Lost's State of Nature

Abstracting from its many manifestations in social and political thought – especially over the last 350 years – we may define a state of nature as a situation in which (i) agents’ interests are best served by coordinated and cooperative behaviour; but (ii) individuals have too little knowledge of or trust in their fellows’ intentions to act with them for the common good. The factors at work to make a state of nature more or less severe, and hence more or less survivable, can be sorted into various categories. Some of these have to do with the vital nature of the goods at stake, such as fresh water, food, shelter, and tools; others are determined by the scarcity or renewability of such goods, and hence with the ferocity of competition for them. In these respects, the survivors of Lost do not find themselves in a particularly severe state of nature; like Robinson Crusoe, they have been fortunate in their destination. Two other types of factor can be considered to understand why Lost models a predicament on the cusp between Hobbes’ conception of the state of nature (Leviathan, 13) and Locke’s (Second Treatise, ii). First, there are the shared frameworks of communication and expected behaviour that allow the (predominantly) anglophone group to organise themselves; at the outset, the Koreans are cut out of this and act accordingly. Second, there are the various relations between the initial position after the crash and the preceding social roles and interactions among the characters; the discovery of the handcuffs in the forest announces the presence of a criminal without indicating their wearer’s identity. Considerations from game theory can be brought to bear to understand why, from some positions, cooperation can be generated and, from others, it cannot.