipulation goes to: Ghost in the Shell.
[You thought I was gonna say The Matrix, didn't you? NOT!]
This anime film takes place in a world where the ONLY thing that can't be mechanically upgraded/created is your "ghost," the thing that makes you human -- your identity, your memories, your instincts. Everything else is just a shell for your "ghost." Problem is, government VIPs order up a custom computer program (A.I., artificial intelligence) to sneaky manipulate world events to keep them in power. When it's released on the web (which covers the entire planet by now), it gets away from them. While they're frantically hunting it down, the A.I. they thoughtfully programmed with oodles of thinking/learning/adaptive capabilities becomes sentient. That is, it becomes aware of itself as itself and negotiates its environment to meet its needs and desires. In sci-fi terms means that the A.I. is now alive. The A.I. applies for asylum (upload into an appropriate body), and nobody knows what to do next.
Sound too simple? It's not. If this A.I. is sentient or alive, then it is basically the digital version of a human "ghost." Up til then in this world, the "ghost" is considered the very HUMANNESS of humans. The debate over granting asylum to the A.I. (and not uploading the virus that will terminate it) sparks lots of existential questions: Does the organic automatically trump the artificial? That is, is the artificial LESS "real" than the organic, even if they are in essence exactly the same? Is the A.I. ghost Alive alive, or just sentient like an animal? If you can artificially create a ghost, now the certainty you have in your OWN ghost is in question. Your YOU can be artificially created, and you'd never know it (kinda like Rachel). And if it does turn out you're artificial, is this a bad thing or evolution?
Here's my question: If an A.I. is the artificial version of a human "ghost," and it can live either in a computer, on the web or in a body (artificial or organic), then wouldn't the organic version of the human ghost be able to exist in all those environments too? [FYI: This question is the center of an episode of The X-Files, and the answer on the show is YES.]
EXISTENTIAL CRISIS, MEET LOST
Fast forward to FRINGE. On this more creepy than The X-Files creep-show, we see an uber-company CEO order a tech to hook a corpse up to a computer and extract its memories (apparently, you can do this up to 6 hours after death). After the process is complete, the tech tells the company's CEO that the memories "they need" are not there. [Hint: where did they go? And how?]
Interesting.
In this sci-fi world, it's possible to hook up a human brain to a computer, download its memories and identify or know the contents of those memories (which means you can separate and sort them individually). Let's assume if you can do all that, you can store them too cuz if you couldn't, that would be dumb.
What if you could reverse this process and digitally implant stored memories? What if you could pick and choose the memories you implanted? Let's assume that you are able to erase all the memories in a human brain somehow. That means you could upload any memories you wanted -- even mix and match memories downloaded from other peeps. If you knew what you were doing and had all the appropriate gear, you could basically create an entirely different "ghost" or identity and insert it into a blank human brain and send that "person" on his/her merry way none the wiser.
The above, by the way, is the ENTIRE premise for a TV show called Dollhouse. In this world, empty humans are called "dolls" or "actives," and composite identities are called "imprints." Customers custom order who/what they want, an imprint is created (on a REALLY big computer), an active is put into the magic chair (with lots of creepy blue light), imprinted (ZAPPED) and then rented by the customer. When time's up, the active is erased back to "doll" status and reused for the next customer.
I know. It's potentially pretty gross. However, what I found interesting was the term the matron of this futuristic whorehouse used to describe "actives" before they are "imprinted": She calls them TABULA RASA.
As I'm sure you remember (HA!), Tabula Rasa ("the blank slate") is the title of our first Kate-centric episode of LOST from Season 1. But did you know it's also the title of an episode of Heroes? And further, did you know that there's a character ("The Haitian") on Heroes that can telepathically remove any memory he chooses? Or that there's a character (Parkman) who can telepathically read AND change your mind (subliminally suggest stuff) at will?
And our buddy Parkman? Ends up he had his own problems, but he ended up magically fixing them.
- He suffered a setback when the bad guy's "ghost" parked in his brain and randomly took over his body. [Hm. This is what happens on FRINGE when a teenager has the "ghost" of a murder victim park in HER brain and take over HER body.]
- Anyway, Parkman thought he had the upper hand when it looked like drinking himself stupid weakened the bad guy's ghost's ability to control him, but he passed out, and bad guy's ghost took over his body completely while he was unconscious. [Oh wait, that's what the girl's EEG told Walter on FRINGE -- her consciousness was "asleep" while the "ghost's" consciousness was controlling her body. That's freaky, right?]
- In the end, Parkman commits suicide by cop (he tricks the officers into shooting him to death) because the ghost in his head won't let him commit suicide by his own hand. [Can't kill yourself, so you trick someone else into doing it? Wow! Deja vue!]
- Bad guy's body visits Parkman in the hospital and with ONE SIMPLE TOUCH OF THEIR FINGERTIPS, bad guy's ghost zips back into his body, threatens revenge and runs away. [MEMORY/IDENTITY transfer via TOUCH, lovely LOST readers. Know anything about that?]
What does all this have to do with LOST, you ask? Simple. Season 6 has shown us that the memories of our losties are being manipulated. If that's true, then the IDENTITIES of our losties are being manipulated because: YOUR MEMORY IS YOUR IDENTITY.
If Desmond and Hurley in the flash world are "given" their memories from the island, then to solve the mystery we need to know 1) why they didn't have them already (were they repressed or missing?), 2) whether these memories are being activated (if repressed) or added (if missing) and 3) HOW they are being added or activated. If we can figure those things out, then maybe patterns of memory manipulation we've missed prior will float to the surface.
The HOW is what interests me. In this sci-fi world, our losties memories are being "restored" in one or a combination of the methods we've discussed above: telepathically, genetically, chemically, magically, or digitally (or physically if that floats your boat).
What do you think?
Before you answer, ponder the following question we've batted around this entire post. What's the tangible difference between "real" memories/identities and "not real" memories/identities?
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A FEW RELATED LOST EPISODES TO PONDER: "HAPPILY EVER AFTER," "EVERYBODY LOVES HUGO," "HEARTS AND MINDS."
NOTES:
**For those of you that don't know, a switch is a traditional American (Southern) corporal punishment device primarily used to discipline young children. It's a soft, supple, thin branch stripped of leaves (usually pulled off a bush or small tree) about a forearm in length. When you misbehaved, your parents (or any adult relative, really) threatened to switch you, and if you continued to misbehave or did something REALLY bad (like tell a big, fat, sneaky LIE) they DID switch you by waving the end of that switch back and forth on your bare legs until you cried and confessed. And you confessed whether you did it or not because getting switched burns like FIRE!
I guess the logic of the switch is that 1) there's no force or permanent damage (it STINGS like a sonuvabitch, but it doesn't break the skin or scratch you up), 2) you only need one hand to use it, which means you can used the other to to hold on to your victim so they can't move outta switch range and 3) it was quick, cheap and easy to pick a switch off the nearest bush when you needed one. My dad said my Grandma would draw out the entire switching process by making him go pick a switch for her to use on him! ("Run yonder and bring me a switch off that tree!")
***I'm skipping the physically altering memories category altogether because my gut says that it doesn't apply to LOST. However, if you are interested, a guy on FRINGE has his memories removed when the parts of his brain containing those memories are surgically removed.
Related Theory Post:
FEAR & Identity
This LOST theory post created by Amy/aohora for www.LOSTblog.com.
Amy's LOST Recaps - Season 6
