The Others: How They Keep their Population Growing

[erikau]

I'm going to speculate something here...we have been told all along that it is not possible to successfully birth a child on the Island if it is conceived on the Island. We have seen two born, and know of one other: Aaron and Ethan, and also Alex. All of these children were born to...non-Others, other others if you will, over a period of time that spans decades (Ethan in the late 70s, Alex in the early 90s, Aaron in the 2000s).

Fast forward to the time when our 815ers crash, since this is when we learned most of what we "know" about the Island. Ben is now an Other...there are no real Dharma left (that we know of), Ben has become lead-Hostile, Rousseau is crazy in the jungle...but in any case the Others are 99.9999% of the people on the Island. So when Ben says children cannot be successfully conceived, carried, and birthed on the Island..is he correct? Or is he speaking from his limited knowledge, which would be of how OTHER women go through childbirth, Danielle had no problem, and neither did Amy or Claire. So is it all women who have trouble with babies on the Island, or just those from the "Other" race of people?

Our Otheriest Other, Richard Alpert, appears not to age. Now this could just be an illusion that comes from his ability to time travel, or he doesn't age, or he just ages verrrrrrrry slowlllllllly. Assuming it is not a time travel thing, and he actually does age differently, is it just him, or all his people that are like that? Do they have such long life spans, live 1000s of years (as is claimed people did a looooong time ago by some cultures, Noah was old as dirt in the Bible), because of some biological, genetic property of their people, or because of some benefit from having lived on the Island for generations? If this is the case, and that these "people" are different than normals, does it effect not only their aging, but any aging that would happen to them internally...basically rendering the women infertile as fetii fail to properly form and develop? Maybe the reason Juliette can't fix the "problem" is that it isn't a problem it all, it is just the way they are.

The whole baby-project...it was not a goal of the Others, it was a goal specifically of Ben's. It is clear from the beginning that this is his pet project, his goal, and the reason he needs Juliette so badly. Therefore it would seem to me that the truly indigenous Others, well, didn't really care about this baby-problem. Like, I'm sure they wouldn't mind if it was fixed, but living forever sort of takes away the necessity of procreation. Ben, however, being a "normal" man who probably greatly desires a family, after how crappy his was, wants a kid. When he realizes that one of the effects of the Purge is that he is now stranded in his paradise, with his people...but without ANYONE who could mother him a child, he freaks out, He steals Alex, and becomes obsessed with Juliette.

(Now, some of you might be thinking, if it only a problem for real, indigenous Others, then why is Ben so worried about Alex getting pregnant? I have two answers: 1) maybe Ben doesn't realize the true nature of the problem, because he refuses to accept that he is different and separate from "his people" on a biological level...talk about feeling left out. OR 2) Alex technically is an indigenous Other...she WAS born on the Island, even though she was born to a non-Other, she was BORN ON THE ISLAND. Maybe that is what Alpert is, all any of the "true" non-aging Others are: babies who were conceived off-Island by "normal" women, but born on-Island and raised by Others. Anyway, that is a tangent haha. But yes, maybe Alex technically is a REAL Other, and will stop "aging" once she hits full maturity, like Alpert.)

In any case, I am going with the idea that true Others, true indigenous peoples and not strays picked up along the way (like Ben and Juliette, and maybe now our 815ers) are close to immortal...they either do not age, or they age very slowly and so they do not NEED to procreate. The statue on the Island is holding ankhs, the key to eternal life in the Egyptian culture, and the true people of the Island have this gift of eternal life. Because of it though, they cannot reproduce on their own, and either have to travel to the real world to plants their seeds (we have seen Alpert make a few trips, maybe he was on baby-making missions haha), or they have to wait for normal women to come to them (like Claire, Danielle, Amy, etc.) This is why the Others steal children...they cannot have them naturally, so in order to have any around they have to collect them. It is why as much as they need to protect the Island from outside forces, they also continually need new outside forces to come to the Island. We have seen to many separate missions over time: We know of the Black Rock, the US Army, Danielle's crew, Dharma, Henry Gale's balloon, Desmond, Flight 815, the Freighter crew, and now Ajira 316. This is a whole lot of crashes for one little, apparently very hard to find Island, in a not-so-long period of time. Is it simply because ALL these people "had work to do"...because if that is the case it is starting to seem like any damn person could have work to do on the Island. I don't think that is it...I think that the Island constantly needs fresh blood so to speak...the different people who crash there are either weeded out, or brought into the fold to live the good life on Magic Island. It is the only method of population regrowth available to the Island's true, indigenous, and infertile people...they literally have to sort through the people that crash there, getting rid of the bad and finding roles for the good.

