Even MORE on the Jacob/Anti-Jacob debate

There’s a feisty Jacob/Anti-Jacob debate going on right now in the comments section, mainly over my suggestions that Jacob isn't as good as he seems, that Anti-Jacob might not be as bad as he seems, that Jacob represents issues related to interventionism, and that Anti-Jacob represents issues related to non-interventionism.  I seem to be kind of on my own on this one, but today I'm going to have another go at defending my position.  Please excuse me if I get a little feisty myself.

(If you're new to the debate, you can catch up by taking a peek at the last two posts -- here and here -- and at the comments sections that follow them -- here and here.)

A few possibly faulty assumptions

To start, let me address a few assumptions about Jacob and Anti-Jacob that I think we need to watch out for. 

First off, just because anti-Jacob wears black and seems able to assume other forms (or at least one form, that of Locke), I don't think we should automatically assume that he and the black, amorphous smoke monster are one and the same.  They might be, but then again they might not.

Also, I don't think we should automatically assume that anti-Jacob’s opening comments (“They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt – it always ends the same”) show anti-Jacob to be a people-hating baddie, or that Jacob’s opening comments (“It can only end once – everything before that is progress”) show Jacob to be a people-protecting goodie.  There’s a case to be made that Anti-Jacob’s seemingly pessimistic view is in fact quite realistic -- it's an unidealized, unsentimental description of the cycles of rise and fall found throughout the history of human civilization.  There’s also a case to be made that Jacob’s apparent pursuit of progress (which, for the sake of argument, I’ll assume is the purpose of his interventions into the lives of the castaways) has caused more harm than anything we’ve seen from Anti-Jacob do.  Yes, Anti-Jacob may have played a part in the death of Locke and the stabbing of Jacob, but compare that with what Jacob’s done. 

• By distracting Sayid, Jacob caused Nadia to be killed by a passing car
• By paying for the shoplifted lunchbox, Jacob taught the young Kate that she didn’t have to pay for her crimes, resulting in the older Kate thinking she could kill her father and get away with it
• By giving Sawyer the pen with which he wrote the letter to the Real Sawyer, Jacob encouraged Sawyer to seek revenge, resulting in Sawyer later shooting an innocent shrimp vendor he was tricked into believing was responsible for his parents’ deaths

Nadia.  Kate's father.  The Australian shrimp vendor.  That’s three Jacob-related deaths right there.  But so far, we’ve only seen Anti-Jacob play a part in two deaths, those of Locke and Jacob – and the latter of these might not have even been a real death at all.  So who's racked up the higher body count, from what we've seen so far?  That's right: Sweet, belevolent, white-shirted Jacob.  The one who supposedly helps people.   

Now, granted, when I say that Jacob’s not a good as he appears, and Anti-Jacob not as bad as he appears, I'm partly doing it to be contrarian.  But contrarianism isn’t such a bad thing when someone’s trying to fool you -- and as we all know, Lost is constantly trying to fool us.  I'm pretty suspicious that Lost is trying to fool us right now, by letting us assume that Jacob is “good” and Anti-Jacob “bad.” 

For example, just look at what Lost has done with Jacob and Anti-Jacob's attire.  Lost has given Jacob a white shirt and his rival a black one, thereby triggering our pre-conceived notions that, in cinematic epics, good guys wear white and bad guys wear black.  Similarly, Lost has given Jacob a gentle demeanor, framing his actions towards the castaways as benevolent – even though, as I argued before, Jacob’s supposedly benevolent actions actually cause the castaways to maintain negative behavioural patterns they might have otherwise abandoned. 

Furthermore, by having Anti-Jacob say he wants Jacob killed, and having him later play a part in the death of Locke and the stabbing of Ben, Lost sets us up to assume that Anti-Jacob is a malicious murderer.  But who’s to say that Anti-Jacob isn’t sacrificing those two lives in order to save many, many more?  Perhaps Anti-Jacob is trying to stop Jacob from bringing more people to the island to prevent more innocent lives from being sacrificed in what he believes to be Jacob’s wrong-headed pursuit of “progress."  After all, if Jacob brought the ship to the island, then maybe he brought Oceanic 815 to the island, too – and if that’s the case, then Jacob bears at least some responsibility for the many deaths that occurred as a result of the plane crash.  It's at least possible that Anti-Jacob has decided that the loss of two lives is a small price to pay, if it will end Jacob's habit of sacrificing outsiders in the name of "progress." 

So, there you go: Just as it’s possible to assume that Jacob is well-intentioned and Anti-Jacob not, I’d argue that there are lots of reasons to assume the opposite might be true, too.  (I’d also argue that its likely that neither man is definitively good or evil, and that their goodness or badness might be entirely in the eye of the beholder...)

Overseas interventionism

Now, onto the prickly issue of interventionism.  I’ve been arguing that Jacob might represent some form of interventionist foreign policy outlook, and Anti-Jacob might represent some form of non-interventionist/isolationist foreign policy outlook.  A few readers disagree with me (Michel and Alistair in particular, who’ve really been working me over lately!).  They might be right on this one, but I won’t be able to rest until I’ve mounted a proper defense, so let me add a bit more to what I said yesterday. 

Let’s look at the arenas in which Jacob and Anti-Jacob seem to operate, based on what little we’ve seen of these two so far. 

Jacob performs a lot of off-island interventions, visiting the mainland to verbally and physically interact with the castaways.  The physical interactions seem particularly important, as Jacob makes a deliberate effort to touch each of the castaways as he talks with them.  So, Jacob travels off-island, and physically intervenes in the lives of the castaways.  That’s Jacob's modus operandi, according to what we've learned so far.

