I'm pretty sure nobody on That Darn Island has realized that they're operating on lifeboat ethics now. (Heck, Sawyer may be the only one there who recognizes the concept.)

I'd say Locke handing that knife over shows he has a pretty clear idea of how desperate their situation is, even if he's manipulating it himself.

They're so desperate a kid needs knife lessons? Not seein' it.

Oops! I meant the knife he handed Sayid in "Confidence Man." Just in case.

I also think, for the record, that someone whose pride/masochistic urges prompt them to work against group survival in as dicey a situation as they occupy is probably a liability that the castaways can't afford at this point. If it happens again, I think Sayid, Locke, or whoever would be justified in making sure it's for the last time.

I'm with Matt on this one. Don't waste time on the fingernails when the carotid is right there. Also, I'd damn well enforce the communist pooling of resources the day after everybody woke up from the wreck. Sawyer and his stash would've been brain-bashed well before that. No hoarding!

Remind me not to piss Hec off, particularly under confined circumstances.

They're so desperate a kid needs knife lessons?

The only problem I have with Locke teaching Walt how to handle a knife is that he should have okayed it with Michael.

They are in a survival situation and *everyone* should be lining up for knife handling and weapons making. Walt is older than I was when I learned the proper respect for knives. What he learns from Locke could save his life, and indeed the lives of others on the island. Even Shannon.

In the situation they are in, it's not a matter of specialization of skills, it's a matter of sharing what you know, so that the group can be as strong as possible.

Exactly. First order of business should be that each day, once their essential food needs are met, Jack should be teaching EVERYONE on that island the basics of first aid. Hunting, knife handling, and general wilderness survival lessons from Locke should be a high priority too.

You made me go read the Sawyer Apologistas! Bad Matt! No biscuit!

The thing is, I like Sawyer a lot. Well, "like" is not the word I'm looking for exactly, but I like the conflict he brings to the group, I like that he's psychologically FUBAR, and OK, the pretty doesn't hurt either. But why must people feel compelled to try white-washing the character? What's the point? And oy, with the "my character is better than your character!" argument.

When it comes down to it, I don't necessarily disagree that the torture was just as disturbing and wrong (if not more so) than Sawyer's passive-aggressive self-destructive assholitude, but something about the tones of these posts just set my teeth on edge.

Eh. Fandomization of a show comes with the good and the bad, I guess. Now, where are all the good fic, damnit?

It's interesting -- but I don't know if the writers have thought this through yet -- the "lifeboat" concept. Because, as large a group as this is, and as seemingly-paradise a place as they washed up, why would they snap immediately to the lifeboat mentality?

More to the point, how? Small groups have managed to overcome personality conflicts to create a main goal and work toward it, but large groups, it gets more and more dicey. More opportunities for competing leaders, less interaction with every individual in the group, more mouths to feed, less opportunity to cement power by offering or withholding a key survival component (since whatever it is, it can't possibly go around to everyone).

The castaways from the Bounty survived, by snapping to a familiar leadership pattern (although a number of them starved to death anyway). The survivors of that plane crash in the Andes similarly had a schema around which to cohere: they were a sports team (plus extra people). The Essex, the whaling ship on which Moby Dick is loosely based, lost almost all its crew, in part because the three surviving dinghys were separated; but even so, it was the 'outsider' crew-members -- several black recruits from the bigger cities of Massachusetts, as opposed to the white Nantucket crew who were practically all 2nd cousins -- who died first.

I imagine some of the probabilities lie on individual personality -- note that the only military guy on Crashy-Crashy Island is a refugee from a dictatorship, so that's out as a leadership method -- but because this is fiction, they also lie on what crazy thing the jungle will think up next.