In addition, some of these "crashers" are indigenous Others...they just don't know it. It appears that both Charlotte and Miles were born on the Island, and while we don't know where Daniel was born, we know his mom was an Other in 1954. In addition, with Christian Shephard, what we have is a charatcer who we assumed we knew, but it is becoming clear that we don't know crap about him (like Widmore before this season...we were all clueless). I refuse to accept that he has become the face of Jacob, the face of the damn Island, for no reason more than his dead body landed there. That's crap. He fathered two children that landed on the Island, and is the grandfather of a child born on the Island. Locke had to wear his shoes in order to get Ajira back to the Island, because he needed to be a proxy for Christian. Why was having a proxy for Christian essential to getting back, but having a proxy for, say, Jin, was not? Christian, technically, is the reason most of our 815ers crashed on the Island anyway. Jack, obviously was picking his body up...Ana Lucia was working for him...Claire, in a less direct way, could be said to be there because of him, because if she had a better family and homelife maybe she wouldn't have been getting rid of Aaron...Boone and Shannon are there because of Christian, he was the surgeon who couldn't help Shannon's dad, making Shannon lose her money, thus she had to trick Boone, and they both end up on Flight 815...Sawyer is on 815 because after he meets Christian in a bar in Sydney, Christian convinces him to kill the man he's hunting, causing Sawyer to get on 815. Soon, he will help Sun and Lapidus get from Hydra to the main Island..he tells Sun they have a "bit of a journey ahead of them." To me, just like Alpert and Abaddon, Christian's main duty is to get people to where they are supposed to be. Anyway, if Christian Shephard does not end up having some sort of deeper connection to the Island, I will eat my hat.


Thoughts?

[sugarnuts]

I like your thoughts about the others actual being biologically different from humans. Over time, people in drastically different geographic locations have evolved in different ways. For example, people in higher altitudes tend to be much stockier with "barrel chests" and much bigger lungs to make up for the cold climate and lack of oxygen.

Well how would a group of people evolve on an island that jumps through time?

Interesting Anthropological question.

I agree that Christian has a deeper connection to the island that will be revealed later, and i think your right on with the comparison to Abaddon.

His last name is Shephard, after all, which is pronounced exactly like Sheppard.

[Lurcher]

I think people landing on the island must be important, as the time flashes were all based on arrivals- 1954, they appear weeks after the military, 2007- just after the 316ers arrive on the main island, 1988- at the same time as Danielle, 2004- Aarons birth. I expect the brief ones we saw were all at the same time as new blood arrived too

[erikau]

Exactly sugarnuts. They would have adapted and evolved...and with all the "unique electromagnetic properties" of the Island, who knows what those evolutions could be! We get hints throughout this show about "special" people...and these people seem to have "special" powers of the mind: Telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, astral projection...are all of our "special" characters that way because they are genetically different? The descendants of a culture of people who are advanced simply because they are from this Island? I love it.


Christian Sheppard...the Christan Shepherd...Jesus? He did "resurrect" after landing on the Island. I don't literally mean Jesus, but a Jesus-esque character, Jesus was God's shepherd, leading his flock, and also the sacrificial lamb. So far we have seen the latter part...Christian seemingly coming back to life, leading the "sheep" on their path...but what about the sacrifice part? Was Christian the last Locke, so to speak, having to sacrifice his own life to save the Island? After all, Locke had to be a proxy for Christian...because Christian WAS the original sacrifice. It was his death that got some of our most important 815ers on that flight...I can't wait to see Christian Shephard on Island as a younger man, as I expect we will before the series ends.

[Lurcher]

I'm not only expecting to see a young Christian on the island but also at least some of those hippies that John lived with off island too. Oh, and i'm expecting a baby called thomas to appear, making Aaron a super-significant multi-generational island birth. We have to find out more about Aarons dad now he's back with his real family- why is one of Thomas' paintings on Widmore's wall about 4 years BEFORE he got claire pregnant- he'd have only been a young'un at the time unless he's spectacularly long lived

[sugarnuts]

Christian Sheppard...the Christan Shepherd...Jesus? He did "resurrect" after landing on the Island. I don't literally mean Jesus, but a Jesus-esque character, Jesus was God's shepherd, leading his flock, and also the sacrificial lamb. So far we have seen the latter part...Christian seemingly coming back to life, leading the "sheep" on their path...but what about the sacrifice part? Was Christian the last Locke, so to speak, having to sacrifice his own life to save the Island? After all, Locke had to be a proxy for Christian...because Christian WAS the original sacrifice. It was his death that got some of our most important 815ers on that flight...I can't wait to see Christian Shephard on Island as a younger man, as I expect we will before the series ends.

I didn't mean to insinuate that Christian was a "jesus" figure.

I meant that his name, Shephard, could be a clue to his purpose, much like Jack (and the rest of the family, by extent). You know, because it sounds like the sheppards, the people that herd animals.