Anti-Jacob, on the other hand, appears to never leave the island.  He clearly has off-island influence, because he managed to maneuver Locke into losing his life, but – and this is key – he exercised this influence solely through his on-island actions.  Unlike Jacob, Anti-Jacob did not travel off-island to affect the lives of the castaways.  What little off-island work we’ve seen him perform, Anti-Jacob did it without ever leaving the island. 

So, to sum up, Jacob frequently leaves the island to actively intervene in off-island events, while Anti-Jacob doesn’t travel off the island, and intervenes in off-island events rarely, and never directly.

Let's say that again, a little bit differently: Jacob leaves home to intervene in overseas events, while Anti-Jacob remains at home, rarely intervening in overseas events.

To me, that contrast sounds a lot like the difference between interventionist and foreign policy non-interventionist foreign policies.  Which leads me to believe that Jacob -- the one who directly intervenes in off-island events -- represents something connected with interventionist foreign policy positions, and Anti-Jacob -- the one who remains on-island, and only indirectly intervenes in off-island events, if he intervenes at all -- represents something connected with non-interventionist/isolationist foreign policy positions.

Domestic interventionism

That said, I also believe that – in addition to representing foreign policy interventionism – Jacob the Intervener might represent interventionism in general, both foreign and domestic.  In that sense, Jacob would represent the view that a nation’s government should actively intervene in the affairs of other nations, as well as in the lives of its own citizens.  Anti-Jacob the Non-Intervener would represent the opposite view, the belief that a nation’s government should not actively interfere in the affairs of other nations, and should have as small a role as possible in the lives of its own citizens.  In that sense, Jacob would represent not just overseas interventionism but also domestic interventionism (so-called “big government”), while Anti-Jacob would represent not just overseas non-interventionism but also domestic non-interventionism (so-called “small government”).

***

So, that’s where I stand on that one.  For now, that is.  Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from running this site, it’s that I get an awful lot wrong before I get it right.  So keep up the debate, and let’s see where it all takes us.  You lot have changed my mind before, and I'm sure you'll change it again.  (But not on this topic.  Okay, maybe you might on this topic.  No, now that I think about it, you won't change my mind on this one.  But then again...)

I’ll be back with more on the finale in the next day or two. 

Take care, all.

Comments

[Michel]

I think it all comes down to what AJ meant when he said "And you have no idea what I've gone through to be here". How much intervention did he have to do to accomplish his plan?

We don’t know if the O-815 and A-316 flights were brought to the island by Jacob. Maybe his enemy has the power to lure people into the island too, and he did it as part of his really elaborate plan to murder Jacob.

Let's look at the two known pawns in AJ's plan, Locke and Ben (ant, to some extent, Richard, although Richard was won over by the real Locke's over-confidence). Ben and Locke’s lives have many similarities. Early births, both mothers called Emily, crappy lives that led them to self-acquired senses of purpose and grandiosity, plotted the death of their biological fathers, etc. Too many similarities? It seems like the hand of Anti-Jacob to me. Or what, the guy waited for his chance and when the o815 crashed he thought: “this is my chance”?

It seems that his plan has been going for many, many years. We don’t know “how much he’d gone through”, after all ;).

About Jacob dying or not, I don’t want him to be dead either, but it’s a possibility. Maybe for his plan to succeed he had to die… to REALLY die… like Dumbledore in the HP books. He was a great character and could be the greatest addition to the cast of the show… but you know the Lost writers are as bold as you can get on TV. Maybe the killed him for good and we won’t see him alive again. I hope not, though.

But yes, I grant you the possibility of Jacob doing more harm than his counter-part... which could end up being a warning against the potential pitfalls of small government with minimal intervention/regulation. It certainly seems that Jacob and AJ are like yin and yang. Therefore, they should aim at complementing each other, which should be the first objective of a better government... striving to get a harmonic balance between Regulatory and Laissez-faire policies.

However, in the issue of Jacob's overseas influencing vs. domestic manipulation of information, I've got to agree with you that none of them are clean. And yes, I didn't understand you at first, but now that you point out that AJ never leaves the Island, I think you may be on to something here. But when we get to domestic grounds, I think AJ has done a lot more manipulation than Jacob who, for all we know, only gave instructions to the leader and never left the statue's foot, except for visiting people outside the Island. Maybe Jacob gives more importance to foreign policy than domestic affairs, and AJ believes on a more isolationist approach, like you say.

But I think we should really start avoiding coining them as good or bad, because it's really not getting nowhere. I don't think the LOST writers are that opinionated to make judgment on things so controversial as the debate between small and big government, or the relative importance of overseas actions and domestic regulation. We must arrive, like they surely did, at a common ground.

[Holly]

We are supposed to believe that the republican party is pro-intervention with respect to foreign affairs and anti-intervention with respect to domestic affairs. So, it would be a contradiction (or typical Lost) to have the same character, Jacob, represent both foreign intervention and big government.
Except that the republican party under Bush managed to get caught in that same conflict and paid a huge price for it. I believe the reason the party found itself in that position was because it allowed the neoconservative faction to take control. The original neocon faction was liberal in its social policy (tending toward bigger governement) and conservative in its foreign policy (tending toward intervention.)
They had a pretty fair opportunity to test their theories. They failed. The American people rejected them. I think that is what happened to Jacob. (Hopefully, he is gone for good.)
I'm also thinking that it wasn't enough to be anti-neoconservative. That alone could not "kill" the neocon control over government. The American people had to stand up and act as one to take away the control. I'm not sure what the loophole is though I'm glad we found it.